Oradour

Objective research on factual information regarding German military related warcrimes.
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Wolfkin
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Post by Wolfkin »

Hello Sid!

Not an accusation by any means but an observation. The Staff member fabricated this story, or received it from someone else who fabricated it. Or perhaps it was a rumour that spread like wildfire. There is no "Das Reich Archive". This is not some "unspecified archive in Germany".

Have you seen the link I posted? This is an update to the original post by the webmaster of the site.

http://www.oradour.info/appendix/retorord.htm

Cheers,

Wolfkin
Amateurs limit their study to either Tactics, Strategy or Logistics. Professionals study ALL THREE of these!!!
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Wolfkin,

Yup. I did look at the site you gave.

I can't see any mention of "fabrication" in its text.

Nor does it mention any formal institution titled "Das Reich Archive". It says "Das Reich archives". Any collection of original Das Reich documents can be described as "Das Reich archives". The text is unspecific about which German institution the claimed document resides in.

As I wrote before, the whole thing is so nebulous as not to be worthy of serious consideration in any way, either as evidence for a direct Waffen-SS order to destroy Oradour sixty years ago, or as evidence for deliberate French fabrication today.

What it does appear to show is that some on both sides of this argument are so entrenched that their critical faculties seem to have become impaired and they will sometimes accept the flimsiest of evidence to support their case.

Cheers,

Sid.
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Wolfkin
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Post by Wolfkin »

Hello Sid!

Yes, good points! I misunderstood it to mean some sort of "Das Reich Archive". You are very correct when you say vague! While reading the article the author mentions that in the documentary no evidence was given to support that any sort of document actually exists. It does make one believe that perhaps this is all just a fabrication of some sort. If this document actually does exist, would you not think that this would be one large piece of groundbreaking evidence and that the information contained would be publicized to give people the truth finally to this event?

Cheers,

Wolfkin
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Wolfkin,

Yup. If such a document was known to exist, I think it would be a significant piece of evidence as to the extent of Waffen-SS culpability.

However, even without it, there is little doubt that executive culpability lay within the Waffen-SS, and the exact command level from which the instruction issued seems a secondary factor.

Cheers,

Sid.
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For the murder of the men that is

Post by Opa »

Provided that explanation B, that they did not know about the explosives (if any) which the fire (set by ?) exploded, is correct, then they were guilty only of the death of the men.

Why can't the French govt open the archives?
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Opa,

From memory taken from a British newspaper article a couple of months ago, I think that it is all French interior archives from the period that are closed, not just those of Oradour. I think that an extension to the closure was granted about twenty years ago. I would guess this was because too many people concerned were still alive and it might have reopened old wounds in French civil society. Recently a French academic published a huge number of documents about his own area of study (not Oradour) in protest at the blanket ban. I don't know if he was prosecuted. Anyway, it appears thgat this ban does not relate specifically to Oradour.

Cheers,

Sid.
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Post by philippe_jehl »

Paddy Keating wrote:
"let's put ourselves in the shoes or boots of the Waffen-SS. The soldiers who did this were mostly Alsatian teenagers, brought up to hate the French with some justification, as anyone who knows how the French behaved in Alsace in the 1920s will appreciate,

PK
Having grown up in Alsace in the 60's and 70's I can tell you that I can relate to the above statement. In school we were beaten severely for speaking Alsatian instead of French. The teachers we had were not from our village but rather from other parts of France. Everything was done to erase anything "Germanic". Some families even changed the spelling of their family name to sound more French. The version of history we were taught was always pro French and anti-anything even remotely German.

No one in my family ever spoke of the wars; it was a forbidden subject to discuss. As a young boy I became an avid collector of WW2 items (many of which could be found everywhere around the village). A friend had given me a German helmet and I was cleaning up the helmet when my grand-father came up to me. He told me all kinds of details about German helmets and the German military in general. I had always thought my grand-father had served in the French military since after all we were French (at least that is what had been literally been beaten into me at school).

I was shocked when he told me he had served in the German military in both world wars. He told me we are neither French nor Germans but Alsatians. Over time as he spoke more openly about the past, probably because he was seeing how brain washed school had made me. I also could see how He had so much hate toward the French.

He told of how his cousin had been executed by the French in WW1 for refusing to serve in the French army. He told how after Alsace became French, the French back taxed all the Alsatian property owners to 1870, and they could only pay in French currency, gold or silver or with German money at 1/3 of the current exchange rates. My family lost a lot of land because they could not pay the back taxes. The properties were seized and given to French families that had been brought in by the French. All political positions and the well paying jobs went to the French and Alsatians were barred from those position. The land that my grand-father managed to keep was seized by the French (and never paid for) when the land happened to be were they wanted to build bunkers as part of the Maginot line. In defense of the French, I can also say that the Germans employed similar tactics to "Germanize" Alsace during WW2 from what my mother has told me of her experiences as a child.

