| In June 1944, the 2nd SS Panzer Division was stationed at Montauban in South West France, 450 miles from Normandy. During its move north to combat the invasion it was harassed by the Resistance & Allied Special Forces. In retaliation, it carried out a series of atrocities against the civilian population, culminating in Oradour-Sur-Glane. At Tulle on June 9, it rounded up 3,000 Frenchmen; 120 Maquis were to be hanged in retaliation for the killing of 40 Germans whose bodies they claimed had been mutilated. As, according to Das Reich by Max Hastings, no more than 2 of the 3,000 were Maquisards, the Germans had to resort to measures such as assuming that the young, dirty or unshaven were Maquisards. Eventually, all but 410 were released. 120 were selected to die but for some reason, possibly representations by the local priest, the Germans stopped after hanging 99 of the innocent Frenchman. The other 311 were imprisoned; 162 were released & 149 sent to Dachau, of whom only 49 returned. Hastings says that there appeared to be no logic as to who was chosen to be released.
Sturmbannfuhrer Dickmann, the SS commander at Oradour, had previously had 13 people killed at Fraysinnant; one was an old woman who'd fired a shotgun at the Germans, 2 were her nieces whose only offence was to share her house & the other 10 were entirely innocent hostages. Hastings also relates other, smaller executions of innocent people.
Hastings' book deals with only June 1944 in detail but makes it clear that this sort of behaviour was normal on the Eastern Front, where Das Reich had previously served. During his research he met a former officer of another SS division, not Das Reich. This individual told Hastings that long after the war he had met another former SS man who had been at Oradour. The ex Das Reich man had said of Oradour that 'in our circles...it was nothing'. In context, this clearly means relative to what the SS had done in the East.
__________________
Martin
|