1320. MALMEDY MASSACRE Official press report and cover letter issued by the Judge Advocate General, Headquarters, Sixth Army, San Francisco, Jan. 21, 1949, the 3pp. 4to. Cover letter bearing original signatures of Lt. Col. Burton F. Ellis who served as Chief Prosecutor at the Dachau Trials (which included the Malmedy defendants) and Asst. Judge Advocate Gen. HUBERT D. HOOVER. This voluminous report, almost 2" thick, was released in reaction to finding by the Simpson Commission reported in San Francisco Chronicle article accusing the prosecutors, among other things, of mishandling the case. The report commences with a detailed defense of the process used to try 1,672 defendants tried to date, reports on sentences recommended for commutation, a list of the convicted defendants and their sentences, including those sentenced to death, and government regulations concerning the conduct of war crimes trials. With original 5" x 4" Signal Corps photo of one of the American victims of the German atrocity. Very good. The Malmedy massacre trial (U.S. vs. Valentin Bersin, et al) was held in May-July 1946 in the Dachau concentration camp to try the German Waffen-SS soldiers accused of the Malmedy massacre of December 17, 1944. The highest-ranking defendant was the former SS general, Sepp Dietrich. The Court eventually decided that all the defendants but one were guilty to differing degrees. Forty-three of them were condemned to death by hanging; the others were condemned to penalties going from ten or twenty years of prison to life. Peiper was sentenced to death; Dietrich was condemned to a life sentence and Priess to 20 years of imprisonment. $300-400