On the evening of August 24, 1944, skirmishes erupted near a farm in the commune of Maille between members of the French Forces of the Interior and German troops. The FFI, the armed resistance fighters who operated behind German lines throughout occupied France, had been increasingly active as Allied forces advanced from Normandy. Second Lieutenant Gustav Schluter, commander of the German control post at nearby Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine, saw the skirmish as justification for reprisal. He mobilized his men and requisitioned two train-mounted artillery pieces. The SS unit believed responsible was the SS-Feldersatzbataillon 17 of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Gotz von Berlichingen, a formation whose soldiers included many teenagers aged 16 and 17.

At dawn on August 25, German forces sealed off Maille. One of the artillery pieces was destroyed by an attacking RAF aircraft, but the operation continued. Soldiers set the first farms ablaze and shot the residents as they fled or cowered inside. By noon, SS troops had entered the village itself and the killing became systematic. Some wounded survivors who had pretended to be dead were shot when they attempted to crawl away. Around 1:00 in the afternoon, the surviving artillery piece began bombarding what remained of the village, collapsing walls onto anyone who might still have been hiding. Soldiers moved through the rubble ensuring that survivors were killed on sight. By late afternoon, the shooting stopped. The few who had survived could only look at what remained of their village. Abbot Andre Payon intervened to allow the dazed survivors safe passage to neighboring communities.

The list of the dead reads like a village census. Entire families were annihilated. The Confolent family lost eight members in a single morning: Maria, age 46, and seven of her children, ranging from Pierre at 22 to Claude at 11. The Guiton family lost eleven people across three generations, including Yvette, age 6, Arlette, age 4, and Jackie, age 2. Six members of the Creuzon family died, including Monique, who was 15 months old. The Menanteau family lost six, the youngest being Hubert, three months old. The Didelin family lost six, including Michel, age 7. Magdeleine Bruneau, born Moreau, was 89 years old. Danielle Martin was six months old. Between them, the dead spanned nearly nine decades of human life, from infancy to old age, all extinguished in a single morning's violence.

Gustav Schluter was condemned in absentia by a French court in Bordeaux in 1953. He was never extradited and died peacefully at his home in Germany in 1965. In 2005, the public prosecutor of Dortmund, Ulrich Maass, reopened the inquiry. German investigators visited Maille in July 2008, and it was clarified that Germany has no statute of limitations on war crimes. But by then, the perpetrators who could be identified were dead or untraceable. Since March 2006, a memorial museum called La Maison du Souvenir has occupied the former Cafe Metais in Maille, displaying photographs and artifacts from the village and honoring those who were murdered. The building's domestic scale is deliberate. This was not a military installation or a concentration camp. It was a cafe in a farming village where people raised children, kept livestock, and lived ordinary lives until the morning the war came to their door.