Argenton-sur-Creuse massacre

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Memorial in Argenton-sur-Creuse

The Argenton-sur-Creuse massacre is a war crime committed on June 9, 1944 by the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" against the population of this community in the Indre department . 67 people, including 56 civilians, men, women and children, were killed.

Historical context

The Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944 triggered a series of acts of sabotage and disruption of the German occupation forces by the Resistance . The 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich" stationed south of Limoges , a National Socialist military unit that was not part of the Wehrmacht and was directly under Hitler's orders, was attacked from all sides. She received orders to march to the invasion front in the north, but she ran out of supplies. A convoy with grenades and 250,000 liters of gasoline was expected but had not yet arrived. On June 10, 1944, the day of the Oradour massacre , General Heinz Lammerding , the commanding officer of the division, wrote to General Krüger, one of Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's adjutants : “[...] our fuel supply depends on one for the moment invisible convoy. [...] the complete dismantling of the railroad network by the terrorists would probably prohibit the earlier loading [by train]. [...] The blockade of the German positions is quite scandalous. Without brutal and determined repression, the situation in this region will pose a threat the extent of which has not yet been assessed. "

This was on the line of Rundstedts, Commander in Chief of the Western Front, who noted in his war diary that the most energetic measures had to be taken to make clear to the residents of the Massif Central what it meant to support the Resistance.

On the French side, 15,000 resistance fighters were active in the Indre département in the summer of 1944, led by Roland Despains, head of the 5th Brigade of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP), and Colonel Raymond Chomel, commander of the Charles Martel brigade in the Organization de resistance de l'armée were commanded.

The false liberation of the city

On June 9, 1944, the resistance fighters attacked Argenton-sur-Creuse. Depending on the source, between 30 and 90 men occupied the gendarmerie, the base of the Groupe mobile de réserve (GMR), the paramilitary unit of the Vichy regime , and the town hall in the morning without any problems .

At the exit of the station and the beginning of the route from Argenton to La Châtre , in Lieu-dit Le Petit Nice , they attacked the 28-man escort of the petrol convoy that General Lammerding was waiting for. The operation, which was commanded by Roland Despains himself, succeeded within ten minutes. Three resistance fighters were killed, one injured, as well as two German soldiers who were brought to the Clinique Cotillon in Châteauroux . The remaining soldiers were captured and taken to Bouesse and later to Maillet .

There was no immediate reaction by the Germans to the resistance action. A Citroën Traction Avant with four soldiers, which was presumably on the way to the train station, reached the southern entrance to Argenton and was attacked by resistance fighters. The men were able to flee and reached Limoges, about 100 kilometers away. Three German trucks coming from the north were intercepted at the entrance to Argenton in the early afternoon, and one managed to turn back.

A leader of the resistance, Marcel Bach of the Armée Secrète , who was installed in the headquarters of the GMR, ordered Raymond Chauvat, known as Bébert, foreman at Bouchon Moderne , who lived on Rue Gambette right next to the GMR and had a delivery truck from his company, to go to Bélâbre to get weapons and ammunition. He provided him with three young teachers from the Collège in Argenton, Mercier, Marsouin and Cubel. The latter, an Alsatian who fled and a German teacher, was to play a key role a few hours later. The group left around 3 p.m. and returned two hours later, everything went smoothly. They were given another identical mission, but without the Cubel, who had walked away for a few moments, which was to save the lives of a number of Argenton residents. The van left Argenton for Saint-Benoît-du-Sault , about 20 kilometers southeast. They took the RN 20, then the road to Saint-Benoît. The three men could not have known that an SS column was moving from La Souterraine on the RN 20 towards Argenton.

The massacre

The railway convoy was of strategic importance for the division “Das Reich”. As soon as they were informed of the events at Argenton, the staff decided to secure the convoy before it could be destroyed. At the same time, it was about suppressing the resistance and terrifying the population. An operation was conducted immediately south of Argenton while access from the west, north and east was blocked. A column was sent to Argenton, consisting of the 15th company of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 4 "Der Führer", an autonomous unit that was specialized in "cleaning work" after resistance activities and was commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Haelke.

