Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane: Nazi Gold and the Murder of an Entire Town by SS Division Das Reich

In this harrowing account of one of WWII’s most notorious atrocities—the June 1944 slaughter of nearly 750 civilians in southwestern France—historian Lupiano (Operation Ginny) excavates chilling details about how the tragedy played out. He starts by outlining the opposing forces: on one side, a Waffen-SS officer corps led by toughened veterans of the brutal Russian front, composed of both German and non-German units (including Vichy and French Alsatian); on the other, Communist-led maquis guerrillas who sprang into action to support the D-Day invasion, sabotaging bridges and railroads. In reprisal for Resistance activity, the Das Reich division of the SS applied atrocious techniques of collective punishment they’d learned on the Eastern Front. First, in the town of Tulle, they hanged to death, from lamp posts and balconies, a randomly chosen group of 99 civilians. Days later, in the nearby town of Oradour-sur-Glane, they machine-gunned and burned alive more than 500 men, women, and children within four hours. Lupiano shines a harsh light on three Nazi officers who, he claims, plotted the Oradour massacre so as to abscond with the town’s gold bars. With this agonizingly taut reconstruction, Lupiano builds an almost minute-by-minute indictment of mass murder. It’s a granular and gut-wrenching chronicle of a war crime. (Jan.)