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FRENCH HISTORY

France starts search for executed German WWII soldiers

A search began in France on Tuesday for the remains of dozens of German soldiers said to have been executed by French Resistance fighters during World War II.

France starts search for executed German WWII soldiers
Police officers walk past the presumed site where the remains of 47 German soldiers and a French woman accused of collaboration, executed in June 1944 by the local resistance, in Meymac western France. Photo by PASCAL LACHENAUD / AFP

Coming 79 years after the alleged killings, the search was sparked by statements from a 98-year-old former resistance fighter, Edmond Reveil, who has gone public with the allegation in recent years.

Reveil was part of a commando that he said took 46 German soldiers they had captured, as well as a French woman suspected of collaborating with the Nazi occupiers, to a wooded hillside on June 12th, 1944, and shot them dead.

The reason for the killings, in the southwestern Corrèze region, was that the members of the local resistance group, made up of around 30 militia and communist partisans, were too few to guard the prisoners, Reveil told AFP.

“If we had let the Germans go, they would have destroyed Meymac,” the nearby town, he said.

He had previously told the local newspaper La Vie Correzienne: “We felt ashamed, but did we have a choice?”

The handful of people who knew about the incident mostly kept quiet over the decades, though historians told AFP that it was sometimes mentioned in private.

A dig was even started in the 1960s to shed light on the affair, but was quickly stopped, “perhaps because of pressure”, said Meymac’s mayor Philippe Brugere, who added that he had been unable to find any record of that search in the town archives.

A fresh investigation was launched when Reveil began to talk publicly about the incident in 2019, and started giving media interviews.

Brugere called the search for the truth “honourable”, saying it was necessary for people to “look at history with honesty”.

But the resistance veteran association Maquis de Corrèze deplored the “media buzz” sparked by the revelations, which it said could become a “pretext for sullying the memory of the Resistance”.

Reveil, who has not given his reasons for speaking out after so many years, said he recalled each of the German soldiers “taking out his wallet to look at a family picture before dying”.

After the killings the shooters were “told not to talk about this”, he said. “It was a war crime,” he added.

But local historian Herve Dupuy said a better term for the executions was “a fact of war”, given that the German occupiers did not treat the French resistance fighters as combatants under the Geneva Convention, but as “terrorists”.

France capitulated to Germany in June 1940 and was governed as Vichy France, a German client state, until 1942, when the country was taken over completely.

The French Resistance, formed by groups of various political leanings, continued to fight against German forces and the Vichy collaboration.

The movement led a guerrilla war against Germans and supplied the Allies with intelligence, crucially ahead of the Normandy landings in June 1944.

Its precise impact on the outcome of the war is still the subject of debate among historians, as is the extent of French collaboration with Nazi Germany.

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FRENCH HISTORY

5 things to know about Charles de Gaulle’s historic ‘appel du 18 juin’

In 1940, France's former president and then-General Charles de Gaulle recorded a historic speech that many consider the start of the French resistance during World War II. