The Tulle massacre was the roundup and summary execution of civilians in the French town of Tulle by the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich in June 1944, three days after the D-Day landings in World War II.
After a successful offensive by the French Resistance group Francs-tireur on 7 and 8 June 1944, the arrival of Das Reich troops forced the Maquis to flee the city of Tulle (department of Corrèze) in south-central France. On 9 June 1944, after arresting all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) ordered 120 of the prisoners to be hanged, of whom 99 were actually hanged. In the days that followed, 149 men were sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where 101 died. In total, the actions of the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, and the SD claimed the lives of 213 civilian residents of Tulle.
A day later, the same 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was involved in the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.
Historical context 2nd SS Panzer Division
At the beginning of 1944, after suffering heavy losses on the Eastern Front, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, under the command of SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Lammerding regrouped in Valence-d'Agen " Rubrique Valence d'Agen " , Archives du Tarn-et-Garonne, 11 June 2011. to prepare to depart for the Western Front. They were to respond to the purported landing of 18,000 Allied soldiers supported by light armored vehicles and tanks.
Historically, there have been several theories for the reason behind the 2nd Panzer Division's role in the massacres. According to Peter Lieb, these were the division's belief in the ideology of national socialism, their battle experience on the Eastern Front, that they saw themselves as an elite military unit, and that they had already participated in engagements with the French Resistance.
After the Normandy Landings, the 2nd Panzer Division received orders to position themselves in the region between Tulle and Limoges to suppress the Maquis, who, in coordination with the Allied invasion, were intensifying their insurgency against German interests and forces. It was the personal wish of Hitler that the division confront the Maquis in the face of their escalation.
The order to engage the partisans was known as the Sperrle Ordinance, after the Deputy High Commander of the Western Front. By those orders, the division was to immediately attack the "terrorists" at any opportunity and that if any civilians were killed, it would be regrettable, but would be the responsibility of the "terrorists" and not their own. The orders also called for the area to be secured along with all inhabitants, and that any house used by the resistance or its supporters, regardless of its owner, was to be burned. The orders of the commander of the division mentioned certain precise tactics: "The resistance must be wiped out by outflanking them." On 5 June 1944, SS general Lammerding approved the use of repressive measures implemented in Eastern Europe in the suppression of the Maquis. His program included provisions such as use of counter-propaganda and discrimination, and other actions intended to "turn the public against the terrorists." It approved mass arrests, occupation of important localities, and the commandeering of vehicles. It also read that "For every German wounded or killed, we will kill ten terrorists." The order's overarching goal was to separate the resistance fighters from the rest of French citizens and turn the public against them.
Between early May and 9 June, the division, particularly the regiment Der Führer, conducted a widespread search for supporters of the resistance as well as several anti-partisan operations. During these operations, sixty partisans were killed and twenty were deported to labor camps. An estimated one hundred civilians were killed in a variety of circumstances, while hundreds of houses were burned.
German crackdown in Corrèze Given the activity of the Resistance in the region, the department of Corrèze and in particular the town of Tulle and its surroundings were the object of frequent interventions by German Security Services. In 1944, a 12-member SD unit under August Meier, the Commandant of the Secret Police and Security Services in Limoges, arrived in Tulle. Directed by the SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Korten, these men, along with elements of the under the command of Henri Lafont, mounted a crackdown on the Maquis.
In collaboration with a division cobbled together under the command of Major General , they systematically swept the region during April 1944. This temporarily united composite units, including notably the 1st Regiment of the 325th Security Division and the Georgians of the 799th Infantry Battalion, recruited from Red Army prisoners of war. From 1 to 7 April 1944, the Brehmer division arrested 3000 people; in the village of Le Lonzac, 17 inhabitants were killed and 24 houses burned; in Brive, 300 people were arrested and deported to work camps in Germany. In total, the operations against the Resistance by the Brehmer division were responsible for 1,500 arrests, 55 shootings, 128 crimes or offenses in 92 localities and 200 Jews murdered, but no direct confrontation with the Maquis. The Brehmer division left Corrèze in May, after having equally devastated the Dordogne and the Haute-Vienne. The crackdown partially explains the operations in Tulle by the Resistance, which hoped to end the suffering of the population.
