Massacre Tulle

German provisions

At the beginning of 1944, the 2 {{E}} division armor-plated S ''' Das Reich ''', a division of elite under the command of the Gruppenführer Heinz Lammerding, after having undergone heavy losses on the face of the East, had been gathered in the area of Montauban, to be reformed in preparation for a allied unloading some share on the Western face. It is made up of 18 000 supported men of light armoured tanks and tanks.

The shortly after the Unloading of Normandy, it receives the order to position in the area between Tulle and Limoges to reduce to it the maquis which, since the advertisement of the combined unloading, intensified the actions of sabotage and harassing of the German garrisons. It is the Régiment “Der Führer” which is charged to prepare the arrival of division. The western high command of the Wehrmacht had in February 1944 emitted on the matter the following orders: " Si of the troops is attacked, in some way that it is, the commander is obliged to take itself of the countermeasures, inter alia the following ones: A) immediate Shooting of response. So the innocent ones is victims, it is regrettable but entirely ascribable to the terrorists; B) The surroundings must be buckled and all the inhabitants, without reference to anybody, stopped; C) The houses from where one drew must be immediately reduced in ashes. As soon as these countermeasures are carried out, a report/ratio is established. In the appreciation of the control of the commander, it is the firmness and the speed of its intervention which will be determining. Only the weak and undecided commander will be seriously punished, because it endangers the safety of his subordinates and the respect inspired by the German army. Considering the current location, too severe measurements will not give place to continuations ". The particular orders of the commander of division bring tactical precise details: " the forces of Resistance must be destroyed by encircling movements ".

Tulle released then taken again

In their majority, the maquis of the area receive the orders of the command ftp southern zone: " Everywhere where the report/ratio of the forces allows it destruction of any German garrison and all units of the Waffen-SS and of the Milice. Everywhere where, for the moment, the balance of the forces is not in favor of the armed patriots, use of the tactic of the guerilla: destruction without respite of the small German garrisons, of the isolated units, to kill without pity the assassins and the villains of the Militia. Ahead… No pity… No forgiveness. "

The Maquisard S thus decide to attack on June 7th in the morning the garrison of Tulle, strong from only two Compagnies. In end of the afternoon, after negotiations with the Prefect, the garrison of Mobile Guards and Militia which supported with difficulty the attack undergone since the paddle, left Tulle for Limoges with the agreement of the partisans, thus depriving the German garrison of its protection. At the end of the day, the latter, badgered, which was dispersed enough gathers in three places: the Teacher training school in north, the Munitions factory and the school of Souilhac in the south. The engagements take again the 8 in the morning, particularly against besieged Teacher training school. In end of the afternoon, groups of soldiers leave the building on fire, constrained to go.

At 9 p.m. the group of recognition of division S arrives at the rescue of besieged. Taken at fault of protection, the men of the maquis surprised take down immediately, carrying their slightly injureds and about fifteen prisoners who will be, with some exceptions, all carried out.

Massacres and maltreatment?

The Waffen-SS find, in heap on the roadway, the corpses of an about sixty Germans, including 35 veterans of the Wehrmacht, the remainder being members of the security service. Some still carried their gas mask in protection against the teargas grenades with which they were smoked out. Against one of these heaps, the Germans noted the presence of a truck having crushed several of these corpses. They are convinced, wrongly seems it, that it knowingly rolled on the soldiers wounded to complete them brutally. Pilot inhabitants are immediately questioned by the officer of information of the regiment. The Germans obtain the conviction that the majority of the men were cut down whereas they went. They see a confirmation with the inspection of the bodies which attests that they received balls with bearing end, some being obvious with ground.

The German sources and works state in addition that many corpses carried mutilations. A judge had to establish a report: " According to certain eyewitnesses, some women, especially, who accompanied the partisans, had had a behavior pushing back towards the bodies of the German soldiers. I found a death with which one had bored in the ankles of the holes by which one had passed a cord; obviously, one had thus trailed it in round; on many corpses, I pus to count to 6 wounds of balls to the plant of the feet ". Another visual witness, Alsatian who had taken part in the burials, also left an account: " the officer of health says that they was the forty, all to us terribly mutilated. [it] did not stop swearing in connection with sexual parts which one had cut and put in the mouth of dead the ". Testimonys of the officers of the group of recognition and division also mention mutilations, in particular that of the judge Okrent.

The French authors reject these testimonys, affirming their not-credibility.

Men whom they had maintained in detention, the Germans carried out a second sorting, assisted Milicien S, which retained 149 of them intended for the deportation under “complicity with the franc-tireurs”. Only 48 will return alive from there.

The last instructions of the command of the Wehrmacht in answer to the intensification of the actions of partisans ordered “ to take measures hard, suitable to dissuade the inhabitants from these continuously infested areas, to remove the taste to them to shelter resistance or to let themselves intimidate by it ”

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