CHAPTER 4
The massacre was carried out by a detachment of the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion of the No 4 Panzer-Grenadier Regiment, Der Führer, of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, Das Reich. commanded by General H B Lammerding
The raid was led by Major Adolf Diekmann, the CO of the battalion, accompanied by Captain Otto Kahn, commanding the 3rd Company, and several other officers. The division was on its way to the Normandy battlefield from the south of France. How these young soldiers (mostly aged between 17 and 25) can have carried out such pitiless slaughter cannot be understood without a study of the SS character and the events that led up to the massacre.
The SS or Schutzstaffel (protection squad) was formed as a personal bodyguard for Hitler. In 1929 when he appointed Heinrich Himmler, aged 28, as Reichsführer SS, there were about 280 men in it. Himmler was instructed to produce an élite Nazi troop, utterly dependable in all circumstances. In 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, the ranks of the SS had swollen to about 52,000. They were nominally part of the SA (Sturmabteilung or Brownshirts) who numbered 300,000. In 1934, the SA, led by Ernst Röhm, were getting out of hand and demanding a social revolution. Hitler decided to purge them. He used his SS for the notorious assassinations of 30 June 1934, the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, when Röhm and other SA officers were ‘liquidated.’
Ernst Röhm, SA Commander. He was murdered, along with many of his officers, by the the SS in the Night of the Long Knives.
In the years prior to the war the combat units of the SS were increased in number, not as part of the Wehrmacht (Army) but as a standing force at Hitler’s disposal. They were subjected to intensive indoctrination, politically and ideologically. The SS were prominent in the occupation of the Sudetenland, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The young soldiers revelled in their physical fitness, which involved strenuous athletics and gruelling trials. One trial involved a recruit digging a hole for himself within a strict time limit before a tank ran over him. There was a cameraderie between officers and men which could never be found in the army.
A guard of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.
Many of the officers were of humble origin, far removed from the Prussian aristocrats who still found a place among the élite of the army. Most of them were under 30 and, wearing the most attractive dress uniform in the German armed forces, they found easy conquests among the females. They had their own brothels. Yet despite their lack of intelligence and imagination, the Waffen SS (Fighting SS) had no equal among the German forces in the field. They were utterly faithful to their beloved Führer and unafraid to die in carrying out his orders. Their ruthless behaviour with innocent people during the war is unquestionable. They killed men, women and children without qualms, looted and burned whole towns and villages. They were trained to ignore the ‘rules’ of warfare (the Geneva Convention) and the weak and innocent were just targets for their sophisticated weapons.
Yet they respected brave enemies. A British officer in the ill-fated Arnhem campaign told me that the SS with whom he was engaged in bloody conflict treated their prisoners well, and gathered and tended the British wounded. They were usually courteous to civilians on whom they were billeted and the officers were reported to have shown almost excessive gallantry to their hosts, particularly women. Their devotion to their Führer ensured that their only salute was ‘Heil Hitler.’
In the selection of recruits, intelligence was not an important asset. In the whole of the war there was no high commander in the SS to compare with the top brass of the army. The prime consideration was complete and unquestioning obedience to orders, however insane they might seem, coupled with bravery in battle. The officers’ greatest fear was that they might be seen to crack on the battlefield.
Ulrich von Hassell, who was executed in September 1944 for his part in the campaign to remove Hitler, described the SS as having ‘an ambiguous psychology’. In them ‘two souls lived in strange confusion, – one a barbarian, the soul of the Nazi party, the other a perverted aristocratic soul.’ Their blind ideology led to heavy casualties in their ranks. They were taught to be contemptuous of death, their own as well as their adversaries’. They were judged by the glory of their achievements, whatever their losses might be.
Their losses were so heavy in the great tank battle of Kursk, during the Russian campaign, that their ranks had to be reinforced by men from the occupied countries and even from German prisons, a procedure hitherto inconceivable to this élite force. Their respect for bravery in the field extended to Russian soldiers (who fought with grim determination) but they could still destroy whole Russian towns and villages, and massacre thousands of innocent people. The toll in many places being worse than Oradour’s.
With the outbreak of the war, the SS leapt into the attack on Poland with ill-concealed joy and enthusiasm. This was the culmination, the vital test of their training, their ultimate goal.