The people of Argenton had no idea what was in store for them, they were even happy because they thought their city had definitely been liberated.

The column was heavily armed. It consisted of two armored vehicles, a cannon, and ten trucks, plus 200 men who were furious at the attacks their division was subjected to from all sides. The resistance fighters posted on RN 20 had to withdraw. On their return they intercepted the van that was returning from Saint-Benoît. Bébert turned quickly and hid the vehicle, the weapons and his machine gun in the thicket. This interception was fortunate, as the discovery of weapons by the Germans only increased the violence.

The column arrived south of Argenton around 5:45 p.m. She split up into several groups. Some shot everyone they saw, others took hostages.

Six soldiers from the Premier Régiment de France (also a unit of the Vichy regime), who had joined the resistance in Argenton that morning, were dispatched that afternoon to reinforce the bar at the southern entrance to the city. On the Avenue Rollinat they saw the vehicles and marching columns of the Germans approaching and opened fire. They holed themselves up in a hut, five managed to retreat while their comrade Henri Rognon continued firing his rifle to cover them. The hut was destroyed by the cannon, and Henri Rognon was killed. The Germans penetrated the city from the west and south and into the houses there, the massacre began between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Hélène Aubry and her two adolescent daughters Nicole and Gisèle and eight other people were shot in the Route de Fontfurat, now Rue du 9-Juin-1944 in western Argentina. Four men, including 16-year-old Fernand Auclair, were killed in rue Saint-Antoine in the south at around 8 p.m. Those found in homes were shot with a bullet in the neck. Other men were held in the gendarmerie, taken to rue de Maroux in northwest Argentina and shot there.

When they arrived at the station, the Germans wanted to shoot all the railway workers. The station master Vautrin, who spoke German, talked to them at length and managed to save his twelve comrades who were taken hostage. He had to lead the soldiers to Le Petit-Nice, where the petrol convoy was.

At the corner of Pont-Neuf and Rue Victor-Hugo, the Nazis entered Jérémie Brunaud's bookstore. The bookseller's family, including his son Pierre Brunaud, and the tenants, including Cubel, who had returned home, were hiding in the basement. The latter addressed the Nazis in perfect German, he explained that he was a teacher, showed his dictionaries and the papers he was correcting. He was taken hostage and caught the attention of the officers.

On that tragic evening, two military events were noteworthy:

  1. The six soldiers of the Premier Régiment de France acted instinctively. This regiment, which had been set up in July 1943 by General Eugène Bridoux , Secretary of State for War of the Vichy government, consisted of three battalions with the task of carrying out military actions against the resistance, but had remained largely anti-German. The Premier Régiment de France was eventually merged with the Forces françaises de l'intérieur .
  2. The occupiers viewed the gendarmes a priori as anti-German soldiers. The Nazis could not have known that the gendarmes did not contradict the actions of the resistance and that they had voluntarily given up the gendarmerie. However, they did not kill them by massacring them like civilians, but by shooting them like enemy soldiers out of sight of the population.

The hostages

Hostages were brought in columns from different parts of the city to Le Petit-Nice, where the now recovered and guarded tanker was located. They were gathered in the Duplaix house that the Germans had occupied. There were 174 hostages and they were expecting to be shot. Here Jean-Marie Cubel (actually Lothaire Kübel, 1918-2010) played his decisive role, which made him the hero of Argentons. The Germans didn't know he was Alsatian. His knowledge of German was explained to them by his teaching profession, which they could also verify. They took him as an interpreter and trusted him. The hostages spent the night sleepless in the garden.

