The Malmedy Massacre-- Part 3: Background

Late in World War II,  the Third Reich's  war-crimes violations of the Geneva Conventions were a type of psychological warfare meant to induce fear of the Wehrmacht and of the Waffen-SS in the soldiers of the Allied armies and in the U.S. Army on the Western front.

Hitler ordered that battles be executed and fought with the same no-quarter  brutality with which the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS fought the Red Army along the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union.

All this took place during what is called the Battle of the Bulge, where the Germans caught the Allied forces by surprise and pushed large parts of the Allies back, isolating units, including the famed Bastogne.

GreGen