Oradour-sur-Glane

The Flemish language 'De Standaard' newspaper is reporting raids on six residences occupied by former members of SS Das Reich with possible connections to the Oradour massacre.

Huiszoekingen bij ex-SS'ers meer dan 60 jaar na bloedbad - De Standaard

Please excuse the lazy Google translate. It gives the gist though.

"The Public Prosecutor has started an investigation into six former members of an SS Panzer division, more than 67 years after a massacre by that division was done in a French village.

In June 1944 established the Waffen-SS massacred the inhabitants of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane. The six suspects were a member of the Waffen-SS Division Das Reich to the murder of 642 people, mostly women and children participated.

Investigators in Germany have the homes of six, in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hesse and Brandenburg, were examined. This is prosecutor Andreas Brendel said. Possible, the six charged with murder or complicity to murder.

The study was launched earlier this year after the conviction of John Demjanjuk. The 91-year-old Demjanjuk was sentenced in May to 28,000 cases of complicity in murder. The court found evidence that Demjanjuk was guard at the Sobibor extermination camp.

It was the first time in Germany that someone was convicted based on the fact that he was a guard and without any evidence existed for a specific murder.

The six men to whom an investigation was launched today, are all 85 or 86 years old. These low-ranking members of the Third Company of the First Battalion of the "Führer Regiment 'which was part of the fanatical" Das Reich' division. The company was responsible for the massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane, just four days after D-Day.

The citizens of the village were rounded up barns and a church. The doors were then closed and the whole village was burned. The people who did not perish in the flames were shot. Only a handful of people managed to escape. The village is still a ghost town.

Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann would have ordered the massacre in retaliation for the kidnapping of a German soldier by the French Resistance. Diekmann has probably thought that the perpetrators of Oradour-sur-Glane were or at least had a relationship with. Diekmann came shortly after the massacre killed in battle, so there is little known about the background of his decision.

Two of the six men who were involved in the massacre denial. Four others were unable for medical reasons a statement. The authorities are now trying to figure out what role the men played that day.

"We know that all members of the Third Company in Oradour were," Brendel said. "Obviously they had different functions - for example, some secured the area. The problem right now is to find out how much they knew and what they have done to the crimes possible. "

 

The No2 Das Reich SS Panzer Division was responsible for Orador. One of the greatest crimes of the war . Who could cram the women and children in the church and burn them alive? Who for heavens sake could do such an evil deed?
They went on to Tuel? and committed further evil crimes there. Even then they took revenge on the wrong village.

For us there was some satisfaction that they were trapped inside the Falaise pocket Though many escaped retribution rained down on many of them.
Sapper

 

The No2 Das Reich SS Panzer Division was responsible for Orador. One of the greatest crimes of the war . Who could cram the women and children in the church and burn them alive? Who for heavens sake could do such an evil deed?
They went on to Tuel? and committed further evil crimes there. Even then they took revenge on the wrong village.

For us there was some satisfaction that they were trapped inside the Falaise pocket Though many escaped retribution rained down on many of them.
Sapper


Well said Sapper!May they burn in hell for ever!I don't forgive.

 

Hi Seb. I forget the name of that other village? Was it Tule or Tuel OR?
They same SS div hung 99 men from ther lamposts in the town...
Sapper

 

Oradour,

The original village was left as it was and was gated at each end.It is designated a "Village Martyr"and has been bypassed effectively by a thriving new village on the north west side.The only location function remaining from the old village is the village cemetery which is still in use.

At the time of the incident,Petain made representations to the German authorities about the massacre but to no avail.The trial at Bordeaux in 1953 came to nought.There was also number of young pressed Alsaciens in the Das Reich and involved at Oradour,when it came to the Bordeaux trial for the sake of French unity,these were looked on as victims and not as perpretators.

For years after the war at each end of the village was the simple sign; Oradour sur Glane Souviens-Toi.....Remember

In the last few years,a visitors centre has been established on south side of the new village and close to the "Village Martyr".I must say I prefer the arrangement as it was but the freedom to wander round the martyred village has not been lost.

