Assassination of Karl Hotz
On his return to Nantes as military governor in 1940, he was described by a French employee as "an old man, dry, short, dressed in an artillery officer's uniform" with "a broad smile and kindly expression."
Hotz was a music lover and was invited to play the trumpet and piano at the homes of prominent citizens of Nantes and its region.
"[2]: 135 On 13 August 1941, a group of 100 young people formed by the PCF youth wing walked out of the Strasbourg – Saint-Denis station singing la Marseillaise under the tricolor flag.
The naval management assistant Alfons Moser was shot in the Barbès - Rochechouart metro station by the communist party member Pierre "Frédo" Georges (1919–1944) in Paris, accompanied by Gilbert Brustlein (1919–2009).
The leaders of the self-named "Battalions of Youth," Georges and Albert Ouzoulias, sent Gilbert Brustlein and Guico Spartaco from Paris to Nantes.
[6] At 7:30 a.m. on 20 October 1941, Hotz and Captain Wilhelm Sieger were walking across the cathedral square in Nantes en route to their offices when the two assassins, Brustlein and Spartaco, opened fire on them.
Brustlein fired three shots into the back of Hotz who died immediately; Spartaco's pistol jammed and Sieger was unharmed.
The French in Nantes issued an appeal to the citizenry to find Hotz's assassins and condemned the "odious crime."
The newspaper blamed the killing on agents of London and Moscow, complimented Hotz on his fairness, and repeated the appeal to find the assassins.
The responsibility for carrying out Hitler's wishes fell on Otto von Stülpnagel, based in Paris and the military commander of occupied France.
The situation was complicated when another communist assassin killed a civilian working for the German military in Bordeaux on 21 October.
[10] French authorities drew up the list from men already in internee and prison camps, using it as an opportunity to rid France of communists.
Thirty of the fifty chosen were communists; the other twenty were a varied group, including one man whose offense had been not surrendering his hunting rifle to the Germans.
Stülpnagel agreed and sent a message to Berlin: "the attacks were carried out by small terror attacks and English soldiers or spies who move from place to place;...the majority of Frenchmen do not support them...shooting hostages only embitters the people and makes future rapprochement more difficult...I personally have warned against Polish methods in France."
[14] In Châteaubriant and Nantes, hostages in each of the three detention sites were gathered early in the afternoon without being formally informed of the reason.
[15] "Mr. Sub-Prefect was among the condemned, informing them of the horrific fate awaiting them and urging them to write farewell letters[16] to their families without delay.
Inside, the condemned were all writing their letters—some seated at the few benches in the room, others leaning against the barrack walls as they wrote..."[16] At Choisel Camp, the hostages gathered in Barrack 6 were assisted by Father Moyon, the priest of Béré (a working-class area of Châteaubriant; the town's main priest had refused to assist communists).
"[18] Other notable individuals among the executed included Charles Michels, a communist deputy from Paris's 15th arrondissement, and Jean-Pierre Timbaud, secretary of the Parisian CGT metalworkers' federation.
Also present were two Trotskyists: Marc Bourhis and Pierre Guéguin, the mayor of Concarneau, who had broken with the French Communist Party after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
The following evening, they were placed in coffins and buried in groups of three across the cemeteries of nine nearby communes, including Moisdon-la-Rivière (Raymond Laforge), Saint-Aubin-des-Châteaux (Jean-Pierre Timbaud), Petit-Auverné (Guy Môquet), and Villepot.
[26][27] On October 25, General de Gaulle declared on London radio: "By executing our martyrs, the enemy thought they would frighten France.
In 1945, the new boulevard created on the filled-in bed of the Erdre River in Nantes was named Cours des 50-Otages, and a monument to the Fifty Hostages was inaugurated in 1952 at its end.
[30][31] Stülpnagel continued to disagree with Berlin's policy of mass executions of hostages in retaliation for anti-German acts.
Rather, he says that the incident "served only to illustrate the madness of armed resistance and the benefits of avoiding reasons to upset the Germans.