Complaints about atrocities committed by the SS arose early in the conflict. They usually came from the army. Hitler warned the generals that there would be activities in the conquered territory ‘which might not be to their taste,’ but they should not interfere. Fifty Jews who had been rounded up in Poland for forced labour were shot by the SS. The army commander in the area insisted that the men responsible should be court-martialled. They were given a short term of imprisonment for manslaughter. Himmler subsequently quashed the sentence.
General (Obergruppenführer) Paul Hausser.
However, despite the lack of trust between the Wehrmacht and the SS, the army generals had to admit that during the early years of the war the SS were exceptional in bravery, discipline and soldierly bearing.
The first division entirely composed of SS was formed in October 1939. It was known as the SS-VT Division (motorised) and was commanded by General Paul Hausser. He was an ‘old soldier’ who had left the army in February 1932. Like many former army officers, he was a member of the ‘Association of the Steel Helmet,’ which in 1934 became part of the reserve force of the SA. In 1934 Himmler, who was reorganising the SS, asked Hausser to organise an SS officers’ school. His success in this resulted in his promotion to Inspector-General of the SS, an office he was holding when the war started.He was credited with being the founder of the Waffen (fighting) SS and was venerated as such.
The SS Division took part in the drive towards Rotterdam in May, 1940. They became part of the army’s 9th Panzer Division while intercepting a French force in the south-west. The French were joined by retreating Dutch troops and the SS had the job of mopping up the last pockets of Franco-Dutch resistance. The division was then transferred to France where they breached a canal line defended by the British. They were accused of the assassination of British prisoners during the drive towards Dunkirk.
Subsequently attached to Panzergruppe Kleist, the SS took part in the advance on Paris. Eventually the motorised section travelled as far as the Spanish border. In December 1940, part of the division, the Germania Regiment and the SS Artillery Regiment joined the Nordland Regiment to form a new SS division named Germania. The original division was compensated for the loss of the regiment by the addition of the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Regiment. The division now became known as SS-Division Deutschland. But it was soon realised that there was a regiment with the same title and the name was changed to SS Division Reich in January 1941.
Captain (Hauptsturmführer) Klingenberg
In March 1941, the division was stationed near Versoul in southern France but was soon moved to south-west Rumania. The motorised section travelled through Vienna and Budapest as far as the Jugoslav frontier where the rest of the division joined them. It had then become part of the 61st Panzer Korps which raced to Belgrade. The city surrendered to an assault group of the Das Reich, led by Captain Klingenberg, who was awarded the Knight’s Cross. The division was then transferred to Poland where it became part of the huge force attacking Russia. It distinguished itself at the battle of Yalna, east of Smolensk, and subsequently took part in the bid to reach Moscow. The Russian winter stopped them within a short distance of the capital. Casualties were heavy, over 10,000 men being killed by Russian weaponry and the bitter weather.
In March 1942, the Reich Division was sent to north-west France to be transformed into a panzer-grenadier division. However, two battalions and an artillery group remained on the eastern front, where they fought until June 1942 when they joined the rest of the division, now known as SS-Panzer-Grenadier Division Das Reich.
Early in 1943, Das Reich joined the Adolf Hitler and Totenkopf divisions to become the 1st Panzer Korps which returned to the battle in the east. Russian armies were threatening the German forces in the Donetz Basin. Field-Marshal von Manstein, commander of the Army Group South, launched an attack with the 1st SS Panzer Korps at the head. It resulted in a Russian retreat and the recapture of Kharkov. Das Reich spearheaded an offensive near Orel and Kursk, but the Russian defence held.
Field-Marshal von Manstein
The division received a special commendation from von Manstein. Hitler told a group of dinner guests, ‘I am proud when an army commander tells me his force is based on the SS Das Reich Division.’
In December 1943, the advance group of the Das Reich moved to Stablack in East Prussia where they made up for some of their huge losses. Apart from men, the division had lost an enormous amount of material. One notable feature was that many of the officers who had been with the division almost since its foundation had survived the war on the Russian front and were continuing to fight there under the name Kämpfgruppe Reich, also known as Kämpfgruppe Lammerding, their commander being General H B Lammerding, a friend of Himmler. Lammerding, the General nominally responsible for the Oradour massacre, was born in 1905 in Dortmund. he trained as a civil engineer and joined the SA in 1931. For a while he was concerned with municipal construction at Leisnig in Saxony, but from 1931 he was entirely employed on Nazi concerns. In 1935 he left the SA and signed a contract with the SS to whom he was committed to serve until the age of 45. His subsequent career included instruction at the SS cadets’ school at Brunswick. It was in October 1939 when Lammerding attracted the attention of General Hausser and was given command of a battalion of pioneers of the SS Totenkopf Division which took part in the war in France. His services were recognised by the award of the Iron Cross 1st Class. In August 1942 as colonel he took over command of the SS Thule Regiment of infantry and after several engagements in the Kharkov region he was awarded the ‘Deutsche Kreuz.’
