Oradour-sur-Glane

Oradour-sur-Glane was a village in the Limousin region of Vichy France that came under direct German control in 1942. Its name has become infamous because of its destruction in 1944 when almost all of its inhabitants — men, women, and children — were slaughtered by the German Waffen-SS.

Events

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 country to the fighting in Normandy. Along the way it came under constant attack and sabotage from the French Resistance. Allegedly, SS soldiers were further angered by finding atrocities committed by some resistants; in particular, a German ambulance in which all the wounded had been killed and the driver and assistants tied to the cab before the vehicle was set on fire. An SS officer who was captured by the resistance, but managed to escape, informed the division that the local centre of opposition was based around the village of Oradour-sur-Glane.

On June 10 the Waffen-SS Fourth Panzer Grenadier Regiment (Der Führer) circled the town of Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered all the inhabitants to congregate in a public fairground near the village centre, ostensibly to examine everyone's papers. All the women and children were taken to the church, while the village was looted. Meanwhile, the men were taken to six barns 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 Nazis covered their bodies with kindling and set the barns on fire. Only five men escaped; 197 died there.

Having finished with the men, the soldiers then entered the church and put an explosive device in place. After it was detonated, 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 240 women and 205 children died in the mayhem. Another small group of about twenty villagers had fled Oradour as soon as the Nazis appeared. That night the remainder of the village was razed. A few days later the survivors were allowed to bury the dead.

Nazi practices of repression

The Nazis viewed activities of resistance movements (which often did use guerrilla tactics) as terrorism, and they regarded members of resistance movements as terrorists. 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. They believed that there would be scores of German lives saved for every presumed or actual "terrorist" (ie. Resistance fighter) they killed and saw little fault in brutally murdering supposed "terrorist sympathisers", or even random people, if such murder could incite the Resistance to cease its attacks. The massacre at Oradour was thus part of a brutal but deliberate German policy of counter-terror intended to break the French support for the Resistance.

Oradour was not the single such collective punishment atrocity 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 had a policy of executing 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. However, the case of Oradour-sur-Glane was particularly striking in comparison with the usual Nazi practices in occupied France because of the large scale of the massacre, and the fact that women and children were not spared.

Post-war outcomes

On January 12, 1953, a trial began against the surviving 65 of the about 200 killers before a military tribunal in Bordeaux. Only 21 of them were present (many living in Germany would not be extradited). Among them were 7 Germans, the 14 others were Alsatians, i.e. French nationals who had been regarded as members of the "Reich" by the Nazis. All but one of them claimed to have been drafted to the Waffen-SS against their will (the so-called malgré-nous).

This 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 of the Germans were freed, too. Karl-Heinz Lammerding, the General of the SS division Das Reich who had given the orders for the measures against the "terrorists" (the Resistance), died peacefully after a successful entrepreneurial career in 1971, having never been indicted or extradited.

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

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.

External link

• Study of 1944 reprisals at Oradour-sur-Glane (http://www.oradour.info/)de:Oradour-sur-Glane

fr:Oradour-sur-Glane it:Oradour-sur-Glane sl:Oradour-sur-Glane he:אורדור-סור-גלאן