Colonel Georges Guingouin, a ruthless communist leader, who was feared throughout the Limousin, controlled the Sussac maquis. Unfortunately for SOE, of all the Resistance leaders in the area he was the one least influenced by London. Understandably given this backdrop, the SOE boss Staunton considered it essential that he should make contact with other, more co-operative, maquis of the Corréze and Dordogne. He decided to send his courier, Violette Szabo, to liase with them. A Sussac maquis section leader, Jacques Dufour, codename 'Anastasie', volunteered to drive 'Louise' to meet a contact at Pompadour, some 30 miles south. From there she would be passed on to local leaders.

Whatever happened that fateful morning, the fact remains that this remarkable young woman was indeed captured by the Waffen-SS, limping from a twisted ankle and nursing a slight flesh wound. She was conveyed by staff car to Limoges and presented to the Das Reich Divisional interpreter, Major Kowatsch (who had acted as 'master of ceremonies' in Tulle only the previous day). Admitting only that she was British and had parachuted into the region just a few days before, Kowatsch later claimed that the SOE agent was treated with respect and supplied with clean clothes before being handed over to the SD (Security Police). Whether or not this is true, given the Germans' frustration and current strength of feeling against maquis activities, is not known but has surely to be considered doubtful.

Jewish Communists say they held up a crack unit getting to Normandy

During the afternoon of that same day, men of the Der Führer Regiment committed the worst atrocity of all against the French civilian population. The unit's commander, Major Otto Dickmann, was a close personal friend of Major Kampfe. Das Reich sources claim that Dickmann received information to the effect that the Maquis was holding a high ranking German officer at the small town of Oradour-sur-Glane. He deduced that this could only be Major Kampfe and immediately moved against the small town (of 254 buildings with a population of 650). Although Dickmann's men failed to locate either Kampfe or prove any connection with the maquis, they left Oradour in flames having slaughtered its population: 393 residents, 167 people from the surrounding area, 33 from Limoges, and 55 from other places were killed. Many of the victims were women and children, only 52 of the total death toll were ever identified.

Das Reich did not reach Normandy for another three days, arriving on June 13th having taken five days to complete a journey of 150 miles. The delay imposed by what was, in effect, a 'Secret Army' was actually far beyond what London had hoped for. These crack SS troops then had to spend another seven days re-grouping and it was not until June 30th that Das Reich had completely trickled into rear areas of the front. In fact, Lammerding's men were unable to fight as a cohesive unit until July 10th, by which time Das Reich had already suffered heavy losses.

Ultimately Violette Szabo was executed, together with fellow SOE agents Lillian Rolfe and Denise Bloch, at the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp on an unknown date in January 1945. She was 23-years old.

 

 

On December 12th, 1946, Tania Szabo, then aged four, received her mother's posthumous George Cross from King George VIth; she was wearing the dress that Violette brought back from her first sortie into enemy occupied France. The citation in part reads: -

 

Madame Szabo volunteered to undertake a particularly dangerous mission in France…. In her execution of the delicate researches entailed she showed great presence of mind and astuteness. She was twice arrested…., but each time managed to get away.

 

…She was arrested and had to undergo solitary confinement. She was then continuously and atrociously tortured, but never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of value. She was ultimately executed. Mme Szabo gave a magnificent example of courage and steadfastness.

 

Captain Etienne Szabo was also decorated, receiving both the Legion d'Honneur and Medaille Militaire. Both husband and wife were also awarded the Croix de Guerre with clasps. These medals can now be seen at the Exhibition of Jersey's Occupation Experience, located in the former German Underground Hospital, having been made available by Tania Szabo who now lives and works on the island. Movingly, Tania recently made a very personal pilgrimage to Ravensbrück where she left violets in the very passage where her remarkable mother had been executed, and placed a wreath in the crematorium.

 

The current owner of 'Cartref', Miss Rosemary Rigby MBE, is equally determined that Violette Sazbo GC will not be forgotten. A plaque commemorating Violette's association with the house was unveiled there on June 26th, 1988 (on which date Violette would have been 67). Although Tania Szabo was unable to attend, she sent Miss Rigby 23 roses - one for each year of her mother's short life. That same year, the Royal British Legion authorised the inclusion of a wreath dedicated to Violette amongst those laid at Hereford War Memorial every Remembrance Sunday.

The Jewish maquisards and partisans were not merely "perceived by the Germans" as Communist, Poles, Frenchmen, etc...

...Dali's limp watches oozing over the desert were perceived as watches nonetheless...

...It has been my observation that the question of Jewish resistance (or passivity) has more often than not been posed in accusatory tones...

