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| Oradour-sur-Glane massacre | |
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| Part ofWorld War II | |
 Wrecked hardware – bicycles, sewing machines – left in the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane | |
| Location | Oradour-sur-Glane, France |
| Date | 10 June 1944 |
Attack type | Mass murder |
| Deaths | 642 (190 men, 247 women and 205 children) killed[1][2] |
| Injured | 1 |
| Victims | French civilians |
| Perpetrators | Waffen-SS
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| Motive | The kidnap and murder ofHelmut Kämpfe (Reprisal) |
On 10 June 1944, four days afterD-Day, the village ofOradour-sur-Glane inHaute-Vienne inNazi-occupied France was destroyed when 642 civilians, including non-combatant men, women, and children, weremassacred by a GermanWaffen-SS company. The execution was retribution in the form ofcollective punishment for Resistance activity in the area, including the capture and subsequent execution ofSturmbannführerHelmut Kämpfe, the 3rd Battalion commander of 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, and a close friend of the 1st battalion commander of the same regiment, Waffen-SSSturmbannführerAdolf Diekmann, who an informant incorrectly claimed had been burned alive in front of an audience. Both of them were battalion commanders in the2nd SS Panzer DivisionDas Reich.[3]
The Germans murdered everyone they found in the village at the time, as well as people brought in from the surrounding area.[4] The death toll includes people who were merely passing by in the village at the time of the SS company's arrival. Men were brought into barns and sheds where they were shot in the legs and doused with petroleum before the barns were set on fire. Women and children were herded into a church that was set on fire; those who tried to escape through the windows were machine gunned. Extensive looting took place.[5][6]
All in all, 642 people are recorded to have been murdered. The death toll includes 17 Spanish citizens, 8 Italians (a woman with 7 of her 9 children), and 3 Poles.[7][8][6]
Only six people are known to have survived the massacre — five men and one woman.[9] A seventh survivor was discovered later and murdered. The last living survivor,Robert Hébras, known for his activism for reconciliation between France,Germany, andAustria, died on 11 February 2023, aged 97.[10][11] He was 18 years old at the time of the massacre.
The village was never rebuilt. A completely new village was built nearby after the war.PresidentCharles de Gaulle ordered that the ruins of the old village be maintained as a permanent memorial and museum.
In 1983 SS-UntersturmfuhrerHeinz Barth became the first senior commander to face trial for the massacre, claiming before a judge that he was shocked that there were any survivors and that the decision was made to wipe the village from the face of the Earth. But there were survivors that were in attendance to see Barth sentenced to life imprisonment.
In February 1944, the2nd SS Panzer DivisionDas Reich was stationed in theSouthern French town ofValence-d'Agen,[12] north ofToulouse, waiting to be resupplied with new equipment and fresh troops. Following theNormandy landings in June 1944, the division was ordered north to help stop the Allied advance. One of its units was the 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Der Führer". Its staff included regimental commanderSS-StandartenführerSylvester Stadler,SS-SturmbannführerAdolf Diekmann commanding the 1st Battalion andSS-SturmbannführerOtto Weidinger, Stadler's designated successor who was with the regiment for familiarisation. Command passed to Weidinger on 14 June.[13]
Early on the morning of 10 June 1944, Diekmann informed Weidinger that he had been approached by two members of theMilice, aparamilitary force of theVichy Regime. They claimed that aWaffen-SS officer was being held prisoner by theFrench Resistance inOradour-sur-Vayres, a nearby village. The captured officer was claimed to beSS-SturmbannführerHelmut Kämpfe, commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion (also part of theDas Reich division). Kämpfe was captured by theMaquis du Limousin the day before while traveling in a German army vehicle marked as an ambulance protected by the Geneva Convention.[14]
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On 10 June, Diekmann's battalion sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered everyone within to assemble in the village square to have theiridentity papers examined. This included six non-residents who happened to be bicycling through the village when the SS unit arrived. The women and children were locked in the church, and the village was looted. The men were led to six barns and sheds, where machine guns were already in place. According to a survivor's account, the SS men then began shooting, aiming for the victims' legs. When they were unable to move, the SS men covered them with fuel and set the barns on fire. Only six men managed to escape. One of them was later seen walking down a road and was shot dead. In all, 190 of the men died.
The SS men next proceeded to the church and placed anincendiary device beside it. When it was ignited, women and children tried to escape through the doors and windows, only to be met with machine-gun fire. 247 women and 205 children died in the attack. The only survivor was 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche. She escaped through a rearsacristy window, followed by a young woman and child.[15] All three were shot, two of them fatally. Rouffanche crawled to some pea bushes and remained hidden overnight until she was found and rescued the next morning. About twenty villagers had fled Oradour-sur-Glane as soon as the SS unit had appeared. That night, the village was partially razed.
Several days later, the survivors were allowed to bury the 642 dead inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane who had been killed in just a few hours. Adolf Diekmann said the atrocity was in retaliation for the partisan activity in nearbyTulle and the kidnapping and murder of SS commander Helmut Kämpfe, who was burned alive in a field ambulance with other German soldiers.
Amongst the men of the town killed were three priests who worked in the parish. It was also reported that the SS troops desecrated the church, including deliberately scattering Communion hosts before they forced the women and children into it. The Bishop of Limoges visited the village in the days after the massacre, one of the first public figures to do so, and his account of what he witnessed is one of the earliest available.[16] Amongst those who went to bury the dead and document the event by taking photographs were some local seminarians.
