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General Leclerc
Description
One day after the capitulation on May 8, 1945, thirteen French volunteers of the Waffen-SS were shot without legal proceedings near Bad Reichenhall/Germany according to orders of General Leclerc, Commander of the French 2nd Armoured Division.
What was the reason to give a firing squad orders to shoot? These French volunteers wearing the uniforms of the German Forces, who had only been employed in their units on the eastern front, had gone without weapons into US-American captivity on the day of capitulation, they were handed over by the US Army to the following up "Leclerc Division". The General took an interest in these French prisoners of war and asked:
'Why are you wearing these German uniforms?'
One prisoner replied: 'General, why are you wearing an American uniform?'
That was the reason the order was given to shoot these thirteen French volunteers. The dead remained unburied for three days, the French chaplain who was present did not try to establish their identities or see to it that they had a dignified funeral. The executed soldiers were buried under the supervision of the US Army. Only the names of five soldiers could be established: Paul Briffaut, Robert Doffat, Serge Krotoff, Jean Robert and Raymond Payras, the other eight victims were included on a memorial tablet as 'Unknown Soldiers'.
This incident is of course pretty unknown in the western world and is usually discounted as revisionist lies.
May these brave French rest in peace.
Recent comments
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With all due respect, I think you have it somewhat backwards. It was the gov't, Paul Reynaud, that wanted to keep fighting and it was France's aged, geriatric reactionary generals like Petain who sued for peace...
The French Army did fight...
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Anyways, nice post all
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I am sorry, but these men were not "brave French soldiers, they were devoted Nazies of the 33rd SS Charlemagne Division. They got what they deserved. France lost many men during the French Invasion, we fought well, the Germans had a lot of casualties,...
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Just some additional things:
-As far as I know this event was first presented to the general public in France in 1973 (Historia journal).
-The family of one of the prisoners asked for an investigation and so one officially started in...
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Ouch is saying (undiplomatically) its been covered up, which there would seem to be truth to. Its easy to say we have no idea who ordered it, but it should also beg the question as to why we dont, why it wasnt investigated. Surely the leftenant in...
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Dear Ouch the D*****bag:
Actually, the caption-indictment is exactly what I'm trying to avoid here, as I don't want this site to turn into a pissing match of semantics and accusations. If one wants to express an opinion of a senior figure,...
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"Ouch... another troll", me thinks this year's troll mating season was a success, we have been having an ample supply of new ones lately. The only "pathetic load of" I see here it's your's since it's the only post that didn't add nothing positive, NDF...
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Missing elements in the presentation of this sad episode here. There is still quite a debate on what exactly happened and this only fact already shows that this is not so simple. Several things have to be taken in the picture:
-The chaplain Gaume ...
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Edited org. title. If we start getting nit-picky, then we're going have to call just about every senior officer a "war criminal." If one wants to discuss this sort of thing, then fine. But please keep it out of the titles. I don't think LeClerc's...
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Nick does have a point - in that many people generally regard Polands defence as being more staunch than the French whereas I would classify them as even from your average soldiers perspective. French resistance being notoriously bad is the fault of...
Nick does have a point - in that many people generally regard Polands defence as being more staunch than the French whereas I would classify them as even from your average soldiers perspective. French resistance being notoriously bad is the fault of their commanders.
It is worth mentioning that with twice as many men as the Polish the French inflicted at least 3x as many casualties. Its not fair to compare the losses of tanks and aircraft because the Polish were vastly less prepared in those areas than France and as such inflicted comparatively trivial damage to tanks and planes.
Its also interesting, while I am on the Battle of France, to mention that the 'Blitzkrieg' of France wasn't the widely perceived complete mobilisation of a highly trained and superior Wehrmacht. In reality, at the time of the invasion of France and Poland, half the German army were an average age of 40yo, veterans reaching the end of their effectiveness, and the other half green recruits without sufficient training. As such only about half of the 3 million invasion troops facing equal numbers of Allied troops were combat ready.
Whats more, only 10% of the Wehrmacht were mechanized, and the French had nearly 3x as many vehicles, not to mention the BEFs vehicles. The British and French combined also had about 25% more tanks, which at this stage of the war were not inferior or ineffective against the Germans. The Germans still relied heavily on horse power for supplies and other logistics at that point, and they continued to do so throughout the war. Most understandly in Russia etc where the weather could make vehicles very unreliable.
It has even been disputed that the invasion of France wasnt a 'Blitzkrieg' at all, an example being the destruction of almost all French artillery on the Meuse by Stukas, ostensibly a classic 'Blitzkrieg' move, but the planes were called in reaction to their interference with the advance, and not as a planned co-ordinated offensive, the co-ordination didnt go beyond a more traditional supporting role as opposed to the pre-planned layered-attack that we consider a 'Blitzkrieg' it is arguable that the notion of Blitzkrieg was only embraced as a result of victory, and not a cause. Meaning the Germans realised that their victory was won by their superior co-ordination, and so adopted and enhanced the same methods for later invasions, but did not yet have fully-formed Blitzkrieg tactics in their invasion of Poland or France.
The recipe for success in the invasion of France was the coordination of forces which the French could not match, especially in ground-level field tactics, and the Germans took full advantage of small, crucial superiorities in these areas; such as almost all German tanks having radios to communicate between themselves and HQ, while the Allies had only about 1/5th of their tanks equipped with radio equipment.
German command structure was more practical. German field commanders had more freedom to take initiative, whereas the Allies were much happier to react to the moves of the Germans than risk a disaster, despite the fact their defensive efforts had been disasterous anyway. An example of that being the over-extension of German armour over the Meuse, where 4/5 of all German armour, 2000 tanks, were unsupported and out of radio contact after advancing further than planned. The move was so foolish Rommel and Guderian, the commanders of the spearhead, very nearly got into serious trouble as it was such a massive mistake. The only reason they werent court-marshalled was no harm was done. A counter attack at that time would\could have argueably obliterated the Germans tanks, and leave them little ability to mount co-operative infantry-tank offensives which were, not realised by the Allies at that point, the effective modern method of battle. It would have effectively reduced Germanys offensive capabilites back to WW1 (but with more planes). A mixture of out-dated tactics from commanders with WW1 mindsets, such as Gamelin who was foolish enough to sell anti-tank guns and field pieces prior to the invasion, not to mention the understandable lack of faith and morale in French commanders when the French president declared they had lost only 5 days into the invasion, were all contributors.
The Allies were outnumbered and inferior in the air, that is true, but they had numerical and tactical superiority in almost every other way, such as having 2x as many field guns and a better understanding of the terrain. I believe the invasion of France was more of an Allied disaster than what is generally accepted to be an inevitable defeat.
Wow, that was a lot of writing...