As a result of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, the Soviets did not join the fight against Germany, thus Germany was successful it its attempt to safeguard itself from a two-front war. The Nazis and the Soviets kept the terms of the pact and the protocol until Germany's surprise attack and invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Guingouin's split with the Party line eventually led him to "take the maquis" in February I941. The Police had become aware of Guingouin's work and raided his home. As a consequence he was forced to flee and take refuge in a fir plantation in the commune of Soudaine-Lavinadière in Corrèze. This led to Gabriel Roucaute, one of the leaders of the clandestine Communist Party in the French southern zone, to say of Guingouin, that he is "the insane one who lives in wood".

Between 1940 and 1942, there was comparatively little out and out fighting between the German occupying forces and the Resistance. For the most part the Resistance carried out intelligence gathering activities and relatively minor sabotage work, along with helping downed airmen escape, but little in the form of direct combat. During this period of time Guingouin went to great lengths to gain at least the understanding and trust of the local non-involved population, rather than their hostility with all the dangers of betrayal which that brought.

As head of an underground printing works, Guingouin was now forced to live under the hardest of conditions, sometimes in shacks and uninhabited houses or even in the undergrowth of the forest. Still, Guingouin continued his work, organizing massive distributions of leaflets at large gatherings such as local fairs and festivals. Not surprisingly, the group's activities were widely denounced in Vichy France both by the police force and by Marshal Pétain, himself, who said that these actions were causing a "feeling of ill wind to rise in all France".

The stakes were raised on 1st October 1941, when Guingouin and his group broke into and stole a stock of ration cards from the town hall in Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts. As a result, and in his absence, on January 21st 1942, Guingouin, for his part in this action is condemned by the Military Tribunal of the 12th Area to serve penal servitude for life. From this point onwards the Resistance group led by Guinguoin, now known as the 'Francs Tireurs' (The Free-Shooters, named after the group involved in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71), became much more aggressive in their actions against the German occupying forces.

FTP leaders in southern France was 'Colonel' Georges Guingouin an ex-school teacher from Limoges: see picture. Guingouin had been asked to help the attackers of Tulle and had refused to send any men, arms or ammunition, even when directly approached on the evening of the 7th June. It is significant the FTP leaders who attacked Tulle on the morning of the 7th June had not secured Guingouin's assistance before the attack began and he refused it when it was sought. So much for idea of a united, indivisible resistance movement all working to a common agreed goal.

    Georges Guingouin has been mentioned several times in this narrative and his name appears in just about every writing on the subject of Oradour. Since he has an important part of the story, his background will be outlined as follows.

    He was the son of a professional soldier, a non-commissioned officer, who was killed at Bapaume at the start of W.W.I. His mother had given him a thirst for reading, especially about patriotic events in France's past, such as the peasant resistance in the Vosges during 1815 and about the 'Francs Tireurs' (Free-Shooters) of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

    Guingouin had competed three years of military service in the infantry before the war, serving in the headquarters unit of the military school in Paris and this is undoubtedly where he picked up the necessary skills to organise and control his band of resistance fighters. Guingouin was a communist, but he claimed to be able to work with and not against General de Gaulle and the other resistance groups.

    Between 1940 and 1942, there was comparatively little out and out fighting between the Germans and the resistance. For the most part the resistance carried out intelligence gathering activities, helping downed airmen escape and did relatively minor sabotage work, but not much by way of direct combat. During this time Guingouin went to some lengths to try and gain at least the neutrality of the local non-involved population, rather than their hostility, with all the dangers of betrayal which that brought. From 1943 onwards the resistance (the FTP), became much more aggressive, destroying the rail bridge at Bussy-Varache on the Limoges-Ussel line in March. Then a little later in May, Guingouin personally, with just one helper attacked the Wattelez rubber-processing factory near Limoges.

    Guingouin and his men had become such a nuisance, that the Vichy government in October 1943 made a determined effort (without success) to locate and destroy them, employing their own men and not German forces.

    This needs to be re-stated, Frenchmen were used in large numbers to hunt other Frenchmen.

    By early 1944, Guingouin and his men had become such an irritant, that no less a force that Das Reich (which was quartered around Montauban) was ordered to assist in the location and destruction of the FTP Resistance, or "Gangs" as the Germans called them. At first sight a group less suited to anti-partisan warfare than a Panzer Division would be hard to imagine, yet in this case there was some logic to it. The point being that Das Reich was in the area occupied by Guingouin's men at the time and many of its veterans had experience of fighting irregular forces (and dealing with the local civilian population). After the D-Day landings were seen to be serious and not just a diversionary feint, Das Reich's orders changed rapidly to send them north to Normandy. However for a few days they carried out what in effect became an anti-partisan operation whist they headed north towards Normandy.

Guingouin understood that the head of Gestapo in Limoges had promised to execute all 2,863 Limousinaise prisoners before leaving the city. Nevertheless, Guingouin, at the head of 8,750 FTP fighters, augmented by British SOE agents, Spanish Republicans, other French Resistance units and Russian Liberationists, had already given orders to carry out an encircling movement around the city.

