The Scourge of the Swastika

by Lord Russell of Liverpool

  General Bérard, who was President of the French Mission attached to the German Armistice Commission, wrote to General Vogl, its Chairman, about the unsatisfactory reply given by von Rundstedt. He pointed out that between i oth October 1943 and 1st May 1944 more than 1,200 people had been victims of such atrocities.1 He pointed out that all these measures of repression struck mainly at the innocent. Reprisals were carried out on persons supposed to be connected in some way with the Maquis without any effort having been made to find out whether there was any foundation for such assumption.

  In regard to the particular outrage which appeared to have caused the German Commander-in-Chief no concern, General Bérard protested that eighty-six innocent people paid with their lives for an attempted attack which had not caused the death of a single German soldier. This protest was summarily rejected.

  On the day following the Allied landings in Normandy considerable numbers of the French Forces of the Interior attacked in Tulle the Vichy French forces who were employed in maintaining order in the district, and after a long day’s fighting seized most of the town. A few hours later German armoured vehicles came to the assistance of the hard pressed Vichy garrison and entered the town from which the FFI then withdrew.

  The German commander decided to carry out reprisals. The FFI having withdrawn without leaving any prisoners, the reprisal was made upon the civilian population, one hundred and twenty of them. The following passage is from an official report.

  The victims were selected without any investigation or questioning, haphazardly: labourers, students, professors, artisans, and tradesmen. There were even some Milice1 and Waffen-SS recruits among them. The one hundred and twenty bodies which were hanged from the balconies and lampposts of the Avenue de la Gare, for a distance of 500 metres, were a horrible spectacle that will remain in the memories of the unfortunate people of Tulle for a long time.

  During April and May of 1944, the campaign against the French Resistance Movement in central and south-west France was intensified. The Maquis, in preparation for the Allied invasion of Normandy, were constantly harrying the German lines of communication and orders from the High Command had been given authorizing those responsible for internal security to take any measures they considered necessary to break down the resistance of the French people.

  To perform this task the SS ‘Das Reich’ Panzer Division was allocated to the German general in command of the Limoges military district.

  The Maquis themselves were difficult to round up. They had no supply problems, and knew the country like the back of their hands: they only emerged from their lairs to make some lightning raid on an enemy convoy or a military encampment, and then returned to hiding. The Germans, therefore, found it easier to take reprisals on innocent people, and when a successful Maquis operation had taken place, wreaked their vengeance on the local population of rural France.

  A deserter from the ‘Das Reich’ Division who was with them during those months has given this brief account of some of the atrocities committed:

  During these operations the officers wore no badges of rank, not wishing to be recognized. First we cleaned up the country around Agen within a radius of seventy kilometres. The popu lation of many villages were searched and massacred and the officers raped the youngest women. After the operation was over, the officers searched the soldiers and took away all objects of value from them. All cattle were taken by the Divisional Supply Column, as supplies from Germany had been cut off.

  Some kilometres from Agen when we were passing through a small hamlet of some twelve houses a woman about thirty years old was watching us from a window. Seeing a lorry halted by the roadside, our company commander asked her, ‘Are there any Maquis here?’ ‘No’, she answered. ‘Then whose is this lorry?’ ‘I don’t know’ she replied. Without further questioning she was dragged down from the first floor, undressed, beaten with cudgels, and hanged bleeding from a nearby tree.

  Further on, our convoy stopped in front of a large house over which the tricolour was flying. Our company commander opened fire on the front of the building and the owner came out: the officer immediately shot him in the chest. All the occupants were made to come out and five young women were taken away in one of our vehicles. The convoy then left, all the men singing and firing their rifles as they drove through the village. Passing through the country after leaving the village, we fired at anyone working in the fields, and their horses, cows, and dogs were all machine-gunned.

  From there we went to Limoges and the next day we continued cleaning up in the Haute-Vienne. Everything in our path was killed; and the women undressed, raped, and hanged from trees. On 6th June we arrived at St. Junien. That evening, while the company were searching for provisions, I managed to get away, unable any longer to endure such sights.

  On 6th June, the invasion of Normandy had begun, and with it the tempo of Maquis operations heightened. In order to prevent German reserves being rushed from the south and south-west to reinforce their hard-pressed comrades in the north, the Maquis made persistent attacks on road and rail communications causing great confusion. Meanwhile the ‘Das Reich’ Division continued its march through central France spreading death and destruction.

  Some twenty-two kilometres north-west of Limoges, and in the Canton of St Junien which the division had reached on the 6th June, lies the village of Oradour-sur-Glâne, situated on the north bank of the little river Glâne not far from the main Limoges-La Rochefoucault-Angoulême road.

  Oradour-sur-Glâne was a largish rural ‘Commune’ in the Haute-Vienne Département. With the neighbouring hamlets of Brandes, Lapland, Bellevue, Le Repaire, La Fauvette and a number of others, its total population in 1936 was about 1,500. The population of the village itself, however, was much less as the greater part was dispersed amongst a number of adjacent hamlets and isolated farms.

