It was a typical Saturday in Oradour-sur-Glane when soldiers from the German 2nd SS Panzer Division arrived outside the village on June 10, 1944. Days earlier, Allied troops had landed on the beaches of Normandy four hours to the north in a massive invasion that was a major turning point in World War II.
For reasons still unclear more than 70 years later, the soldiers surrounded the village, marched the women and children into a church and forced the men into garages and barns. The men were shot. The woman and children suffocated or were burned to death when the church was set aflame. In all, 642 people died, including 247 children. Only six survived to tell the tale of the largest Nazi massacre of civilians ever committed on French soil…….
……In an ironic twist of fate, most of the 200 SS soldiers believed to have participated in the rampage that day died within months as well, all killed in battle. Of the few who survived the battlefield, only 20 were ever found guilty. All were released from prison within five years.
Despite their convictions — and all the documents, interviews and confessions gathered about Oradour-sur-Glane in the 70 years since the bloodbath — the reason for the Nazi massacre remains unclear. One historical account states that the massacre was in retaliation for the murder of a German officer killed by the French Resistance. Another claims the Nazis were looking for a kidnapped military official when they herded villagers to the fairgrounds and told them the soldiers were there to search for weapons and other contraband. Still another theory states that the Germans came to recover some stolen gold seized by French rebels just days before. Or they could have mistaken the village for another town nearby. Whatever the reason for the soldiers’ appearance, there is little to explain why they turned on the villagers so ruthlessly and without provocation.
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