My grand-father served as an officer in the German cavalry in WW1; in 1939 he was drafted into the French army. My grand-father did not want to fight for the French. He had a neighbor, also an Alsatian living in Nancy, who was a doctor. The doctor friend falsified a medical condition and had my grand-father stay in bed at home under doctors orders. When my grand-father heard the news of the French surrender, he put on his old German uniform, found a German unit and asked to speak to their commanding officer. Shortly afterward he re-entered German military service and served in the German military until the end of the war when he was captured by the Americans.

In the 1990’s the French government sent out a request to me for proof of my Grand-parents “reintegration “papers in order for me to maintain my French citizenship. This same request was also sent to my mother. From the copies my mother had I found out It was only in the late 1950's that he requested "re-integration" as a French citizen, yet he could have done this in the 1920’s. My grand-mother also apparently waited until then as well.

Only over time and mostly after his death did I learn the little of what I know about my grand-father’s military service. I also learned that my uncle had served in the Waffen SS and had been in the Hitler youth prior. It was never his intention let it be known he has served in the Waffen SS. He had given to me medals, badges helmet, as well as other items including his “dog tag”. As an avid collector, I recognized from what he had given me he must have served in the Waffen SS. As an immature teenager at the time and not realizing the consequences, I told my mother.

When my mother found out she would no longer speak to him (he was her brother in law). She herself was very anti anything German. Though she could speak Alsatian, she refused to speak it. My grand-parents knew about his service in the Waffen SS as had my aunt, his wife, since she was dating him during the war years. My mother was too young during the war years to remember. All this was kept secret.

I can certainly understand that many Alsatians might have hated the French, just as some hated the Germans. Alsatians were caught in the middle. When I said to my grand-father, I thought we were French, why were you serving the "boche", he replied we are neither German nor French but Alsatian. We are French or German only when it is to our benefit. Well I wrote more than I meant to, but even now I still can feel some resentment as to what I experienced as a child

Today there are even Alsatian language classes taught in French school but speaking about WW2 is still very much forbidden in my family and I suspect many other families.
Last edited by philippe_jehl on Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
sid guttridge
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Philippe,

Very interesting.

Might I suggest that this deserves its own thread entitled something like "Alsatian Identity"? Otherwise it will get buried in Feldgrau's endless Waffen-SS-related squabbles.

Also it would read better if broken up into paragraphs.

Thanks,

Sid.
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Post by philippe_jehl »

Sid,

Yes you are right. Where would be a good forum category to place this? I never intended to write such a long response and ramble a little.
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi philippe,

There is no exact category but I would suggest "General German Military Discussion" or "Reichswehr" (which deals with the inter-war period).

Cheers,

Sid.
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Post by philippe_jehl »

can I move the post or do I recopy it . I still think it has some merit in this tread as a response to the post part I had quoted. Does anyone know how many Alsatians participated in the Oradour massacre? In the trial there were 14 Alsatian If I recall correctly.
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi philippe,

Why not leave it here AND post it in its own thread? Then both angles are covered.

Cheers,

Sid.
Paddy Keating

Post by Paddy Keating »

Very interesting, Phillipe. Living in France, I can only say that your account does not surprise me at all.

Paddy
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Post by philippe_jehl »

How many Alsatians participated in the Oradour massacre? I saw news video clips from the TV station France3 for the Alsace region.

http://alsace.france3.fr/dossiers/2483524-fr.php

On the link above there are articles and video news clips about Oradour and Alsace. One video clip mentions that of those killed in Oradour 11 of them were from Alsace (all of them from Schiltigheim , a suburb of Strasbourg). In addtion it also mentions that at the beginning of the war when most of the Alsatian population was moved to other parts of France, many of them were sent to Oradour. The Alsatians returned to Alsace after the French surrendered. (The entire population of my village was sent to Dordogne for example and those of Schiltigheim were sent to Oradour and surrounding areas).

There is also one video clip about how the maire of Strasbourg in 1998 tried to make amends between the two regions (Limousin and Alsace), even sent memorials, but these were vandalized shortly afterwards. In 1998 there were commemoration ceremonies in Oradour, which the maire of Strasbourg as well as a delegation of youths attended.

In 2004 there was again the Maire of Strasbourg and a delegation of officials and youth from Alsace were sent to the Oradour remembrance ceremony. Supposedly they said that this time there was a friendlier and more welcome exchange.

