War Crimes
For more details on this topic, see Oradour-sur-Glane.The division is infamous for the massacre of 642 French civilians in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944 in the Limousin region. Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, commander of the I Battalion, 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment (Der Führer) that committed the massacre, claimed that it was a just retaliation due to partisan activity in nearby Tulle and the kidnapping of Helmut Kämpfe, although the German authorities had already executed ninety-nine people in the Tulle murders, following the killing and maiming of some forty German soldiers in Tulle by the Maquis resistance movement. There is some suggestion that the German authorities wanted to prosecute Diekmann for the massacre although he was not relieved of his command and was killed in action, before he could stand trial. On 12 January 1953, a military tribunal in Bordeaux, heard the case against the surviving sixty-five of the approximately two hundred German soldiers who had been involved. Only twenty-one of them were present. Seven of them were Germans, but fourteen were Alsatians, French nationals of German ethnicity. On 11 February, twenty defendants were found guilty. In December 2011 German police raided houses of six former members of the division, all aged 85 or 86, to determine exactly what role the men played that day.
Read more about this topic: 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich
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