Oradour-sur-Glane

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Administration
Commune of Oradour-sur-Glane
Location
Coordinates	45°55′58″N, 1°1′57″E
Country	France
Region	Limousin
Department	Haute-Vienne
Arrondissement	Rochechouart
Canton	Saint-Junien-Est
Intercommunality	Communauté de communes Vienne Glane
Mayor	Raymond Frugier (2001-2008)
Statistics
Altitude	227 m–312 m (avg. 285 m)
Land area¹	38.16 km²
Population² (1999)	2,025
- Density (1999)	53.1/km²
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	87110/ 87520
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 mi² or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel).

Oradour-sur-Glane was a village in the Limousin région of France that was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants — men, women, and children — were murdered by the German Waffen-SS.

1 The massacre of Oradour
2 Intended German prosecution of Diekmann
3 German practices of repression
4 Post-war outcomes
5 Today
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] The massacre of Oradour

As an Allied attack on Europe loomed, the local French Resistance increased its activities in order to occupy the German forces and hinder communications.

2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was ordered to make its way across the country to the fighting in Normandy. Along the way it came under constant attack and sabotage from the French Resistance.

Early on the morning of June 10, 1944, Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, commanding the I. battalion of the 4th Waffen-SS ("Der Führer") panzer-grenadier regiment, informed Sturmbannführer Otto Weidinger at regimental headquarters that he had been approached by two French civilians who claimed that a high German official was being held by the French Resistance guerrillas, the maquis, in Oradour. He was to be executed and publicly burned amidst celebrations that day. The two French civilians also stated that the whole population was working with the maquis and that high ranking leaders were there at the moment. At about the same time the SD in Limoges reported that local informers had revealed the location of a maquis headquarters in Oradour. The captured German was believed to be Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, commander of the 2nd SS Panzer reconnaissance battalion, who had been captured by the maquis the day before. Kämpfe was never found and is listed in SS records as "Missing in southern France in action against terrorists."

On June 10 Diekmann's battalion sealed off the town of Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered all the townspeople to congregate in a public fairground near the village centre, ostensibly to examine people's papers. All the women and children were taken to the church, while the village was looted. Meanwhile, the men were forced into six barns and sheds where machine gun nests were already in place. According to the account of a survivor, the soldiers began shooting at them, aiming for their legs so that they would die more slowly. Once the victims were no longer able to move, the soldiers covered their bodies with kindling and set the barns on fire. Only five men escaped; 190 men died.

Having finished with the men, the soldiers then entered the church and put an incendiary device in place. After it was ignited, the surviving women and children tried to flee from the doors and windows but were met with machine gun fire. Only one woman survived; another 247 women and 205 children died in the mayhem. Another small group of about twenty villagers had fled Oradour as soon as the soldiers appeared. That night the remainder of the village was razed. A few days later survivors were allowed to bury the dead. 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane had been brutally murdered in a matter of hours.

[edit] Intended German prosecution of Diekmann

Sturmbannführer Diekmann received orders upon entering Oradour from his regimental commander, Standartenführer Sylvester Stadler, to have the mayor of Oradour name 30 people who could serve as hostages in exchange for Sturmbannführer Kämpfe; however, Diekmann instead ordered the population exterminated and the village burned to the ground.

Protests followed from Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel; General Gleiniger, German commander in Limoges; and the Vichy government. Standartenführer Stadler felt Diekmann had far exceeded his orders and began a judicial investigation; however, Diekmann was killed in action a few days later during the invasion, and a large portion of the third company, which had committed the massacre, was annihilated a few days later.

[edit] German practices of repression

The Germans regarded members of resistance movements as terrorists.^{[citation needed]} They found it difficult to deal with a "faceless", ununiformed enemy, which would not hesitate to attack unarmed German occupation staff (who were easier targets), striking without warning and subsequently vanishing by blending into a civilian crowd. Although less brutal in scope than what occurred on the Eastern Front, the reprisal at Oradour was part of a deliberate German policy intended to break all resistance. Despite such massacres and the death of thousands of innocents at the hands of the Germans, resistance movements in various parts of France continued until the end of the war.