Faced by siege situation, Guingouin succeeded in obtaining the surrender of General Gleiniger, commander of the German garrison troops for the Limousin. However, Gleiniger's surrender was not accepted by the 19th Regiment of SS Police. One unit, aided by the peaceful entry of Guingouin's fighters into the city, took the opportunity to assassinate Gleiniger and escape towards Creuse, leaving the body of their former Garrison General in a rubbish pile at the cemetery in Guéret. It was not until the evening of August 21st that the remaining part of the garrison,12 officers and 350 men, finally surrendered the city of Limoges.

The City of Limoges had been liberated purely through the efforts of the French Forces of the Interior under the command of Guingouin. On his return to France and in recognition of the military exploits of the resistance fighters of the city, General de Gaulle, praised the city as the Capital of the Maquis.

Following the liberation of Limoges, 20,000 resistance fighters, in the Limousin, fell directly under the orders of Colonel Guingouin. But on November 20th 1944, Guingouin was seriously injured in a car accident and, as a result, was hospitalized until April 4th 1945.

In recognition of his popularity in the city, Guingouin was officially elected mayor of Limoges from 1945 until 1947 and then, having served his term, returned to teaching firstly at l'Aube and then successively at Montiéramey, Saint André les Vergers and Troyes.

On the 9th June, the Schutzstaffel (SS) hanged 99 men from the balconies, trees, and bridges along the main street of Tulle. Another 149 were deported to Germany. Later that day another 67 were murdered in Argenton.

Oradour-sur-Glane before the beginning of the Second World War

The following day German soldiers began encircling the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. A unit of 120 soldiers from the Waffen SS tank division entered the village and instructed everyone to assemble in the central marketplace. Other soldiers in armored cars rounded up men and women working in nearby farms and fields.

Dickman rejected Desourteaux's offer and ordered that all the men be divided into groups and moved them to various barns and garages in the village. The SS soldiers then opened fire on the men. The only ones to survive were five young men from a group of 62 taken to the Laudy barn.

At five o'clock two German soldiers entered the church and placed a large chest on the altar. They walked out, laying out a long fuse as they went, which they lit before shutting the door. A few seconds later the chest exploded. Some managed to survive the blast but were shot dead by the soldiers as they scrambled out of the bombed building. Only Marguerite Rouffanche managed to get out of the church and escape the bullets being fired by the SS soldiers. Although she was wounded she managed to hide until the Germans left the village.

Oradour-sur-Glane after the Germans left the village on 10th June, 1944

The Germans then destroyed Oradour-sur-Glane. A total of 642 people were killed during the SS operation. This included 393 people living in the village, 167 people from neighbouring villages, 33 people from Limoges, and 25 others from different parts of the Haute-Vienne. Around 80 residents of Oradour survived. This included the five men from the Laudy barn, Marguerite Rouffanche from the church, 28 people who managed to hide during the roundup and 36 others who happened to be away for the day. Another 12 men were in Germany as part of Vichy's compulsory labour service.

Local hamlets also suffered high losses. Eight children of Le Mas du Puy attended the school at Oradour. Four mothers, concerned that their children had not come home from school, had gone to Oradour to look for them. They died with their children in the church.

In 1946 the French government decided to preserve the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane. The forty acres of crumbling buildings became a martyred village. A testament of French suffering under the German occupation and an example of Nazi barbarism.

Oradour-sur-Glane Headstone

(1) Marcel Darthout was one of the men who survived the shooting in the Laudy Barn. Darthout was interviewed about his experiences in 1988.

We felt the bullets, which brought me down. Everyone was on top of me. And they were still firing. And there was shouting. And crying. I had a friend who was lying on top of me and who was moaning. And then it was over. No more shots. And they came at us, stepping on us. And with a rifle they finished us off. They finished off the buddy who was on top of me. I felt it when he died.

(2) Sarah Farmer, Martyred Village (1999)

The chest exploded, releasing clouds of suffocating smoke and blowing out some of the church windows. In the ensuing chaos, the soldiers opened the door and sprayed the group with gunfire. They piled flammable material on some of the bodies, set a bonfire with the church pews, and abandoned the building.

Only one person managed to save herself from the conflagration. Marguerite Rouffanche, a forty-seven-year-old woman, had been part of a group that pushed back into the sacristy in search of fresh air. As the church burned, she crawled behind the altar and found a stool used for lighting candles. She managed to climb up and out the window. She dropped three meters to the ground below. Looking up, Madame Rouffanche saw that she had been followed by a young woman with a baby. The young woman handed down her baby before jumping, but all three were caught in a hail of machine-gun fire. Mother and child were killed; wounded, Madame Rouffanche was able to crawl into the garden of the presbytery, where she hid among rows of peas.
 

(3) Report written by an agent of the French domestic security service (16th June, 1944)

It was not until Monday, the twelfth of June, that one learned that on Saturday the tenth, in the course of the afternoon, the entire bourg of Oradour had been prey to fire and that the whole population had been shot and burned following police operations undertaken by the occupying authorities. Emotion gave way to horror and consternation when one knew with certainty that many women and children died a horrible death in the burning of the church.
 