Regarding the excesses committed by the SS,not forgetting the Wehrmacht,they were not innocent,it has been reported that there were over 600 such villages, martyred in Russia.It was a common theme throughout German campaigns.

 

Hi Seb. I forget the name of that other village? Was it Tule or Tuel OR?
They same SS div hung 99 men from ther lamposts in the town...
Sapper

Tulle was the place.

 

Unfortunately this is a scenario that was all too common in the East, there were hundreds of Ouradours, Tulles, Lidices, all a feature of the war of annihilation that was the Ostfront.

 

Unfortunately this is a scenario that was all too common in the East, there were hundreds of Ouradours, Tulles, Lidices, all a feature of the war of annihilation that was the Ostfront.

Never heard of anything like what happened at Oradour took place in the East. Though I can imagine this would take place there aswell. Do you have any further info about specific towns?

 

Have a goo at this site, it gives a good starting point: Massacres and Atrocities of WWII in Eastern Europe

 

Thanks Gibbo . My memory back to those times is a little short of where it should be.... I am delighted with the thought that we were able to rectify the evil that took place ..Even if a very small extent! by the destruction by fire of those of the Das Reich inside the Falaise cauldron of Fire...
And it was Fierce cauldron to be caught in we were behind the bag clobbering the rear.

 

Have a goo at this site, it gives a good starting point: Massacres and Atrocities of WWII in Eastern Europe

Thanks Gerard. It's quite unbelievable and surreal to read. It never ceases to amaze me just how evil these people were and how they were capable of committing these sorts of atrocities.

 

As regards the slaughter of Russian civilians,the intentions were made clear before the invasion of Russia by the Barbarossa Decree.In the decree,it was emphaised that no German soldier would be charged with offenses against civilians unless it was an infringement of discipline...whatever that meant.

This was issued by Hitler's lackey,Keitel on behalf of Hitler.Civilian suspects would be at the mercy of a officer who would decide their fate which normally was death and the act was justified by recording the victims as "partisans".With his commando order against uniformed specialist forces,it was to send Keitel to the gallows in 1946.

As regards the anti partisian war,the leading ace,if I can call him that, was Bach-Zelewski,recorded as very ruthless and efficient when engaged with "partisans".His background was that he was an early convert to Nazi ideology,joining the party in 1930.He was the first commander of "anti partisan commandos",a Hitler favourite,he was awarded a Knights Cross for this type of work in Russia and in 1943 he was given a similar task against Polish partisans.

For a man who was reported to have commanded a Einsatzgruppen in the early days,Bach-Zelewski appears to have been fortunate to escape Soviet retribution and his neck when called to book for his activities.

 

Hi Seb. I forget the name of that other village? Was it Tule or Tuel OR?
They same SS div hung 99 men from ther lamposts in the town...
Sapper


Sapper,i think it 's Tulle.

 

As regards the anti partisian war,the leading ace,if I can call him that, was Bach-Zelewski,recorded as very ruthless and efficient when engaged with "partisans".His background was that he was an early convert to Nazi ideology,joining the party in 1930.He was the first commander of "anti partisan commandos",a Hitler favourite,he was awarded a Knights Cross for this type of work in Russia and in 1943 he was given a similar task against Polish partisans.

For a man who was reported to have commanded a Einsatzgruppen in the early days,Bach-Zelewski appears to have been fortunate to escape Soviet retribution and his neck when called to book for his activities.
He escaped, Harry, due to his agreement to testify on behalf of the Prosecution at Nuremburg (If I recall correctly). Seems that the Allies were willing to overlook this Sadist's catalogue to try and net the bigger fish.

 

Never heard of anything like what happened at Oradour took place in the East.
A consequence of allowing the German Generals to write the history of the Eastern Front.
The post-war desire to keep Germany on-side allowed them to falsify the record and when the Soviets came up with proof to the contrary the West was only too willing to dismiss it as 'Soviet propaganda'.
In truth 2nd SS were just doing the same thing at Ordour as they did in the East, murder those they saw as inferiors. Man, woman or child made no difference to the 'brave' SS.

