Still today there are many war crimes and stories which are being uncovered about the
Second World War.
On a daily basis, different soldiers are being exhumed from the battlefields of Europe, 80
years after the conflict had gripped the continent.
But many resistance elements emerged during World War 2, as the Germans captured different
lands and territories and the people living in those countries did not want to tolerate
the evils of the Nazis.
But it has emerged recently that there are executions that were carried out by the French
Resistance which still haven’t been spoken about, and many of those who fought for the
French resistance took their secrets of the war to their deaths.
But recently a 98 year old surviving member of the resistance spoke out and told of the
executions of up to 40 German soldiers who were executed by the French Resistance following
D-Day.
But what is the story of this?
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In the build up to D-Day, the British and the allied nations were planting spies inside
of France to work with the French Resistance.
They would play a key role in the normandy landings disrupting and delaying the Germans
who would make their way to the north of France following the landings.
But the French Resistance were known to have been a brutal foe for the Nazis, and they
were a feared enemy.
If members of the resistance were discovered, then usually they were executed quickly and
swiftly by the Germans with very little questions asked.
Some were sent to concentration camps where they were then killed by the conditions there.
They did play a key role in the rapid advance for the Allies through France following D-Day,
and there had been activity inside of France for many years, even as soon as the Germans
occupied France.
There were many hardline policies taken by the Nazis against the Resistance, and different
elements such as the Maquis went to live and take up actions in the mountains and the forests.
These men were difficult for the Germans to hunt down, and 1944 in particular was a key
year for the resistance.
But one man who was a member of the French Resistance was Edmond Reveil.
He was a man who had lived with a secret for decades, and at a meeting of the National
Veterans Association in 2019, he stood on his feet and spoke to the other veterans about
a mass execution of German soldiers that he had been apart of.
It was said it was like a weight had lifted from his shoulders, and the Mayor said ‘Over
the years he had plenty of opportunities to tell the story and he never did.
But he was the last witness.
It was a burden to him.
He knew that if he did not speak out, then no one would ever know.’
What this elderly Frenchman was talking about was the executions of around 40 German soldiers
that had taken place at the hands of the French resistance.
Following D-Day on the 6th June 1944, Resistance fighters had staged a small uprising in Tulle,
the capital of the Correze department, and during this between 50 and 60 German soldiers
were taken prisoner by the resistance.
3 days after D-Day, the Germans fought back and they then publicly hanged and executed
99 of their own hostages.
In the days following D-Day, more horror would occur as the Germans would discover the charred
remains of Helmuth Kempfe, an SS commander who had been locked inside a field ambulance
and this was then set on fire.
Following there, the SS Das Reich Division massacred 643 people inside the village of
Oradour-Sur-Glane.
Women and children were locked in the church which was then set on fire, and men were locked
in a barn and were shot by machine gun fire, before the barn was then set on fire.
The village became a ghost town, and it still stands today as a memorial, but Edmond Reveil
who had taken part in the Tulle Uprising then joined a party of resistance members that
then went towards the east.
He said, ‘none of the resistance groups wanted anything to do with the prisoners they
had taken, we didn’t know what to do with them.’
So these men accompanied the German prisoners they had captured, and they then took them
to Meymac.
Some of the prisoners had become separated from the main group, and it was said ‘If
a prisoner wanted to take a pee, he needed to be guarded by two of us.
We hadn’t planned anything for food.
We were under the orders of an Allied Command Centre, and they were the ones who gave the
orders to killed them.’
Edmond Reveil is today the last surviving member of the local resistance group of the
FTP, and he would then personally witness the executions of up to 40 German soldiers
at a place referred to as Le Vert.
Amongst the inmates and the prisoners were other members of the Wehrmacht, but also other
collaborators including a French woman who had collaborated with the Gestapo.
But after receiving the orders to kill them, the resistance members did not want to shoot
her, and they drew straws and the loser had to shoot her.
The commander of this group who was guarding the soldiers was codename Hannibal and it
was said he ‘cried like a kid when he got the order, but there was discipline in the
resistance.
He asked for volunteers to carry out the order.
Every fighter had someone to kill.
But there were some of us, and I was one of them recounted Reveil who said we wouldn’t
take part.’
Reveil then told of what happened with the executions.
In the countryside he said, ‘it was a terribly hot day.
We made them dig their own graves.
They were killed and we poured quicklime on them.
I remember it smelled of blood, we never spoke again.’
For over 75 years this secret would remain close with the witness, and it’s clear that
it must have played on his mind and that if he didn’t get it off his chest then it would
have gone with him to the grave.
The rest of the executioners who massacred the dozens of soldiers had died, but this
would not be the end of the story.
It was believed that in the 1960s, a group of archaeologists uncovered the remains of
11 German bodies from Le Vert, but then the excavations came to a close, and there were
no records stating the exact place of the dig.
This was done in complete secrecy, and a local man remembered seeing the excavations and
discoveries, and he has collaborated with modern archaeologists.
This is became in the next few weeks the German War Graves Commission are going to be searching
for the remains of the missing German soldiers who were executed.
The 98 year old Resistance member’s testimony has also been used to try and pinpoint where
these people’s remains are.
There has been a lot of discussion in the media regarding the search for the remains
of the executed German soldiers and collaborators.
The thought by Reveil the 98 year old man is that he wants these dead soldiers to be
remembered and for their stories to be told to the families so that a memorial can be
placed near the spot.
But there are many other atrocities and war crimes that were committed by the French Resistance,
but also there are war crimes that have been committed by German soldiers.
Many of these still today have not been uncovered, and the victims remain in their graves under
the ground.
Still around Europe there are huge mass graves of victims who were executed by the einsatzgruppen
or who were killed inside of the concentration camps.
Many of these people have been exhumed and laid to rest inside of a proper burial site.
There are also some unknown German soldiers who have been buried inside of Britain who
died inside the prisoner of war camps here.
But whether the 40 German soldiers who were executed at Le Vert can be found or have been
found is yet to be known.
It’s believed that 11 were exhumed, but that leaves about around 30 to be discovered.
But the testimony of a 98 year old man has brought executions of the Second World War
into the forefront of the world’s mind and consciousness, decades on from the end of
the deadliest conflict in history.
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