On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in Nazi-occupied France was destroyed when 643 civilians, including non-combatant men, women, and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company as collective punishment for Resistance activity in the area including the capture and subsequent execution of a close friend of Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, who an informant incorrectly claimed had been burned alive in front of an audience.

[9] The last living survivor, Robert Hébras, known for his activism for reconciliation between France, Germany, and Austria, died on 11 February 2023, aged 97.

In February 1944, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich was stationed in the Southern French town of Valence-d'Agen,[12] north of Toulouse, waiting to be resupplied with new equipment and fresh troops.

[13] Early on the morning of 10 June 1944, Diekmann informed Weidinger that he had been approached by two members of the Milice, a paramilitary force of the Vichy Regime.

The captured officer was claimed to be SS-Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion (also part of the Das Reich division).

Kämpfe was captured by the Maquis du Limousin the day before while traveling in a German army vehicle marked as an ambulance protected by the Geneva Convention.

[14] On 10 June, Diekmann's battalion sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered everyone within to assemble in the village square to have their identity papers examined.

Adolf Diekmann said the atrocity was in retaliation for the partisan activity in nearby Tulle and the kidnapping and murder of SS commander Helmut Kämpfe, who was burned alive in a field ambulance with other German soldiers.

It was also reported that the SS troops desecrated the church, including deliberately scattering Communion hosts before they forced the women and children into it.

Raymond J. Murphy, a 20-year-old American B-17 navigator shot down over Avord, France in late April 1944, witnessed the aftermath of the massacre.

I saw one baby who had been crucified.Murphy's report was made public in 2011 after a Freedom of Information Act request by his grandson, an attorney in the United States Department of Justice National Security Division.

[17] Protests at Diekmann's unilateral action followed, both from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, General Walter Gleiniger, German commander in Limoges, as well as the Vichy Government.

[citation needed] On 12 January 1953, a military tribunal in Bordeaux heard the charges against the surviving 65 of the 200 or so SS men who had been involved.

[19] Continuing uproar in Alsace (including demands for autonomy) pressed the French parliament to pass an amnesty law for all the malgré-nous on 19 February.

General Heinz Lammerding of the Das Reich division, who had given the orders for retaliation against the Resistance, died in 1971, following a successful entrepreneurial career.

[23] On 9 December 2014, the court dropped the case, citing a lack of any witness statements or reliable documentary evidence able to disprove the suspect's contention that he was not a part of the massacre.

[25] After the war, General Charles de Gaulle decided the village should never be rebuilt, but would remain a memorial to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation.

Its museum includes items recovered from the burned-out buildings: watches stopped at the time their owners were burned alive, glasses melted from the intense heat, and various personal items.On 6 June 2004, at the commemorative ceremony of the Normandy invasion in Caen, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder pledged that Germany would not forget the Nazi atrocities and specifically mentioned Oradour-sur-Glane.

[26] On 28 April 2017, French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron visited Oradour-sur-Glane and met with the only remaining survivor of the massacre, Robert Hébras.