The next morning, June 10th, the Nazis split the hostages into two groups, those who had their ID with them and the others. Then Cubel stubbornly and persuasively intervened on his own initiative. He presented every undocumented hostage as one of his friends from the football club, as a former student, as a trader or as a well-known and peaceful employee, as a traveler waiting for a train ... All in all, Cubel and Vautrin made it for the railroad workers to rescue most of the hostages. Less than fifteen were put in a truck. Among them are the five soldiers of the Premier Régiment de France in uniform. and the brothers Ernest and Joseph Thimonnier, two young people who were Cubel's pupils but whom he could not save because they were recognized as the sons of a gendarme and their father Joseph Thimonnier had been shot with the other gendarmes the day before.

Shortly after 7 a.m. the Nazi column left Argenton for Limoges and took the hostages, two of whom were able to escape by jumping from the truck at the end of the town. When the SS division received orders to march north, they were disposed of by being shot dead in the Gramagnat quarries in Le Malabre, north of Limoges, where fourteen bodies were found on June 12.

After the massacre

The marching orders led the SS division from June 11 to Poitiers , west of Argenton, which saw no further march through. The Germans had recovered the tanker. The division was constantly attacked by Resistance and Allied planes during its march. Instead of the planned three weeks, she only needed two weeks to arrive scattered in Normandy, regroup and be ready for action again. She suffered heavy losses in Operation Cobra .

The victims were buried on June 12th. 53 bodies were laid out in the Saint-Benôit chapel. After the service they were brought to the cemetery in an escort from Argenton. Argenton was finally liberated on August 14th. The Thimonnier brothers were buried on October 20th.

memory

A monument erected on the slope of the hill on which the Lycée Général et Collège Rollinat stands was inaugurated on the anniversary, June 9, 1947, and visited the following day by the President of the Republic, Vincent Auriol . On each side of a Lorraine cross are engraved the names of the 67 dead in the massacre, 56 civilians, men, women and children, 6 soldiers from the Premier Régiment de France , 5 resistance fighters and gendarmes. There were no legal proceedings against the perpetrators. Haelke was killed in Normandy. In 1953, the Bordeaux Military Tribunal sentenced Lammerding to death in absentia for war crimes in Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane, but the former general was not extradited. He became a successful entrepreneur and died in 1971.

Argenton received the Croix de Guerre from Prime Minister Georges Bidault on May 23, 1950 . Lothaire Kübel, alias Jean-Marie Cubel, became an honorary citizen of Argenton on February 25, 1945 and on May 8, 1990 in Le Petit-Nice, where he had rescued his fellow citizens and, in their presence, was knight of the Legion of Honor . Pierre Brunaud, son of Jérémie Brunaud, who was at his father's house during the hostage crisis, published a detailed historical review of the events of the massacre in 2008, in which the circumstances of the tragedy are described for each of the victims.

A plaque commemorating the soldier Henri Rognon was inaugurated on June 9, 2014 at the site of his battle at 76 avenue Rollinat.

The street name Rue du 9-Juin-1944 also commemorates the event.