Battle of Tulle Liberation Resistance operations in Tulle were planned by the commander of the Maquis FTP of Corrèze, , known as Kléber, in mid April or at the beginning of May 1944: "Originally, it seems the attack was planned with no connection to the landing, the date of which was still unpredictable." It had several objectives: "disarm, and if possible, destroy the German defenses; disarm the mobile reserve groups and appropriate for themselves their weapons and vehicles; render inoffensive the French Militia [Milice the Vichy French militia] and known collaborators", but also, "to open gaps in the defense, to inspire a healthy fear of its leaders and get them to retreat into Tulle and be unwilling to leave, stopping them, at least for a time, from continuing their efforts against the Maquis." When contacted, officials of the French Armée secrète Resistance indicated they were totally opposed to operations against an urban centre.
According to J. Delarue, Tulle was defended by a garrison of seven hundred men of the 3rd battalion of the of the Wehrmacht, which had to be supplemented by six or seven hundred men of the Mobile Reserve Group and the Milice; B. Kartheuser estimates that the staff of the 95th Security Regiment included 289 men coming from the 8th and 13th companies and from the general staff, on the basis of detailed records drawn up on 17 May. Facing them, the resistance had 1350 fighters, of which 450 did not participate in launching or supporting the attack. For Jean-Jacques Fouché and Gilbert Beaubatie, the forces involved numbered just over three hundred men on the German side, the attack being launched by four hundred FTP who were joined by one hundred and fifty additional fighters between the middle of the afternoon on the 7th and the morning of the 8th.
The offensive began on 7 June 1944 at 05:00 with a bazooka shot on the security forces' barracks at Champ de Mars serving as the signal to begin the attack. By 06:00, the buildings used to house the German garrison were identified; the post office and the town hall, where the FTP established their command posts, were secured by 07:00. At 08:00, the train station was also taken by the Resistance, who found there only eighteen watchmen and one employee of the railway, Abel Leblanc; invited to join the Maquis, they decided instead to await the end of the fighting in the station waiting room. At 11:30, the forces of the Milice and the Mobile Reserve Group hoisted a white flag on the barracks of the Champs de Mars and, following negotiations, they left the town around 16:00 carrying all their gear. For Elie Dupuy, whose FTP battle group was not affected by the order to fall back to Chapou, this departure was a failure of one of the operation's goals of recovering war material and transport from the security forces; but with his single battalion of only 90 men, he could not afford "to continue the attack against the German garrison, and at the same time, impose unconditional surrender on the security forces".
Meanwhile, around 13:30, German forces took advantage of a partial withdrawal of the Maquis from the hills around Tulle that had been ordered by Chapou and briefly regained control of the train station where they found the watchmen wearing white armbands, part of their work uniform but also bearing some resemblance to those worn by the FTP. The watchmen were taken from the building and, without any questioning and without being searched, they were shot by German troops in the station courtyard or along the tracks leading to the regional railway engine house, cut down "in the crossfire, including of a machine gun shooting them in the back as they pleaded with the Germans, shouting 'Comrades! Comrades!'". Only Leblanc survived the shootout. According to B. Kartheuser, it was deliberate murder, the Germans being aware of the presence of the watchmen and knowing their attire.
In the night between 7 and 8 June, according to the Maquis fighters, still without the 450 fighters of their A group, withdrew to the hills around the town and the German forces regrouped in three places: the girls' school in the north, the weapons factory and the Souilhac school in the south. Fighting resumed at 06:30, the main offensive being against the girls' school, the main stronghold of German troops. In the face of German opposition, the FTP set fire to the building around 15:00. Around 17:00, in circumstances that remain unclear and disputed, the Germans tried to leave, if one of them was waving a white cloth, others were carrying live grenades. In all the confusion, the Maquis opened fire with automatic weapons; some soldiers were cut down at close range, by exploding grenades, and this explains the injuries observed on the horribly mutilated corpses. After the surrender of German troops, nine members of the SD were identified with the help of thirty liberated Maquis fighters, taken to the graveyard and shot without trial. Fighting ceased from that moment, the Resistance merely maintaining circles around the weapons factory and Souilhac school which they planned to attack the following day. While the German and French wounded were taken to the hospital. Kléber went to the prefecture and asked the prefect, Trouillé, to continue to provide leadership of the civil administration. For the Resistance, with the exemption of two small holdouts to be taken the next day, Tulle was liberated.
German losses were estimated by Sarah Farmer as 37 dead, 25 wounded and 35 missing. For G. Penaud, they amount to about 50 dead, sixty missing, probably taken prisoner, and between 23 and 37 wounded. The majority of the prisoners were probably shot thereafter, except for a handful of soldiers of Polish origin who agreed to join the Maquis.
Reoccupation