(4) Ce Soir (22nd August, 1944)

For four years we have all lived in horror, we have all been used to hearing in low voices in our families, among friends, the sinister news of prisoners shot, whole buildings where inhabitants, chosen at random as hostages, have been savagely slaughtered, farms and their inhabitants burned: it was our daily news. Nonetheless, certain dreadful massacres which go beyond the Occupier's habitual savagery have sorrowfully made several French villages famous. The names of Chateaubriant, Oradour-sur-Glane, Ascq are on all lips.
 

(5) Jacques Delarue, Oradour (1945)

The drama of Oradour eclipsed all the other crimes of the "Das Reich" Division. The name of the martyred Limousin village became a symbol, the image of crime and of suffering, and that is understandable. But this attitude, in isolating the crime from its general context, that is to say the wave of crimes that surrounded it, the long succession of murders, assassinations, arson, and destruction, which this account has tried to reconstruct, has caused one to forget all these other crimes and made of Oradour an exceptional event, an involuntary excess due to the war, when it was only the application, more total and complete, of the daily methods of the "DAs Reich" Division.
 

communist Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP)

were created. Both organizations expanded during the winter of 1942–43, and a few

individual resisters, such as Georges Guingouin in the Limousin, had already seen the

potential for guerrilla action in the countryside before the impact of the STO

Disputing evidence of eyewitness survivors, the former teacher denied that the SS deliberately killed more than 350 women and children after rounding them up and ordering them into the village church, arguing that the deaths were due to explosives concealed in the church by members of the French Resistance active in Oradour.

Reynouard had sent videos of his film, along with order forms for additional copies, to the last two living survivors of the massacre, the village memorial centre (now a national war memorial and museum) and to the mayor of Oradour and numerous villagers.

Reynouard was first convicted in 1991 of distributing revisionist literature when he was a student in Caen, in Normandy. Six years later he was sacked from his post as a maths teacher at a technical college in nearby Honfleur, after he set homework involving counting Dachau concentration-camp victims and was discovered to have stored revisionist documents denying the Holocaust on the school computer.

Reynouard was eventually banned from teaching anywhere in France. He also wrote a revisionist book questioning the Nazi slaughter entitled The Oradour Massacre: A Half-Century of Theatre.

In 1998, some 500 French and German copies of the book were seized by police in Brussels and the Flemish port city of Antwerp at the request of French judicial authorities.

Reynouard’s sentence was handed down by the Limoges appeals court, which said that his film had insulted the memory of those who had been massacred.

The court doubled his original prison sentence, but reduced his fine of 10,000 (£6,688), ordering him instead to pay 1,000 (£668) in damages to each of the three civil parties in the case, including Marcel Darthout, one of the last two survivors of the massacre still alive today.

Today, only the stone skeleton of the original Oradour-sur-Glane remains. The late president Charles de Gaulle ordered that the charred ruins of the village should be left as a memorial to the suffering of France under the Nazi occupation and a new village was constructed nearby.

A rusting bicycle, a blackened iron bedstead and the charred wreckage of a baby carriage are still standing as a chilling reminder of the horrific events of that spring afternoon when Hitler’s troops razed the village to the ground and murdered its inhabitants.

The massacre is believed to have been a reprisal for a French Resistance attack which killed 40 Germans following the D-Day invasion.

The SS Das Reich storm-troopers were heading for Normandy when they were ordered to attack the village, a sleepy backwater near Limoges with little Resistance activity. Many historians have argued that the Nazis attacked Oradour-sur-Glane in error after mistaking it for nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres, a suspected Resistance stronghold about 15 miles away.

On their arrival, the SS rounded up children and women, many carrying babies in their arms, and marched them to the village church, where they locked them inside before throwing in grenades filled with poison gas, and opening fire.

As those who survived screamed for mercy, the SS built a human bonfire by throwing wood on to their badly injured bodies and setting it alight. Only one woman escaped from the church, by throwing herself from a 12ft-high altar window.

    Overall, France in the 1930's was probably just as anti-Communist as was Germany, but France was a democracy with a tradition of freedom of speech and action, expressed in the phrase, "The Rights of Man" which had first been used during the Declaration of 1789 (at the beginning of, The French Revolution). Germany in contrast had been feeling its way towards democracy from having an autocratic monarchist political system, which had lasted until the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918.

    It is normal and usual for democracies to have divisions in political opinion, it being a hallmark of a free society that such activity is unexceptional. In most of the really successful democracies, successful in terms of economic and political influence that is, the numbers of political parties have always been small. For example The United States of America has only two effective parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. It is true that there is an American Communist Party and many other fringe groups of all sorts, but in terms of effective elected numbers, just the two main parties. It is also true that in times of national crisis in a democracy, party political differences are set aside in order to present a common front, as for example in Britain during the Second World War which had a coalition government.