General (Obergruppenführer) H B Lammerding
(Obergruppenführer) Police-General von dem Bach-Zalewski.
In July 1943, Himmler created some special ‘anti-terrorist’ units to combat partisan activity in Russia. In charge of these units was SS Police-General von dem Bach-Zalewski. Lammerding was his chief of staff. Their activities involved ruthless slaughter and destruction. One of the last orders given by Lammerding to the SS Brigade Langemark before he left read:
‘The inhabitants of Mitkowsky and Klembowka are to be removed from their homes and all resistance will be repressed. All the dwellings in those areas will be burned and the remains razed by tanks.’
In other words, he expected the villages to be erased from the map, like Lidice, and no mercy should be shown to anyone who resisted.
Civilians being rounded up by the SS.
In December 1943, the Das Reich Division in France had over 20,000 men and 200 tanks. Their ranks included many men from Alsace-Lorraine who had been conscripted with other men from occupied countries. (Alsace-Lorraine was still regarded as part of Germany at that time.) The Alsatians had been called up in various age groups since 1942 to serve in the German forces. The Vichy government protested several times about the recruitment of Frenchmen but there was no reply from Germany. The fact that these protests received no publicity led the people of Alsace-Lorraine to believe they had been totally abandoned by France. Some of the conscripts managed to get away to Switzerland and unoccupied France. If they were captured they were shot. In October 1943, the Germans decided to confiscate all the possessions of the deserters and their families were sent to Poland. This almost stopped the desertions. Yet a few of the young Alsatians were helped by the Resistance to escape from the Das Reich training camp at Bordeaux.
In January 1944, a large number of 18 years old Alsatians were sent to SS training camps to make up for the losses in Russia. Some went to the Das Reich camp at Stablack and others were trained elsewhere. Most of them eventually joined the division at Bordeaux. The trainloads of recruits, many still in civilian clothes, were transported in cattle trucks.
The training was rapid and incomplete. It was considered that the newcomers would complete their training when the division was in action. Then they would soon learn how the strictly-disciplined SS carried out brutal activities without question. However, despite the influx of new recruits, the Das Reich division was dispirited. The hard core were battle weary and depressed by the loss of comrades in Russia and families who were killed by the bombing of German towns and cities. The efforts to make good SS men from reluctant recruits imposed a burden on the officers and NCOs.
In the Spring of 1944, the Germans were aware that an invasion of France was imminent. Apart from aerial reconnassance revealing a massing of men and war material in the south of England and reports from agents in Britain and the USA, documents taken from captured maquisards proved that the great battle was near. It was assumed that suitable weather conditions for the attack would be between 1 May and 30 June.
General Blaskowitz.
Hitler was convinced that the main onslaught would be in the region of Calais. However, the German forces were spread over a wide area north of the Loire, under the command of Rommel. They were known as Army Group B. The forces south of the Loire, Army Group G under General Blaskowitz, were comparatively light, comprising thirteen infantry divisions, of which five were in training, one light motorised SS division and three SS armoured divisions, of which Das Reich was one.
The 11th Armoured Division was based near Bordeaux and the 9th near Avignon. The Das Reich installed their headquarters at Montauban and were expected to be in a position to support the others if needed. Apart from a possible Mediterranean landing, there was a growing threat from the Resistance. The Gestapo were well aware that the maquis would exert their full force as soon as the invasion started, trying to cut communications between one army group and another.
Field-Marshal Sperrle
In May 1944 Das Reich comprised three panzer-grenadier regiments with battalions of tanks, artillery (including mobile guns, flat-topped and difficult to hit), motorised reconnaissance and signals, together with catering, repairs, medical and sanitation units.
Field-Marshal Sperrle had ordered an utterly ruthless treatment of civilians, involved or sympathising with the ‘terrorists’, including the burning of their homes. Lammerding’s orders were to keep the lines of communication open at any price. In the event of a landing he would move his division as rapidly as possible to the front concerned, spreading wide to deal with all possible resistance.
SS officers swearing the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Men living up to their oath were prepared to implement the most outrageous orders.