Over hundreds of meters through the streets of Tulle, nooses hung from trees, lampposts, and balconies. The preparations had been made that morning by SS-Hauptsturmführer Hoff and a section of pioneers -- all volunteers. On the afternoon of 9 June 1944, three days after D-Day, the condemned were led in groups of ten to these makeshift gallows. Ninety-nine men died. Their bodies were taken down at evening, buried at a garbage dump without identification, with only a brief ceremony cut short by the Germans. The next day, the same 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich would carry out the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. But Tulle came first.
The events at Tulle began with a victory. On 7 June, the day after D-Day, French Resistance FTP fighters launched a planned offensive against the German garrison -- roughly 300 Wehrmacht troops facing some 400 attackers. By the afternoon of June 8, the Maquis controlled most of the town. The Milice and Mobile Reserve had surrendered and departed. German forces held only two strongholds: the weapons factory and the Souilhac school. The Resistance fighters believed Tulle was liberated. When the girls' school, the main German position, fell after being set ablaze, the fighting appeared over. German losses were significant: an estimated 50 dead, some 60 missing, and between 23 and 37 wounded. But the FTP had no way of knowing that the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, ordered north toward Normandy, was bearing down on them with tanks and overwhelming firepower.
The SS arrived on the evening of June 8, their tanks sweeping aside Maquis positions outside town. By morning, they had sealed Tulle. All men between sixteen and sixty were arrested -- close to 5,000 people assembled before the weapons factory. A grotesque selection process followed. French officials negotiated the release of those deemed 'essential' -- government employees, bakers, factory supervisors -- while an SD operative named Walter Schmald sorted the remainder based on appearance alone: unshaven faces, unpolished shoes, anything that might suggest Resistance involvement. Each time an intervention freed one man, Schmald replaced him from the main group, maintaining his quota of 120. As one survivor, Jean-Louis Bourdelle, later reflected, those who secured releases were unknowingly condemning the 'most vulnerable, the loners, the weakest or the luckless, those with no one to defend them.' At 3:30 that afternoon, the hangings began.
Sturmbanführer Kowatsch, the senior SS officer, dismissed a final plea from the prefect against death by hanging. 'We have developed on the Russian Front the practice of hanging,' he said. 'We have hanged over a hundred thousand men in Kharkov and in Kiev. This is nothing to us.' The condemned were brought in groups of ten. Two SS men stood at each noose; one climbed a ladder with the victim, placed the rope, and the other kicked the ladder away. Father Jean Espinasse, a local priest, was allowed to minister to the dying. He watched soldiers break rifle butts across the backs of men who froze at the sight of the nooses. Meanwhile, on the terrace of the Café Tivoli, SD spokesperson Paula Geissler and a group of SS watched the executions while drinking wine and listening to a gramophone. The hangings stopped at 99 victims -- why not the planned 120 remains debated by historians. The remaining hostages were not spared: 149 men were deported to Dachau, where 101 died.
In total, the actions of the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS, and the SD claimed 213 civilian lives in Tulle. Repression continued for weeks after the hangings: from June 11 to July 31, the weapons factory laboratory was used as a torture center where the Milice cooperated with the SD. On June 21, Prefect Trouillé witnessed three young militiamen pour acid on the facial wounds of a man they had just beaten. Another raid on June 21 sent 80 men to forced labor in Austria. The German troops finally departed Corrèze on 16 August 1944. After the war, the massacre was examined by historians who concluded it violated the laws of armed conflict, particularly articles of the fourth Hague Convention of 1907. Bruno Kartheuser rejected even the term 'reprisals,' calling the events 'very clearly a war crime' and any softer label 'the jargon of perpetrators.' Today, the Rue du 9-Juin-1944 runs through Tulle, ensuring that the date is spoken aloud every time someone gives directions.
Located at 45.25°N, 1.75°E in the department of Corrèze, south-central France. Tulle sits in a narrow river valley surrounded by hills. The town's arms factory and cathedral are identifiable landmarks. Nearest major airport is Brive-Souillac (LFSL), approximately 30 km south. Best viewed at 3,000-4,000 ft AGL. This is a site of wartime atrocity -- approach with appropriate gravity.