Blood in the Snow, Blood on the Grass (23 page)

During the night, still short of 400 men who had not arrived in Tulle, he withdrew to the heights above the town, allowing the Germans to re-occupy two schools and the Manufacture d’Armes de Tulle, known as the MAT arms factory. At 0600hrs on 8 June the insurgents attacked with automatic weapons and hand grenades, forcing surrender. Nine members of the Sicherheitsdienst having been identified by liberated
maquisards
, they were taken to the cemetery and shot without trial. Chapou called a ceasefire, leaving enough men in place to contain the Germans in one of the schools and the arms factory, in the hope of reducing these strong points the following day, by which time he expected substantial reinforcements to arrive.

Considering the town as good as liberated, Chapou allowed the French and German wounded to be taken to the hospital while he called on Prefect Trouillé and asked him to continue in office. Unbeknown to Trouillé, the first atrocity was about to be perpetrated. Estimates of German survivors and dead at this point vary between thirty-seven and fifty dead, twenty-three to thirty-seven wounded and between thirty-five and sixty missing in action – probably taken prisoner. The disparity between the various estimates is an indication of the confusion and lack of control inevitable in such an operation. What is certain is that the girls’ school was set on fire, forcing the Germans inside to emerge, whereupon they were shot down to a man. Some, it seems, had intended to surrender, but others were alleged to have had primed grenades in their hands, which exploded when they were shot, causing hideous wounds to their bodies.

With the exception of some Polish conscripts in German uniform who chose to change sides, the rest of the prisoners were now killed. At 2100hrs the first tanks of 2nd Das Reich entered the town from three directions, having eliminated the advance posts of the FTP that were supposed to have given the alarm. The insurgents immediately fled to the high ground again. Their first intention was to use bazookas on the German tanks below, but it was wisely decided not to do this because of the civilian casualties that would have been inevitable and because the tanks had vastly superior fire power.

Serving as an interpreter with the Das Reich sappers was a young Alsatian named Charles Buch. He was one of the young men forcibly conscripted into the German armed forces when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were annexed into the Reich in 1940. In private, they called themselves
les malgré nous
– meaning, we don’t want to go, but we have no choice. His recollection from the German side of events was as follows:

We in the HQ unit arrived outside Tulle and parked with a number of other vehicles on either side of the road. I heard many shots being fired by the Maquis and even saw them running away through the gardens on a hill to the left of the town. This was while the armour of the Aufklärungsabteiling – reconnaissance battalion – commanded by Major Wulf was driving off the FTP and securing the town. Wulf discovered the bodies of forty German soldiers assassinated and badly mutilated. In the afternoon of 10 June twenty more German bodies were found in the cemetery. In all, about 140 German soldiers were either killed or kidnapped. Apart from the sixty dead, the others were never found.

Inside Tulle that first night was another Alsatian. Elimar Schneider was the reverse of a typical SS man, having been a religious novice before being forcibly conscripted into the Waffen-SS. He was with Wulf’s men in a Pak75 tank destroyer which came under machine-gun fire. This is what he saw:

We could hear the firing growing less intense. From time to time other Pak75s arrived, some returning from the centre of town with
maquisards
tied in front of them as human shields. Fortunately for them the SS respected their FFI armbands, although I knew from the old guys who had served in Russia that they made short shrift of partisans captured there with weapons on them. [I learned later that] my fellow conscript and friend Marcel Most was killed that evening by a partisan in civilian clothes firing a hunting rifle from a window. The bullet entered above the eye and came out through the top of his head, shattering his helmet.
³

That night, the SS threw a cordon around the town and patrolled the streets in tanks and armoured cars under strict curfew. Setting up his headquarters the next morning at the Hotel Moderne, the senior SS officer Sturmbannführer Aurel Kowatsch – his rank was equivalent to major in the Wehrmacht – threatened to shoot Prefect Trouillé after his men found in the prefecture building a crate of hand grenades left by the FTP the previous day.
⁴
Trouillé saved his life by begging Kowatsch to visit the hospital, where the German wounded were being cared for. There, one of them explained that they owed their lives in the general massacre to Dr Toty, the chief medic of the FTP, who had prevented Chapou’s men from dragging them out to be shot with their comrades.

The story of the mutilated German bodies was commonly believed among the SS, but denied by French sources. Elimar Schneider was one of the men detailed to bury the corpses:

The chief medic told us that the forty bodies were horribly mutilated. We saw the bodies lying there but did not want to look too closely. The medic tidied them up before letting us carry them away, buttoning a jacket here, doing up a fly there and pulling up some man’s trousers, to make them decent.

Being legally a French citizen when telling his story post-war, Schneider was careful to deny seeing any evidence of deliberate mutilation. The official version is that wounds to the bodies were caused by bursts of machine-gun fire from close range and the explosion of grenades in the hands of soldiers killed in the schoolyard. Such wounds would not be unusual for Das Reich men killed in action, so why did Schneider mention that the medic had to do up the fly buttons of some corpses and pull up the trousers of others, which implies sexual mutilation, presumably after death?

Shortly after 0900hrs Major Kowatsch told Prefect Trouillé that the protection afforded to the wounded in the hospital would be ‘taken into account’ by the German command – he was in radio contact with Lammerding – in deciding on the reprisals to be exacted on the population of Tulle for the previous day’s massacre. What else he said is unknown, but at 1000hrs a loudspeaker announcement was made by Trouillé:

Inhabitants of Tulle, you have followed my instructions and kept an exemplary calm during the days we have lived through. This attitude and especially the way the German wounded were cared for have enabled me to obtain from the German command an assurance that life can go back to normal today.

