I can still hear Sir Laurence Olivier's narration:
"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..."
A favorite series of mine. Another is the nearly forgotten WW2 GI Diary if I got the title right.
And Leftists demand I give up my rifles.
< spits>
I remember that episode from ‘’World At War’’. It frequently shows up on ‘’The Military Channel’’. The atrocity was the work of the 2nd. Waffen SS Panzer Division ‘’Das Reich’’. This unit was under the command of SS General Heinz Lammerding. Lammerding was in British custody after the end of the war. The French tried him in abstention and sentenced him to death but the Brits would not extradite him to France. Lammerding was released and returned to Dusseldorf where he was from and he became a successful business man, retiring in 1971 and dying peacefully in his sleep which is more than his victims ever got.
And what Olivier didn’t mention was that the women and kids were locked in that church and then it was set on fire. This was a favorite tactic of the SS. Real tough guys. Killing women and kids. Bloody bastards is all they were.
From 1958 to 1961 we lived in Poitiers, France. My Father was a career Army officer. One of the few things I remember clearly from that time was our visit to Oradour.