There is also mention of how they are now teaching all Alsatian students about what happened in Oradour.

So again just how many Alsatians participated in the massacre
Paddy Keating

Post by Paddy Keating »

This was posted in a thread in the books section and I was asked to put it here as it wasn't really on-topic.
There is an underlying feeling amongst many people in France that there was far more to the events in Oradour-sur-Glane that day than the official version of events recounts. It has been discussed here and elsewhere and, as Mark Yerger says, opinions remain entrenched. The French refusal to release the files, the paranoid and threatening reactions of some French families in the area whose members were in the communist FTP, and the apparent 'fragging' of Dieckmann in Normandy after it became clear that he would face a court of enquiry appear to vindicate this underlying feeling.

There is testimony from local people about German soldiers saving or trying to save lives that day, both on the outskirts of the village and after the church caught fire. That said, there is plenty of evidence of soldiers acting brutally. Given that many of them were young Alsatians who had no love for the French as a result of the brutality and cruelty of the French occupation of their homeland after the 1914-1918 war, it is not hard to understand their behaviour without condoning it. Indeed, they were all released at the Bordeaux assizes in 1953 precisely because Paris wished to avoid rekindling the ill-feeling caused by her excesses in Alsace in the 1920s. Add to this the fury provoked by terrorist attacks on German columns and on individual German soldiers and one can see that some of the "Der Führer" men in Oradour that day probably lost control of themselves along with, it appears, their CO.

But one is left wondering why the French authorities are so reticent about the files upon which they have extended statutes of limitations. What part did Frenchmen play in the tragedy? Had communist terrorists stockpiled explosives in the church? Were the explosives set on fire by an FTP man to prevent them falling into the hands of the Germans who, as we know, were not carrying explosives with them?

One of the standard methods of delaying German columns advancing towards Normandy was to block the roads with trees, usually blown down with parachuted plastique. German columns with no explosives of their own to blow felled trees apart had to resort to sawing them up by hand, which was a time-consuming process, especially when terrorists had blown huge trees down along a one hundred meter stretch of road.

The scenario is easy enough to imagine. The Das Reich column rolls out of Montauban and the surrounding towns where it had been garrisoned, wished well by hundreds of locals who had found them to be very well-behaved and courteous, unless dealing with terrorists, of course. But then, un-PC as it might be to point this out, most French people hated the terrorists as much as the Germans did. They wanted a quiet life.

Tempers rise on the RN20 and the surrounding departmental roads as the terrorists start their fun and games. By the time the columns are up around Tulle and Limoges, they have had to make some examples, hanging Frenchmen from balconies and so on pour décourager les autres, so to speak. All of this is quite normal. In fact, it is quite restrained on the part of a military formation accustomed to the brutal realities of anti-partisan warfare on the Eastern Front, where razing villages and killing populations was not unusual. The German Nazis were, after all, neo-colonialists and imperialists whose methods were no different to those employed by the other European imperialist powers at various times during the development of their empires. The Germans had the advantage of modern technology - machine guns, gas and so on - but the amorality was the same.

And then the communist terrorists take it a bit too far with the kidnapping of one of the division's most popular characters. Acting on a tip-off, Dieckmann's unit descends on Oradour-sur-Glane. Evidence of terrorist activities is found there so Dieckmann and some of his people question the local men. They grow frustrated and decide to hang them all. To facilitate this, they lock the women and children up in the church. It really is quite logical. They then get on with the task of hanging the menfolk and burning down the houses.

Things get out of hand when the church goes up in flames...far faster by all accounts than one would expect of a stone building with a few wooden pews and rafters. Dieckmann had clearly lost the plot, hence the intention to put him in front of a court of inquiry. But there is clearly more to all of this than the official version tells us and as long as the French authorities remain in a characteristic rictus of denial, refusing to give us access to the files and doggedly adhering to the postwar "what-beasts-the-boche-were" mantra, conspiracy theories will abound.

I think the theory I have just proposed is probably fairly close to what actually happened. It is certainly what many people here suspect happened. It was probably a local resistance man who set fire to the gear in the church and killed hundreds of women and children. There may have been more than one FTP man in the church when the Germans locked the people in there. They may have opened fire on the Germans guarding the church. Most of the Germans were away elsewhere burning down houses and stringing men up from lampposts. Communist terrorists would not have been concerned about "collateral damage". They were, essentially, Stalin's guerillas in Western Europe and we all know how little human life mattered to people pushing that belief system.

If that's close to the true story, no wonder the French are scared of releasing the files. The 1940-1944 period remains a very sensitive issue in France, with the potential, even sixty years later, to be very divisive.

PK
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