No sooner had he done this than he was informed by Kowatsch that all men between
16
and
60
were already being rounded up, but that those essential for running the municipal services would be released after their identities had been checked. Charles Buch remembered that, from 0600hrs onwards, SS men had been forcing entry into the houses and dragging out any men found inside who resisted, and arresting any male found on the streets. André Gamblin, a 22-year-old accountant, was out shopping for milk for his baby daughter when they picked him up.
Gazogène
engineer Raymond Lesouëf was having breakfast with his wife and two children when he was led away. Even the priest Father Jean Espinasse was rounded up. In every home, all adult males were arrested and their womenfolk told that this was a simple verification of their ID papers and that there was no need for them to bring along any food. One man who survived what was about to happen said:

We were escorted by the SS to the Quai de Rigny and joined a larger group. Then another group joined us. Half-tracks and tanks were parked tidily along the pavements. As the tension built up, all our hands were clenched but we walked along with heads held high, trying to conceal our misgivings.

Finally, between 3,000 and 5,000 men – again, estimates vary – were herded inside the walls of the MAT armament factory on Place Souilhac while other SS went around the town, breaking into sheds and barns to collect ladders and rope. They were in no hurry because this was routine work for them. Major Kowatsch admitted as much to Prefect Trouillé: ‘We hanged more than 100,000 at Kiev and Kharkov. What we are doing here is nothing for us.’

Trouillé’s pleas for mercy ended with the protest that execution by hanging was not customary in France, to which Kowatsch replied that it was standard SS procedure in such cases because it was considered less honourable than death by shooting.
⁵

The Mayor of Tulle, Colonel Bouty, appeared soon afterwards at the MAT factory with various heads of municipal departments, the electricity, water and gas companies, the post office, railway station and other town functionaries, attempting to persuade the SS officers to widen the definition of those who were ‘essential to the normal running of the town’. Negotiation was mainly by Maurice Roche, secretary general at the prefecture, who spoke fluent German. Doctors, postal clerks, local government employees and even butchers and bakers were now released, until only 1,500 men were left, including – because they had been overlooked – the dentists and teachers of Tulle. The apparent collaboration between the mayor and the SS over who was to be released resulted in later bitterness on the part of those who maintained that he had also identified members of the Maquis to make the Germans’ task easier. Had he done so, it was surely to his credit, since it was better for a guilty man to be hanged than one who was completely innocent. Although this is not recounted in most French histories of the hangings, it does seem that the Germans had information on some of the men arrested: a M. Neyrat was set free, while his brother, who was in the Maquis, was placed in the group to be hanged.

Tall, blonde Paula Geissler was well known in the town as the horse-riding, chain-smoking secretary/interpreter of the German manager of the armament factory. She also released twenty or so men she knew because they worked in the MAT factory, as well as the young son of the local pharmacist.

The men who had been released were escorted to the Hotel Moderne
⁶
to be registered and issued with papers confirming their release. As they returned to their homes, one by one, their families saw the shock on their faces. No one yet knew it was because they had seen nooses hanging from every possible support in the main street.

Towards the end of the morning General Lammerding himself arrived in Tulle, to find everything being done in accordance with his instructions. He later denied that he arrived before the hangings had been carried out. In any event, after the Germans had eaten lunch, leaving their hungry and thirsty victims standing in the sun of the factory yard, at 1330hrs a loudspeaker truck toured the town, announcing that life should go back to normal.

At about 1545hrs Kowatsch brought Trouillé up to date:

In recognition of your humanitarian gesture in looking after the German wounded, my superiors have cancelled the reprisals which were originally ordered, under which the whole town was to be burned down and 3,000 men shot. But we cannot let what has happened pass unpunished. Therefore only 120 men – exactly three times the number of our comrades assassinated yesterday [sic] – will be hanged and their bodies thrown into the river.
⁷

Lieutenant Walter Schmald was a slim, blonde Belgian-born Feldgendarmerie officer who had been stationed in Tulle for five months as interpreter for the Sicherheitsdienst detachment and had narrowly escaped assassination by Chapou’s
maquisards
the previous day. Using his local knowledge, he now conducted a further triage, releasing some men and dividing the others into a group of 120 who were to be hanged and the remainder, who would be forced to witness the hangings. Each time someone was liberated from the group of 120 by special request, one of the witnesses was selected to replace him. Schmald’s method was simple: any man who had not shaved that morning, or whose hair was untidy, or clothes unbrushed or soiled, was dubbed ‘Maquis’. On this ‘evidence’ he was moved across to the group to be hanged. Final interventions by the borough engineer to the effect that a father aged
30
was innocent elicited from Schmald the reply, ‘I know. They are all innocent. But they must pay for the guilty ones who are not here.’

Locked up in the Kommandantur, Adjudant-chef Conchonnet and three other gendarmes were released at 1630hrs, in time to hear another loudspeaker announcement: ‘Forty German soldiers were atrociously assassinated by the Maquis yesterday. Therefore, 120
maquisards
or their accomplices are to be hanged. Their bodies will be thrown into the river.’ According to some people present in Tulle that day, a notice to that effect and signed ‘The General commanding the German troops’ was posted outside the Hotel Moderne.

It now fell to Colonel Bouty to brief the men in the factory not selected in the group of 120 on how to behave when witnessing the executions.

‘I ask you to stay completely calm,’ he said. ‘Do not make any gesture or utter a word.’ Escorted out of the factory, these men found ropes with slip knots hanging from every tree, every lamppost and every balcony, all along the street. These preparations had been carried out under the orders of Hauptsturmführer Wulf of the reconnaissance section – equivalent rank, captain – and Oberscharführer Otto Hoff, the company sergeant major of the sappers. When Hoff now asked for volunteers to carry out the hangings, more than sufficient men stepped forward.