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Massacre at Oradour, France, 1944
Coming to Grips with Terror
Jean-Jacques Fouché (Author)
9780875806013
Paperback / softback, published 3 November 2004
287 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.7 cm, 0.454 kg
Fundamentally excellent history, with an unusual style and a mastery of telling detail. Fouché's work carries a sense of immediacy, of real people struggling with fateful events. A remarkable achievement.... A very readable and gripping account of the most infamous German atrocity committed on French soil. A most valuable contribution to truth.
Near the end of World War II, four days after Allied armies landed at Normandy, a unit of Waffen SS troops en route to that front surrounded the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane and, without warning, systematically massacred its citizens. The Nazi soldiers herded women and children into the village church, machine-gunned them, and set the church on fire while some were still alive. The men were taken to barns in groups, where they were shot. Afterward, the Nazis plundered the village and burned it to the ground. Altogether, more than 640 men, women, and children died in Oradour that day. Jean-Jacques Fouché explores the massacre from several points of view—religious or ethnic differences, the background and training of the Nazi soldiers, and German suspicions that villagers sheltered Jewish and Spanish anti-fascist refugees. Probing the most shocking massacre in World War II France, he shows how memory affects our understanding of the past.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Translators' Note
Maps
1. What is Known about the Massacre?
2. The War Culture of the Waffen SS
3. The SS Das Reich Division in France
4. A Hot Spot: The Massif Central
5. Was Oradour Just an Ordinary Village?
6. Account of the Massacre
7. The Victims
8. Conflicting Accounts
9. Souviens-Toi-Remember
Afterword—Oradour-Sur-Glane, July 16, 1999-Opening Ceremony
Glossary of Abbreviations and Foreign Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index