    France in the years preceding the outbreak of W.W.II had a fractious political system with much intra-national squabbling. Politically in 1939 the Third Republic was in a less robust state than Great Britain, her main ally against Germany. Whilst both Britain and France had been alive to the threat of German expansionist policies and had been building up their armed forces in order to counter them; they were both less ready for war than Germany when it came. The reason for this was simple, Germany under Hitler had the express intention of spreading eastwards by military conquest and had been rearming with that aim in mind. Britain and France were only reacting to Germany's action and a reaction will always be slower, because it comes after and in response to, an action. Both Britain and France were doing all they could to avoid a conflict, Germany in contrast actively sought one (initially with Poland and then Russia).

    When the talking ended following the invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939 and the expiry of the 3rd September deadline, both Britain and France fully mobilised in order to react to German aggression. Significantly neither country attempted an invasion of Germany itself. Time passed, the allies armaments industries went into high gear, more British troops were sent to France and the period known as the Phoney War began.

Diekmann had received information that morning from two collaborators in the French Milice (secret police), who told him that Kämpfe was being held prisoner in Oradour-sur-Glane and that the Maquisards, as the resistance fighters were called, were planning to burn Kämpfe alive. This information was confirmed by German intelligence reports.

Another SS officer named Karl Gerlach, had been kidnapped the day before by the Maquis and taken to Oradour-sur-Glane, after he had offered to give information to their leader in exchange for his life. In the village, Gerlach saw members of the Maquis, including women who were dressed in leather jackets and wearing steel helmets, the clothing of Resistance fighters. He escaped, wearing nothing but his underwear, just as they were preparing to execute him. He gave this information to Diekmann and showed him the location of Oradour-sur-Glane on a map.

Also on the day before, in the nearby town of Tulle, 73 SS soldiers had been murdered by the Maquisards after they had surrendered, and their bodies had been horribly mutilated beyond recognition. Genitals had been cut off and stuffed into their mouths. Some of the soldiers had been run over by trucks while they were still alive. An SS soldier had been dragged by his heels, face down, behind a vechicle until he was dead. Female resistance fighters had thrown excrement on the bodies of the SS soldiers. These were German soldiers who had surrendered in good faith to the Maquis, but had not been treated according to the rules of warfare under the 1929 Geneva Convention. After the Allied invasion at Normany, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had unilaterally informed the German army that the French resistance fighters were to be regarded as legal combatants under the protection of the Geneva Convention, but the partisans in Tulle were not honoring the Convention.

Just outside the southern entrance to Oradour-sur-Glane, the SS soldiers came upon the horrible scene of a recent ambush of a German Army ambulance. Four wounded German soldiers had been burned alive inside the ambulance; the driver and another soldier in the passenger seat had been chained to the steering wheel and burned alive.

French like germans

On Hitler's orders, the German conquerors went out of their way to be friendly. They set up food depots and soup kitchens to feed the French people until the economy could be brought back to normal. The French soon decided that collaboration with the Germans was to their advantage. After the successful Normandy invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower made the decision not to take Paris immediately. De Gaulle knew that Paris was a Communist stronghold and he believed that, if Paris were liberated from within by the Communists, France would become a Communist country after the war. To prevent the Communists from taking control of the capital city of Paris, De Gaulle decided that Paris must be liberated by the Allies.

25,000 Paris did nothing. Nonme did anything until 1944. Mostly back marterers, roibbres

Robert Hebras, one of the 5 survivors of the Laudy barn, wrote a book called "Oradour-sur-Glane, the Tragedy Hour by Hour," in which he described Diekmann as a "blood-thirsty man" and said that "Major Dickmann was a man whose callousness had earned him the reputation of a cold, cruel butcher, and a drunkard besides." Diekmann lies buried in the huge La Cambre Cemetery at Normandy where the bodies of 21,115 German soldiers were laid to rest. During the 60th anniversary ceremonies at Normandy, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took part, but he made it a point not to visit La Cambre to pay his respects to the German soldiers who gave their lives for their country.

Major Kamphe

Also on June 9, Das Reich's SPW (armored personnel carrier) abteilung, III./Der Fuehrer, was ordered by LXVI Reserve Army Corps to reoccupy the town of Gueret, 60 km from its present billeting area. Gueret had been captured by Maquis on June 7, and a German Army attack from the east on June 8 had failed to retake it. Now III./DF approached from the west. It accidentally skirmished with the German Army unit, which had just recaptured the town, and suffered several wounded. These were sent back towards Limoges in two SPW, which were overtaken on the way by III./DF commander SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Helmut Kaempfe alone at the wheel of his command car. He was driving ahead to meet with the mayor of a town along the route.