  Since the commencement of the war the population of the village had been somewhat enlarged by the arrival of a number of refugees from Lorraine, and people from Limoges who found existence in the country easier in war time than life in the town.

  The 10th of June 1944 was a Saturday, and Oradour-sur-Glâne full and busy. In addition to the inhabitants themselves there was the usual number of week-enders from Limoges, and as it was the beginning of a new ration period for tobacco, dealers from all parts of the Commune had come to Oradour to get their allocation.

  All were still lingering over dejeuner when at 2.15 p.m. a large convoy of German troops swept into Oradour from the Limoges road and parked in the lower part of the village. The soldiers were wearing steel helmets and were dressed in the well-known green and yellow camouflaged denims worn by so many Waffen-SS units. Some vehicles proceeded higher up the village and parked there.

  Shortly after their arrival the town crier passed through the streets reading out an order to the effect that every one without exception, men, women, and children must parade at once with their identity cards in the village square. At the same time each house in the village was visited and all the occupants brought out and marched to the square; those still in the fields were also rounded up, many being shot dead in the process. Others living in isolated farms and nearby hamlets were also brought in.

  It also happened that all the school children were assembled that afternoon for a medical inspection, 191 children in different school buildings. The detachment commander said that they feared there might be a skirmish in the village and they would, therefore, take all the children to the church for safety. Thus assured, the children and their teachers were escorted there without any trouble. All save one. One young boy, a refugee from Lorraine had experienced German troops before and said to one of his friends, ‘These are Germans, I know them, they’ll do us harm, I am going to try and get away.’

  Somehow or other this boy, whose name was Roger Godfrin, escaped from the others and after hiding for a time in the school garden managed to reach the surrounding woods. Six hours later, of all those children, he alone was alive.


  By a quarter to three all were assembled in the square; the young and the old, invalids and cripples, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, pupils and teachers, infants in arms and babies in their perambulators; the Maire, the notary, the blacksmith, the chemist, shopkeepers, artisans and peasants—not less than six hundred souls.

  The German officer in command then called on the Maire to name thirty hostages, but these were firmly refused.

  The German troops had now closed in, and their intended victims were surrounded and separated into two groups, the one consisting of the women and young children, the other of the men. The former group was marched off under escort to the church. Their fate will be described later.

  The men were then addressed by the German commander. He told them that he had information that there was a secret store of Maquis arms in the village and he proposed to make a thorough search. During the search, the male inhabitants would be taken to six of the village barns and there kept under guard. Accordingly they were formed into six parties and marched away to the farms of a like number of local residents.

  Of all these men, only five survived, and it is from them that the fate of the others is known. Let one of them tell his story.1

  Yvon Roby in June 1944 was eighteen years old and then lived with his parents at Basse-Forêt in the Commune of Oradour-sur-Glâne.

  The group locked in the barn with me included Brissaud, the blacksmith, Compain, the confectioner, and Morlières, the hairdresser. We had hardly arrived when the Germans made us move two carts which were in the way; then, having forced us inside, four soldiers posted at the door covered us with their tommy-guns to prevent our escaping. They talked and laughed among themselves as they inspected their firearms. All of a sudden, five minutes after we entered the barn, the soldiers, apparently in obedience to a signal fired from the square, opened fire on us. The first to fall were protected from the bursts of fire which followed by the bodies of the others who fell on top of them. I lay flat on my stomach with my head between my arms. Meanwhile the bullets ricocheted off the wall nearest me. The dust and grit hampered my breathing. Some of the wounded were screaming and others calling for their wives and children.

  Suddenly the firing stopped and the brutes, walking over our bodies, finished off with their revolvers at point blank range those who still showed signs of life.

  I waited in terror for my turn to come. I was already wounded in the left elbow. Around me the screams died down and the shots became less frequent. At last silence reigned, a heavy depressing silence only broken from time to time by smothered groans.

  The soldiers then covered us with anything they could find which would burn; straw, hay, faggots, wheel spokes, and ladders.

  All those around me, however, were not dead and the uninjured began whispering to those who were wounded but still alive. I turned my head slightly and next to me saw one of my friends on his side lying covered with blood and still in his death throes. Would my fate be the same?

  I heard footsteps; the Germans had returned. They then set fire to the straw which covered us and the flames quickly spread through the barn. I tried to get away but the weight of the bodies on top of me hampered my movements. Furthermore, my wound prevented me using my left arm. After desperate efforts I finally managed to get clear. I raised myself gently, expecting to receive a bullet, but the murderers had left the barn.

  The air was becoming stifling. I suddenly noticed a hole in the wall some way up from the ground. I managed to squeeze through it and took refuge in an adjoining loft.

  Four of my friends had gone there before me, Broussaudier, Darthout, Hebras, and Borie. I crawled under a heap of straw and dried beans. Borie and Hebras hid behind a pile of sticks. Broussaudier was huddled up in a corner. Darthout, with four bullet wounds in his legs, asked me to make room for him beside me. We lay close together side by side and waited anxiously, listening intently to every sound.

