The US military has used a glamorised image of a Nazi war criminal who led an infamous massacre during the Battle of the Bulge to kick off a photo-series commemorating the Allied victory’s anniversary, drawing a furious reaction on social media.

Joachim Peiper was a personal assistant to Heinrich​ Himmler and the chief of a German combat unit that murdered at least 84 American prisoners of war during the Nazis’ failed final offensive on the Western front.

Peiper and 72 others in his unit were later convicted of war crimes for the Malmedy massacre, which saw them assemble dozens of surrendered American troops in the snow and open fire without warning on the second day of the five-week Battle of the Bulge.

As US defence secretary Mark Esper and other senior officials prepared to gather at the Mardasson Memorial in Belgium on Monday, the US military posted a colourised image of Peiper on the social media channels of the Department of Defence, the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, and the XVIII Airborne Corps as the first in a series telling the story of the battle.

The posts were deleted after prompting outrage, but Lt Col Brian Fickel posted screengrabs on Twitter, where he described himself as “dumbfounded” by the decision. Another person wrote: “What the actual f*** am I looking at here?”

On the XVIII Airborne Corps Facebook page, the image of Peiper was accompanied by a narrative titled “December 16, 1944: “Today we gamble everything”, which begins: “He paused at his desk. He hated to be alone with his thoughts, with the feeling of uncertainty he’d been trying to avoid for weeks.”

The new post contains the same text but uses different images, in the original black and white.

The now deleted image said it had been “coloured by Tobias Kurtz”, who appears to be a digital artist from Slovakia. In the bio of his website, Tobias Kurtz uses a picture of the far-right Slovak People’s Party’s flag, bearing the words: “I’m a Slovak, not a facist.”

On the XVIII Airborne Corps’ now-deleted post, a Facebook user wrote: “This photo looks like you admire the SS – if that is not your intention please move it to later in the article and provide a caption (other than ‘Coloured by Tobias Kurtz). Especially this week, this comes across wrong, considering the white power hand-sign scandal at the Army-Navy game.”

In a comment, the corps replied: “Sometimes in movies, the movie will create a sense of tension by introducing a bad guy. It is a technique of effective storytelling.”

In another comment, the US official wrote: “Peiper was a war criminal, but he cannot be faulted for the German failure in Ardennes.”