A few minutes later the two SPW found Kaempfe's car, deserted and still running. Kaempfe was gone, with no sign of a fight. The main body of III./DF left Gueret in Army hands and followed Kaempfe and the SPW back towards its billets. Upon reaching the car, it searched the surrounding area without finding any trace of Kaempfe or his apparent captors. (1, 21-23)  he is captured by the communists. who was kidnapped by members of the Further south, Der Führer's 3rd Battalion, commanded by the dashing Major Helmut Kampfe, was advancing from Limoges to Gúeret, the latter in maquis hands. Several engagements took place en route, including the execution of 29-captured Maquisard. Frustrated by these delays, at 8 p.m. Major Kampfe, who is believed to have been alone, overtook his column at high speed driving a Talbot car. A short time later his men found the Talbot abandoned at La Bussiére, 15 miles south of Limoges. There was sign of neither struggle nor injury. In fact, Kampfe had been stopped and kidnapped by a maquis group returning from blowing up a bridge near Brignac. Naturally lone German vehicles travelling in advance of their columns were easy prey and at least one other Das Reich officer was captured in similar circumstances but escaped to tell the tale.

The Truth on church

The explosion in the church was actually set off by a civilian. This individual is even believed to have shot a civilian while escaping from the church via the vestry, after setting a fuse. (3, 10) Speculation is that a member of the Maquis, perhaps not even a Frenchman, committed the deed in so that the Germans would be blamed. This would presumably cause even more civilians to join the resistance. Instead, the deaths at Tulle and Oradour ended Maquis activity in the Dordogne through the German withdrawal in August. (1, 32 & 47)

In 1969 Otto Weidinger met the former Maquis chief for the Dordogne, Rene Jugie, who called himself Gao, in Paris. Jugie confirmed that Oradour-sur-Glane had indeed been full of weapons and ammunition. It had been the supply center for all the towns and villages in the Dordogne. Any argument that Oradour had been randomly selected for destruction by the Germans thus received another nail in its coffin. (1, 42)

Jew massacre of SS at Tulle

In the light of day on June 9,  Forty men of III./95 were discovered dead near a school. They showed signs of execution, and local civilians reported the men had been killed after surrendering. Most of the bodies were mutilated, some had had their genitals cut off and stuffed into their mouths. Jewesses covered the SS with excrement. Other bodies were found around town, bringing the total German dead to 64. The III./95 had reported 80 missing, meaning several were unaccounted for. And 9 more Germans died in rescuing the garrison, as mentioned before. (1, 18-19)

All civilian Jew communists men found in Tulle were gathered in the yard of the local ammunition factory. The operation was directed by Das Reich 1c (third general staff officer, responsible for intelligence) SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Aurel Kowatsch. He was aided by the Mayor of Tulle, local officials, and the manager of the factory in selecting all non-residents and suspicious individuals. The remaining men were released. From the suspects 120 men were selected for execution as guerrillas by SD official Walter. A number were released because of their youth, and then the remaining 98 were executed, at the direction of Kowatsch, by the Pioneer platoon of SS-Panzer Aufklarungs Abteilung 2.

Synopsis of the Official Story of Oradour-sur-Glane

Around 2 p.m. on 10 June 1944, four days after the Allied invasion of Normandy, approximately 150 Waffen-SS soldiers entered the tranquil village of Oradour-sur-Glane in the Limosin region of south central France. For no apparent reason, Hitler's elite troops destroyed every building in this peaceful village and brutally murdered a total of 642 innocent men, women and children, an unexplained tragedy which has gone down in history as one of the worst war crimes committed by the German army in World War II.

Only one woman, a 47-year-old grandmother, escaped from the church. Taking advantage of a cloud of smoke, she hid behind the main altar where she found a ladder that had been left there for the purpose of lighting the candles on the altar. Madame Marguerite Rouffanche, the lone survivor of the massacre in the church, managed to escape by using the ladder to climb up to a broken window behind the altar, then leaping out of the window, which was 9 feet from the ground. Although hit by machine gun fire and wounded 4 times in the legs and once in the shoulder, she was able to crawl to the garden behind the presbytery where she hid among the rows of peas until she was rescued, 24 hours later, at 5 p.m. the next day, and taken to the hospital in Limoges where she was admitted under an assumed name. It took a full year for her to recover from her wounds. In 1953, she testified before a French military tribunal in Bordeaux about the masscare of the women and children in the church.

There were now about 200 men in the Square, covered by SS troops. The men were split into several barns. Dickmann was by now losing his temper, things were taking too long. He nodded to Captain Kahn who drew his pistol and fired a single shot into the air. This was the signal for the massacre to begin. THe SS threw open the barn doors and began firing and shouting loudly. 30 seconds later the firing petered out. At the church a large strange box was carried into the church and three fuses were lit, it began to pour out acrid fumes but was taking too long so that the soldiers lobbed grenades into the Nave and raked the church with machine gun fire. the fumes drove them out of the door so they continued to lob grenades in through the windows. Inside was a blazing inferno. One SS Lt, Knug, was killed by falling masonry. When the SS had opened fire at the barns, aim was deliberately kept low, taking most of the victims in the legs. Dickmann arrived and entered a barn, not more than a few were already dead, obviously well planned.