Raymond J. Murphy, a 20-year-old AmericanB-17navigator shot down overAvord, France in late April 1944, witnessed the aftermath of the massacre.[17] After being hidden by the French Resistance, Murphy was flown to England on 6 August, and indebriefing filled in a questionnaire on 7 August and made several drafts of a formal report.[17] The version finally submitted on 15 August has a handwritten addendum:[18]
About 3 weeks ago, I saw a town within 4 hours bicycle ride up [sic] the Gerbeau farm [of Resistance leader Camille Gerbeau] where some 500 men, women, and children had been murdered by the Germans. I saw one baby who had been crucified.
Murphy's report was made public in 2011 after aFreedom of Information Act request by his grandson, an attorney in theUnited States Department of Justice National Security Division.[17] It is the only account to mention crucifying a baby.[17]Shane Harris concludes that the addendum is a true statement by Murphy and that the town, not named in Murphy's report, is very likely Oradour-sur-Glane.[17]
Protests at Diekmann's unilateral action followed, both from Field MarshalErwin Rommel, General Walter Gleiniger, German commander inLimoges, as well as the Vichy Government. Even Stadler felt Diekmann had far exceeded his orders and began an investigation. However, Diekmann was killed in action shortly afterwards during theBattle of Normandy; many of the 3rd Company, which had conducted the massacre, were also killed in action. The investigation was then suspended.[citation needed]
On 12 January 1953, a military tribunal inBordeaux heard the charges against the surviving 65 of the 200 or so SS men who had been involved. Only 21 of them were present, as many were inWest andEast Germany, which would not extradite them. Seven of those present for the charges were German citizens, but 14 wereAlsatians, French nationals whose home region had been occupied by Germany in 1940 and later integrated into theGerman Reich. All but one of the Alsatians claimed to have been forced to join the Waffen-SS. Such forced conscripts from Alsace andLorraine called themselves themalgré-nous, meaning "against our will".
On 11 February, 19 of the 20 defendants were convicted. Five received terms of imprisonment and two were executed.[19] Continuing uproar in Alsace (including demands for autonomy) pressed the French parliament to pass an amnesty law for all themalgré-nous on 19 February. The convicted Alsatian former SS men were released shortly afterwards, which caused bitter protests in theLimousin region.
By 1958 the remaining German defendants had been released. GeneralHeinz Lammerding of the Das Reich division, who had given the orders for retaliation against the Resistance, died in 1971, following a successful entrepreneurial career. At the time of the trial, he lived inDüsseldorf, in the former British occupation zone of West Germany, and the French government never obtained his extradition from West Germany.[20]
The last trial of a Waffen-SS member who had been involved took place in 1983. FormerSS-ObersturmführerHeinz Barth was tracked down in East Germany. Barth had participated in the massacre as a platoon leader in the "Der Führer" regiment, commanding 45 SS men. He was one of several charged with giving orders to shoot 20 men in a garage. Barth was sentenced to life imprisonment by the First Senate of the City Court ofBerlin. He was released from prison in the reunified Germany in 1997 and died in August 2007.
On 8 January 2014, Werner Christukat,[21] an 88-year-old former member of the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion of the "Der Führer" regiment was charged, by the state court inCologne, with 25 charges of murder and hundreds of counts of accessory to murder in connection with the massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane.[22] The suspect, who was identified only as Werner C., had until 31 March 2014 to respond to the charges. If the case went to trial, it could have possibly been held in ajuvenile court because the suspect was only 19 at the time it occurred. According to his attorney, Rainer Pohlen, the suspect acknowledged being at the village but denied being involved in any killings.[23] On 9 December 2014, the court dropped the case, citing a lack of any witness statements or reliable documentary evidence able to disprove the suspect's contention that he was not a part of the massacre.[24] Christukat died in 2020.[25]
After the war, GeneralCharles de Gaulle decided the village should never be rebuilt, but would remain a memorial to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation. The new village of Oradour-sur-Glane (population 2,375 in 2012), northwest of the site of the massacre, was built after the war. The ruins of the original village remain as a memorial to the dead and to represent similar sites and events.
In 1999 French presidentJacques Chirac dedicated a memorial museum, theCentre de la mémoire d'Oradour, near the entrance to theVillage Martyr ("martyred village"). Its museum includes items recovered from the burned-out buildings: watches stopped at the time their owners were burned alive, glasses melted from the intense heat, and various personal items.
On 6 June 2004, at the commemorative ceremony of the Normandy invasion inCaen, German chancellorGerhard Schröder pledged that Germany would not forget the Nazi atrocities and specifically mentioned Oradour-sur-Glane.
On 4 September 2013, German presidentJoachim Gauck and French presidentFrançois Hollande visited the ghost village of Oradour-sur-Glane. A joint news conference broadcast by the two leaders followed their tour of the site.[26] This was the first time a German president had come to the site of one of the biggest World War II massacres on French soil.[26]
On 28 April 2017, French presidential candidateEmmanuel Macron visited Oradour-sur-Glane and met with the only remaining survivor of the massacre,Robert Hébras.[27] Hébras was 18 at the time of the massacre and died at age 97 in 2023.[28][29]
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