Oradour was not the only collective punishment reprisal action committed by German troops — other well-documented examples include the Soviet village of Kortelisy (in what is now Ukraine), the Czechoslovakian village of Lidice (in what is now the Czech Republic), the Dutch village of Putten and the Italian villages of Sant'Anna di Stazzema and Marzabotto. Furthermore, the German troops executed hostages (random or selected in suspect groups) anywhere in France to deter Resistance fighters from attacking; resistants would hesitate to risk the lives of other individuals in addition to their own.

[edit] Post-war outcomes

On January 12, 1953, a trial began before a military tribunal in Bordeaux against the surviving 65 of the about 200 soldiers. Only 21 of them were present (many living in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic would not be extradited). Among them were 7 Germans, the 14 others were Alsatians, i.e. French nationals of German ethnicity who had been regarded as members of the "Reich" by the Nazis. All but one of them claimed to have been drafted into the Waffen-SS against their will (the so-called malgré-nous). The SS records do not show that any such drafting took place. It is most likely that the Alsatians were Nazi sympathisers and volunteered.

The trial caused huge protest in Alsace, forcing the French authorities to split the process in two separate ones according to the nationality of the defendants. On February 11, 20 defendants were found guilty. Continuing uproar (including calls for autonomy) in Alsace pressed the French parliament to pass an amnesty law for all malgré-nous on February 19, and the convicted Alsatians were released shortly afterwards. This in turn caused bitter protest in the Limousin region.

By 1958 all the German defendants had been released as well. General Heinz Lammerding of the Das Reich division, who had given the orders for the measures against the Resistance, died in 1971 after a successful entrepreneurial career, never having been indicted.

The last trial against a former Waffen-SS member took place in 1983. Shortly before, in the GDR the former SS-Obersturmführer Heinz Barth had been tracked down. Barth participated in the Oradour massacre as a platoon leader in the regiment Der Führer, commanding 45 soldiers. He was amongst other war criminals charged with having given orders to shoot 20 men in a garage. Barth was sentenced to life imprisonment by the 1st senate of the city court Berlin. He was released from prison in the re-unified Germany in 1997.

After the war, General Charles de Gaulle decided that the village would never be rebuilt. Instead, it would remain as a memorial to the cruelty of Nazi occupation. In 1999, President Jacques Chirac dedicated a visitors' centre, the centre de la mémoire, in Oradour-sur-Glane and named the site a Village Martyr.

The tragic story of Oradour was featured in 1974 in the acclaimed British documentary television series, The World at War, which was narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. The first and final episodes # 1 and 26, entitled "A New Germany" and "Remember" respectively, show helicopter views of the destroyed village, interspersed with pictures of the victims that appear on their graves. Somber music of Haydn's St Nicholas Mass is used during this poignant sequence in the documentary. It also shows the sign in Oradour that reads "Remember" and uses this atrocity as a symbol of all the suffering of the entire war.

Episodes 1 and 26 both started with the poignant words:

Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community which had lived for a thousand years, was dead.

This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.

They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a World at War...

And at the end of episode 26, while another aerial shot of the village ruins plus photos of various massacre victims was being shown to the accompaniment of dramatic music, Olivier said:

At the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, the day the soldiers came, they killed more than six hundred men, women, and children. Remember.

[edit] Today

Oradour-sur-Glane is now a commune of the Haute-Vienne département. Population 2,025. The new village was built after WWII, away from the ruins of the former village.

The entrance to Oradour-sur-Glane.	The main street of Oradour-sur-Glane.	The church where the women and children were burnt to death.	Wrecked cars.
Wrecked hardware - bicycles, sewing machines etc. are still left in Oradour-sur-Glane.