An old man was lying by the wall, crying for his wife. Dickmann, with theatrical aplomb, waited whilst eyes turned to him, then he shot the old man though an eye. He questioned men for 10 minutes then shot each one and stormed out of the barn, ordering the men to torch them all. The screams of the dying echoed above the roar of the flames.

Sole Witness

10th June 1944

    Towards the end of the Second World War, in a peaceful part of France, there took place a particularly horrible murder of 642 men women and children.

    Shot five times

    The soldiers then journeyed on up through France to Normandy and joined the rest of the German army in attempting to throw the allied invasion back into the sea. Many of them, including Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, who had led the attack on Oradour-sur-Glane, were killed in the Normandy battles.

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The mystery of why?

    What has fascinated people ever since the 10th of June 1944, is why did the SS act as they did? Why did they turn up at Oradour that day and without mentioning anything to the inhabitants, kill them all? That a few people survived the attack was not due to any lack of zeal on the part of the SS, but why did they do it?

    There had never been any obvious Resistance activity in the town, the Germans had never been attacked by the townspeople and after the killings were over the SS left without saying why they had done it to anyone at all. If the attack had been a reprisal for some violence towards the German forces, it would be normal for the Germans to say (loudly) to all the local population, 'that's what you get when you help the Resistance, let that be a lesson to you all'. But they did not, they just left without saying a word.

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The events that led up to the attack

    To understand the reason why, we must go back to the end of the First World War in 1918. After Germany was defeated, the allies, mainly France, made her pay a very heavy price for the war and this led to very strong feelings of resentment. There was much hardship within Germany in the years between the end of the war in 1918 and the 1930's and this enabled a young Austrian called Adolf Hitler to become the ruler of the country in 1933. Hitler led the Nazi party, which was an extremely violent and racist group, with the express intention of restoring Germany's prestige by winning back all her losses and making the country strong and internationally respected.

    Eventually Hitler's aggressive politics proved too much and when he invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, both Britain and France declared war. At first Germany was very successful and quickly conquered Poland and then turned on France, defeating her in June 1940.

    France asked for peace terms, which were granted by the Germans. As a result France was divided up into 9 zones, only one of which was allowed to be ruled by Frenchmen, the others were governed by Germany and her allies. After about a year, or so the French Resistance movement came into being and from 1941 up to the end of the war in France in 1944, they were a thorn in the flesh for the Germans. The French Resistance was not a single united group, especially in the beginning they were disorganised and very weak. Eventually two main groups were formed; the largest was controlled from London by General Charles de Gaulle and the smaller by the French Communist Party. The communists were called the FTP and they were a ruthless group who during the war years killed many French people whom they suspected of working with the Germans.

    Towards the end of 1943 the 2nd SS-Panzer Division, Das Reich, was moved from Russia to southern France so that they could be re-equipped and re-train. One of Das Reich's young officers was Adolf Diekmann who had been severely wounded fighting the French in 1940. He had been shot through the lung and had spent several years as an instructor on light duties at the SS-officer training school at Bad Tölz, before going to Russia in the autumn of 1943. Another officer was Diekmann's friend Helmut Kämpfe, who had already spent several years in Russia and had recently won the Knights Cross for his bravery in halting a Russian tank attack.

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Das Reich moves north

When the invasion began on 6th June 1944, Das Reich was ordered to move north to Normandy to help the rest of the German army repel the allies and throw them back into the sea.     As soon as the SS began to move north they were attacked by the Resistance. At every step along the way they were ambushed and shot at. The soldiers began to detest the Resistance fighters who never wore uniforms and so could not be identified as the enemy until they started shooting. No soldier has ever liked guerrilla fighters, it is hard enough to face an enemy who is clearly marked, much worse to be shot in the back by a smiling civilian who has just passed you in the street.

The Resistance could not do much serious damage to Das Reich, but they could and did irritate the troops a great deal, in the same way that midges can spoil a picnic.     These attacks continued and then on the 8th of June the FTP Resistance tried to liberate the town of Tulle from the occupying German garrison. In the battle that followed, the FTP came close to capturing all the German troops, but before they could quite finish the job, that evening Das Reich arrived to the rescue. The SS made short work of the undisciplined and poorly armed Resistance fighters, who were soon in full retreat.

When the Germans had secured the town they found that the Resistance had killed and mutilated some surrendered garrison troops, so reprisals were called for. The SS rounded up all the men that they could find and after questioning them briefly, selected 120 of them to be hung from lampposts as a warning to the Resistance and anyone thinking of helping them. There was no proof that these 120 men were actually members of the Resistance, but that did not matter to the SS. After 99 had been hung, the soldiers ran out of rope and so the remainder were not killed on the spot, but deported to Germany as slave labourers.