literature

  • Le 9 June 1944 à Argenton, homage to J.-M. Cubel , in: Argenton et son histoire , No. 7, 1990, Cercle d'histoire d'Argenton-sur-Creuse, Argenton-sur-Creuse
  • Jacques Delarue , Trafics et crimes sous l'Occupation , Paris, Pluriel, 2013, ISBN 978-2-213-03154-5 , pp. 400-412
  • André Cotillon, Argenton, 9 June 1944: une tragique page d'histoire , 1994
  • Max Hastings, La Division Das Reich et la Résistance: 8 juin-20 juin 1944 , Paris, Pygmalion, 1983, ISBN 978-2-857-04150-4
  • Jean-Louis Laubry, Les mémoires de Roland Despains and La tragédie d'Argenton-sur-Creuse , in: L'Indre de la débâcle à la Liberation, 1940-1944, témoignages et documents inédits , Volume 2, L'été 1944 , Aspharesd, No. 12, 1996 ISSN 0769-3885
  • Paul Mons, Afin que nul n'oublie: en France la Das Reich fit la guerre aux civils , Brive-la-Gaillarde, Ecritures, 2004, ISBN 978-2-913-50663-3
  • 1944, la région opprimée, la région libérée , La Nouvelle République, 2004
  • Guy Penaud, La Das Reich, 2nd SS panzer division , Éditions de La Lauze, Périgueux, 2005
  • Peter Lieb, Répression et massacres, l'occupant allemand face à la Résistance française, 1943-1944 , in: Gaël Eismann, Stefan Maertens (eds.) Occupation et répression militaire allemande, 1939-1945 , Éditions Autrement, Collection Mémoires / Histoire , Paris, 2006
  • Pierre Brunaud, Argenton-sur-Creuse dans la guerre: 1939–1945 , Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, A. Sutton, Collection Témoignages et récits , 2008 ISBN 978-2-849-10711-9
  • Jean-Claude Fillaud, Guy Lebon: November 2, 1910 - November 4, 1969 : [chef de maquis FTP blancois], Mérigny, Association des amis de Mérigny et de ses environs, 2012, ISBN 978-2-952-02714-4 , p 33
  • Daniel Paquet, Ma résistance , Éguzon, Éditions Points d'Æncrage et Cercle d'Histoire d'Argenton, 2016 ISBN 978-2-911-85323-4
  • Jean-Paul Gires, Le Premier Régiment de France et la Résistance: Indre, Cher, Creuse, Corrèze, Haute-Marne , Issoudun, Alice Lyner éditions, Collection Passé simple, 2016, ISBN 978-2-918-35276-1
  • Jean-Paul Gires, Le Premier Régiment de France et Argenton , in: Argenton et son Histoire , Bulletin No. 34, November 2017, pp. 11-19, Cercle d'Histoire d'Argenton-sur-Creuse, ISSN 0983-1657 .

Web link

Remarks

  1. ↑ back translation of "[...] notre ravitaillement en carburant dépend d'un convoi pour le moment invisible. [...] la dislocation complète du réseau ferroviaire, par les terroristes, interdirait probablement un embarquement plus rapproché. [...] Le bloquage des positions allemandes est tout à fait scandaleux. Faute d'une répression brutale et déterminée, la situation dans cette région finira par constituer une menace dont les proportions n'ont pas encore été évaluées. ”(German military archive, Freiburg im Breisgau), quoted in: Dominique Lormier, Combats oubliés: Résistants et soldats français dans les combats de la Liberation 1944-45, 2014
  2. ↑ KTB / Ob. West, XIII-fnl. 159 and WIV-f.
  3. ↑ The railway line to La Châtre no longer exists, the Lieu-dit Le Petit-Nice, today called Quartier du Petit-Nice, is now designated by the Rue du Petit-Nice, which runs in a long straight along the former railway tracks.
  4. ↑ Cotillon, p. 44
  5. ↑ The British wanted to destroy it and would have bombed it if the resistance had not eliminated it.
  6. ↑ a b Le Premier Régiment de France et la Résistance , pp. 73–76
  7. ^ "Lothaire Kubel", p. 93, Pierre Brunaud, Argenton de A à Z en 44 rubriques historiques, Le Menoux, P. Brunaud, 2013, ISBN 978-2-954-69550-1 , OCLC 887474081
  8. ^ La nouvelle République, September 14, 2010
  9. ↑ Le Premier Régiment de France, p. 74
  10. ^ The five soldiers (André Freysse, 20 years old, François Gorgone, 20, Guy Gorse, 21, André Vallet, Auguste Wetzel, 20), nine civilians: four from Argenton (the Thimonnier brothers, 16 and 18 years old, Roger Montagu , 21, and Raymond Garros, 19), two train travelers stranded in Argenton (Ngoc Tran, 23, from Cochinchina ; and Paul Arnoux, 39, from Haiti ), and three unidentified prisoners removed from the Marceau cavalry barracks came to Limoges.