Oradour-Sur-Glane - Massacre on 10th June 1944

From https://www.oradour.info/images/or698097.htm

The landmark television series, 'The World at War', used Oradour-sur-Glane as a symbol of the horror that was the conflict of W.W.II. and both the first and the last episodes contained the following narration spoken by Laurence Olivier (Lord Olivier) ...

"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; in China; in a World at War . . ."

Later citing spurious allegations to justify the atrocity; namely the villagers' alleged (but untrue) complicity in aiding the French Resistance, notably in the kidnap and assassination of  SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Helmut Kampe; the Panzer Regiment 'Der Führer' surrounded the village and gathered all of the villagers together in the town square, even rounding up villagers working in the fields. 

The 197 men were segregated from the women and children. An officer announced that he knew that the villagers were hiding weapons and ammunition for the resistance and that those hiding them must step forward immediately. No-one did, as no-one was hiding materiel for the resistance. 

The men were divided into groups and forced into six locations, barns and garages, throughout the village, where they were callously shot before the buildings were set alight. In Laudy's barn, where the largest group of some 60 men were taken, they were shot in the legs and lower body. Somehow 6 men escaped, including Robert Hèbras, although one later succumbed to his injuries.

Hèbras later wrote:

"The inquiry which took place afterwars established that all the men were murdered at the same moment. There were only five survivors from the six sites of execution. All were from Laudy's barn. 

If the S.S. had moved their guns a little further back (Note 1), they could have shot their victims in the upper part of the body. They did not bother. Without doubt, many of the martyrs perished atrociously in the flames, because most of them must have been wounded inthe legs.

Once the executions were over, a man-hunt was organised. Any witness was systematically shot without trial. Later, bodies were found all over the village, down a farmyard well, in a bakery oven." (HÈBRAS. 1994. P21)

(Note 1) This narrative and the illustrations in Hèbras' booklet would indicate that the S.S. troops used one of their standard methods when carrying out such atrocities, namely setting up light machines on tripods, either Maschinengewehr (MG) 34s or MG42s. This would potentially explain why the Germans fired low as the MGs could not elevate sufficiently at short range to target the victims' upper bodies. 

The women (240) and children (205) were forced into the church where they were locked inside. The SS troops threw smoke grenades (Note 2) then hand grenades into the church which injured some people whilst others were suffocated by the smoke. The SS men then added combustible materials in the church and set it alight, and anyone attempting to escape was shot dead. The SS then searched the village looking for anyone in hiding - presumably so as not to leave any witnesses - and murdered anyone they found. They then set fire to all the buildings. Of the 642 bodies, only 52 were intact enough to be identified and death certificates issued. The remaining 590 bodies were charred beyond any chance of recognition. 

(Note 2) In Hèbras' booklet, he repeats the account given by Madame Rouffanche (see below) in which she explains that:

Around 4.00 p.m., a few soldiers, around 20 years of age, brought into the nave, close to the choir, a large kind of box, from which hung strings, which trailed on the ground. When the trailing strings were lit, the device suddenly exploded with a loud bang, and gave off a thick, black, suffocating smoke. Women and children, half choking and screaming in terror, rushed to those parts of the church  where the air was still breathable. It was thus that the door to the sacristy was broken down, under the irrestible pressure of a terrifieid crowd. I followed them, and sat down on a step. My daughter joined me.The Germans saw that people had escaped into the room, and cold-bloodedly shot down everyone who was hiding there. My daughter was killed where she stood, by a shot fired from outside. I owe my life to my c;osing my eyes and feigning death.

(HÈBRAS. 1994. P25)

However in total 7 people did in fact survive the massacre. Five men lay under the bodies of the men killed around them and played dead. One child had managed to escape before the SS began rounding up the villagers. One lady, Madame Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped through a window of the church and was shot five times whilst trying to escape, presumably being left for dead before crawling away into a garden where she hid amidst pea plants until she was rescued the following day. Madame Rouffanche survived and gave evidence at trial in Bordeaux in 1953.

In 1946 President de Gaulle announced that Oradour would be preserved as a national memorial. A new Oradour was to be built adjacent to the ruins of the old village.

Today Oradour may be visited and entered, but only through the Visitors' Centre and Museum. Over the years, all traces of soot and charcoal appear to have been washed away, giving no hint of the firestorm that laid waste to the village. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

HÈBRAS, Robert. 1994. Oradour-Sur-Glane, The Tragedy, Hour by Hour. Montreuill-Bellay: Editions C.M.D.

Images from Oradour-sur-Glane - 16th August 2025.

In August 2025, my wife (Dr Jo Parkes) and I visited our old friends Ian and Sharon Davison in the La Vienne department of France. Whilst planning the trip, I looked at the CWGC website to see what military graves were in the area. I was amazed to discover the nearby cemetery at Rom, with its 30 graves of SAS soldiers all killed on the same day. Researching the story I became aware of Operation BULBASKET and the execution of the SAS troops and the French Resistance fighters by the 2nd SS Panzer Division "DAS Reich". I discovered that the Germans had conducted a brutal massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane a mere few days before murdering the SAS and French fighters. Due to the proximity in time, I rationalised that Oradour-sur-Glane must also be close by and planned to visit the town. Following are my images from the visit. 

It is only in relatively recent years that birds have returned to Oradour-sur-Glane. For decades following the atrocity, there were no birds. No birdsong. Such was the immenisty of the evil that was perpetrated there. 

It is also now thought that the Germans got the 'wrong' Oradour.

Sturmbannfuehrer Adolf Diekmann (known as Otto) ordered the massacre in retaliation for the participation of resistance fighters 'from Oradour' in the kidnapping and apparent execution of his friend and fellow SS Sturmbannführer, Helmut Kämpfe. Kämpfe had been captured by a French Resistance Group and had either been executed or killed trying to escape, and his body burned. Some reports speculated that he may have been burned alive.

When the SS Division discovered that Kämpfe had been kidnapped, Diekmann led troops from the 3rd Company, 1st Battalion, 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment and members of the brutal French Milice on a brutal search of the surrounding area. Two local men were shot dead 1.5 miles east of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat by SS men under Diekmann's command.

Diekmann eventually reached the outskirts of Oradour-sur-Glane. He told his superiors that he ordered his men to raze the village and kill the inhabitants (245 women, 207 children, and 190 men) because he had become enraged after he had found Kämpfe's handcuffed body inside a German field ambulance with the remains of other German soldiers. He believed the vehicle had been set alight, burning alive everyone inside.

The commander of the 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, SS Standartenführer Sylvester Stadler, ordered that Diekmann should face a court-martial for ordering the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. The Das Reich's division commander, SS Brigadeführer Heinz Lammerding confirmed the decision.

Diekmann was killed near Nayers-Bocage during savage fighting against the British on 29 June 1944. He was killed by shrapnel wounds to his head from a British artillery shell. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of his death, prompting speculation that he may have sought 'suicide by combat' rather than face justice. Following his death, all charges against Diekmann were dropped. He was buried at La Cambe German war cemetery in block 25, row 4, grave 121. (Picture below.)

(The above information includes material from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Diekmann).