 

    On the 9th of June Das Reich was asked to help drive the Resistance off from another town garrison that they were attacking. This town was called Guéret and the group that went to its assistance was commanded by Helmut Kämpfe. After driving to the town the SS found that they were not needed and so they decided to return to their new headquarters at Limoges. Kämpfe recklessly decided to drive on ahead of his men and about 10 miles from Limoges he met a lorry carrying some Resistance fighters who kidnapped him.

The Resistance men managed to avoid Kämpfe's men and took him to their local headquarters at Cheissoux, from where he seems to have been moved that night to Breuilaufa by way of Limoges. Whilst he was being driven through Limoges Kämpfe managed to throw his personal papers out of the vehicle as a clue to his whereabouts; they were found and handed in to his commanding officer, Sylvester Stadler. It seems that Kämpfe was killed by the Resistance at Breuilaufa either on the night of the 9th or early on the morning of the 10th of June.     During the day of the 9th June another officer, Karl Gerlach and his driver were kidnapped by the Resistance and according to Gerlach they were taken to Oradour-sur-Glane before being driven off to be killed. Gerlach managed to escape, but not his driver and he eventually managed to make his way back to Limoges to report to Stadler what had happened.

    On the morning of the 10th June Diekmann travelled from his headquarters at St. Junien to attend a meeting called by Stadler in Limoges and on arrival said that he had news from the Milice of a unnamed captured German officer being held at Oradour-sur-Glane. This man he now assumed to be Kämpfe and thus he requested permission to go and rescue him. Stadler is said to have agreed and added that if Kämpfe were not to be found, then Diekmann should take 30 or more hostages and hold them prisoner in order to force the Resistance to release him. Diekmann then left for Oradour via St. Junien after he had spoken to Gerlach in order to hear his story first hand.

    As we now know Diekmann did not attempt to take any hostages at all, he went to Oradour-sur-Glane simply to kill everyone. Later that afternoon he reported back to Stadler with the news of what he had done and Stadler is said to have been shocked at his news.

    Stadler was supposed to be so upset at what Diekmann had done that he promised to have a Divisional court martial set up to try Diekmann for the crime of killing the women and children. The death of the men was not judged to be worthy of a trial, but that of the women and children was thought to be shocking. However, Diekmann was not relived of his command, which makes me think that neither Stadler nor Lammerding, the commanding officer of Das Reich, were really upset over what he had done. In the event Diekmann was killed in action on 29th June before the court could try him. After his death the German authorities let the matter drop and no one was ever tried by the German courts for the massacre.

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On their 450 mile drive from the south of France to the Normandy invasion area, the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' (15,000 men aboard 1,400 vehicles, including 209 tanks) under the command of SS General Lammerding, arrived at Limoges, a town famous for its porcelain. In the small town of St. Junien (30 kilometres from Limoges) the 'Der Führer Regiment' was regrouping.

Following many encounters with the local maquis in which two German soldiers were killed, a unit of the regiment arrived at ORADOUR (believed to be a hotbed of maquis activity) in a convoy of trucks and half-tracks. At about 2 PM on this Saturday afternoon the 120 man SS unit surrounded the village ordering all inhabitants to parade in the market place for an identity check. Women and children were separated from the menfolk and herded into the local church. The men were herded in groups into six carefully chosen local garages and barns and shot. Their bodies were then covered with straw and set on fire. The 452 women and children in the church were then suffocated by smoke grenades lobbed in through the windows and sharpnel grenades that were thrown down the nave while machine-guns raked the interior. The church was then set on fire.

Incredibly, one woman, Mme Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped by jumping through a window, she was the only witness to the carnage in the church. (Mme Rouffanche died, aged 91, in March, 1988) Unspeakable atrocities were committed throughout the village, but some men managed to escape. The commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the SS Regiment at ORADOUR was thirty-two year old SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, a survivor of the Russian Front. He was later killed in the Normandy battle area on June 30 when hit in the head by shrapnel. Many members of the "Das Reich" reacted with surprising venom against the officer who ordered the massacre and a court martial was established but Diekmann died before the trial took place.

The world heard of this massacre eight years later when some of those responsible were brought to trial. In 1953, a French Military Court at Bordeaux, established that 642 people (245 women, 207 children and 190 men) had perished. Twenty-one other members of his company (including fourteen Frenchmen from Alsace-Lorraine who had been conscripted into the SS) were sentenced to death but later their sentences were commuted to terms of imprisonment. All were released by 1959. SS General Lammerding died peacefully at his home at Bad Toltz in Germany on January 13, 1971, of cancer. A close friend of Diekmann was Major Helmut Kampfe, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion of the Der Führer Regiment. He was kidnapped and executed by the FTP (Communists) the day before the massacre. His kidnapping was not the only reason for the events at Oradour.

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