  Alas, our ordeal was not over. Suddenly a German entered, stopped in front of our pile of straw and set fire to it. I held my breath. We avoided making the slightest sound or movement, but the flames began to scorch my feet. I raised myself on top of Darthout, who did not move, and I risked taking a quick look; the SS men had gone. At this moment Broussaudier came across the loft. He had discovered another means of escape. I followed close behind him and, pursued by the flames, found myself outside, near a rabbit hutch which Broussaudier had just entered.

  I went in after him and without losing a moment scraped a hole in the ground in which I lay crouching. Then I covered myself with rubbish which was lying all round me. There we remained for three hours until the fire at last reached the rabbit hutch and the smoke got in our throats. I held my hands over my head to keep off the sparks which were falling from the roof and burning my hair.

  Yet a third time we managed to escape from the flames. I noticed a narrow gap between two walls. We managed to crawl up to it, still crouching, and breathe a little fresh air, but it was impossible to remain in such a position for long. We got up, therefore, and cautiously made our way towards the square. We had to make quite certain that there were no German soldiers left on guard there. Broussaudier went on ahead as scout. There was no one in sight. We reached the square. Dare we cross it?

  One last glance to right and left and we made off as quickly as we could in the direction of the cemetery. At last we gained the shelter of a coppice. We embraced each other, so great was our joy at having regained our freedom.

  We then separated. I had to spend the night in a field of rye and on the following morning at about eleven o’clock finally reached my home in Forêt-Basse.

  Whilst this butchery was going on, the party of women and children numbering some four hundred had reached the church. It consisted of all the women in the village, many of them carrying babies in their arms or wheeling them in perambulators, and all the children of school age.

  Of these, but one survived, Madame Marguerite Rouffanche, a native of Limoges, who this day lost her husband, a son, two daughters, and her little grandson of seven months.

  For nearly two hours, packed in the church, these wretched people waited with mounting anxiety wondering what was to be their fate. What that fate was has been told by Madame Rouffanche in the following words:1

  About 4 p.m. a number of soldiers, all about twenty years of age, entered the church with a kind of packing case which they carried up the centre aisle and placed at the head of the nave near the choir. From this case there hung what looked like lengths of cord1 which were left trailing on the ground. These cords were lit and the soldiers moved away. When the fire reached the packing case the latter exploded and produced clouds of thick black suffocating smoke.

  The women and children, gasping for breath and screaming with terror, fled to other parts of the church where it was still possible to breathe. It was then that the door of the vestry was broken open by the sheer weight of a mass of panic-stricken people. I followed in and sat down on a step resignedly to await my fate.

  The Germans, realizing that this part of the church was overrun, brutally mowed down all others who tried to reach it. My daughter was killed at my side by a shot fired from the outside. I owe my life to having the presence of mind to close my eyes and feign death.

  A volley rang out in the church. Then straw, faggots and chairs were thrown on top of the bodies which were lying strewn all over the stone floor. Having escaped this slaughter and received no wound, I took advantage of a cloud of smoke to hide behind the high altar.

  In this part of the church were three windows. I went towards the centre one which was the largest and with the help of the small stepladder used for lighting the candles, I tried to reach it. I do not know how I managed to do so but somehow extra strength was given me. The glass was broken and I jumped through the frame. The drop was over three metres.

  I looked up and saw that I had been followed by a woman whom I knew and who was holding out her baby to me from the open window. She let herself drop
beside me. The Germans, whose attention had been attracted to us by the child’s screams then machine-gunned us. My friend and her baby were killed and their bodies were subsequently discovered where they had fallen.

  I then proceeded to the vicarage garden, being wounded on the way. There, hidden amongst rows of green peas, I anxiously waited for some one to come to my aid. I lay there wounded until 5 p.m. the following day when at last I was discovered.

  The very ruins of the church themselves provided silent but striking corroboration of Madame Rouffanche’s testimony. The roof was burnt out, much of the nave which was spared by the fire has since collapsed and the blackened walls to this day remain gaunt witnesses of the crime. The high altar was practically destroyed and the communion table torn away from its seating and twisted.

  A subsequent inspection of the ruins revealed that the Germans fired many of the shots from inside the church where large numbers of empty cartridge cases were found. It also confirmed that they fired low, doubtless to make more certain of hitting the children.

  Two or three days later the site was inspected by the District Inspector from the Ministry of Health. When he made his first inspection the church floor was littered with ashes, human debris, and sickening heaps of flesh and bones. Amidst this indescribable mess lay many half-charred unrecognizable bodies. He reported finding, close to the high altar, many bones and charred remains, including the foot of a child of about six years of age. In the vestry, into which according to Madame Rouffanche’s account large numbers of women and children had rushed after the explosion, the charred remains of bodies were recovered in large quantities. In a chapel on the south side of the church was a small door leading into the churchyard. Many of those who had not been wounded by the first volley of shots made for this door, doubtless hoping that they might be able to escape through it. But it must have been locked, for near it a large pile of ashes and charred bodies was found. The inspector’s report stated that there were sufficient bodies to fill a large farm waggon, and from the quantity of wedding rings and trinkets found, the police estimated the number of victims amounted to several hundred, all of whom were burnt alive. People living two kilometres away have testified that they heard screams coming from the direction of the church.