 

A consequence of allowing the German Generals to write the history of the Eastern Front.
The post-war desire to keep Germany on-side allowed them to falsify the record and when the Soviets came up with proof to the contrary the West was only too willing to dismiss it as 'Soviet propaganda'.

Its really telling when you reread some of the German Generals memoirs with this in mind. Gives a whole new perspective to them.

 

As regards the slaughter of Russian civilians,the intentions were made clear before the invasion of Russia by the Barbarossa Decree.In the decree,it was emphaised that no German soldier would be charged with offenses against civilians unless it was an infringement of discipline...whatever that meant.


It meant that what was allowed and what wasn't really sanctioned depended on troop discipline. Whatever threatened discipline (Manneszucht, as they called it), like rape or killing in drunk state would or at least could be punished. Like in the Kommissarbefehl, also part of the "criminal orders", the military leaders tried to keep their mass murder within certain limits, so that their soldiers wouldn't totally get out of control. According to the Kommissarbefehl e.g., executions could only be ordered by officers. Naturally, that doesn't change a thing about the results, but it gave them a sort of legal cover. Like m kenny suggested, the former high ranking officers of the Wehrmacht played a huge role in historiography after the war.

I'm a tad surprised that the extend of the criminal warfare in the East isn't so well known - at least in Germany it has been well researched, and there's a lot of very fine studies on it (not sure which have been translated to English). Christian Hartmann, Felix Römer and Christian Gerlach are worth a read, to name just a few.

 

Souviens-Toi

I've visited Oradour-sur-Glane a few times. I am unable to describe in words how I felt each and every time I was there. When I think of the church where the women and children were herded, enclosed and burned alive: The bell lies melted to the floor.
I want to cry.

 

Heimbrent,

I am fully aware of what it meant.I was cynical because it is evident that there was no redress of grievance by any enemy in the East,be it civilian or military.German troops had a free hand to sexually exploit and worse, any females they were to encounter and that included those of the Jewish faith.No female was safe against the tide of the Hun.

As regards the Wehrmacht,there has been a somewhat concerted effort post war by the Wehrmacht leadership,postwar, to establish their credentials as having fought a fair war.Nothing could be further from the truth for in the East,the Wehrmacht have been proved to be hand in glove with the SS etc in the commissioning of atrocities.On the other side of the coin,it has resulted in the criticism of Bomber Command and the accusation of the failure to take Germans as prisoners in the Normandy bridgehead."Well you British and Americans were no different" is the standard response.

The fact that the Nuremberg trials did not declare the Wehrmacht an illegal organisation while the SS,SD and its affillations and the Waffen SS were, appeared to have given the Wehrmacht some isolation from war crimes.Clearly, the cold war intervened to dampen down the motiviation to look deeper into the Wehrmacht's role in commissioning war crimes.When that motivation came into being there was "a lot in the cupboard" that the Germans did not like and would have liked to dismiss.

But behind the policy of the establishment of The Greater German Reich was the Germanisation of the eastern lands and reducing surviving inhabitants to uneducated slave labour for the German colonists.This policy came from Hitler and his coherts and involved the elimination of the Slav,the "untermenchen" as reasonably practical with slave labour considerations in mind.

Recently there has been a major work for German history has been published by the Military History Research Institute.Potsdam, entitled "Germany and the Second World War".In 10 volumes it will be interesting to see what interpretation is recorded of the account of the German Third Reich and its various military factions.

From personal viewpoints,comes the stark reality of war as undertaken by the German armed forces, obtained from secret transcripts, running to 150.000 pages and derived from evesdropping the conversion of German POWs,is the publication "Soldaten....Transcripts of Fighting,Killing and Dying".

It is a German work which researchers have scutinised the transcripts and recorded these covert conversations which the participants thought were private.Some of it reveals the evil behaviour of those Germans involved on the Eastern Front while others strafed civilians for fun. (Eastbourne and Folkstone gets a mention in the hit and run daylight raids)

What I can see is that there appears to be an element of denial surfacing...its Allied propaganda they note.