The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre remains one of the most horrifying atrocities committed in Western Europe during the Second World War. On 10 June 1944, just four days after the Allied landings in Normandy, soldiers of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich entered the quiet French village as part of a wider campaign of terror across occupied France. The division had been moving north through the countryside, burning towns, executing civilians, and hunting resistance fighters in an effort to reassert German control. Acting on false intelligence that linked the village to the Resistance, SS officers surrounded Oradour-sur-Glane and sealed off all escape routes.
The population was ordered into the village square, where men were separated from women and children. The men were divided into small groups, taken to barns and sheds, and systematically shot before the buildings were set ablaze. At the same time, more than 450 women and children were locked inside the village church. Explosives were detonated, gunfire followed, and the church was set on fire, turning it into a death trap with no escape. By the end of the day, 642 civilians were dead, and Oradour-sur-Glane had been reduced to smoking ruins.
After the war, the French government chose to preserve the village exactly as it was found—its burned-out homes, destroyed church, and abandoned streets left untouched as a permanent memorial. Oradour-sur-Glane stands today not only as evidence of Nazi brutality, but as a warning of how occupation, ideology, and collective punishment can annihilate an entire community in a matter of hours. The massacre remains one of the clearest symbols of civilian suffering during the German occupation of France.
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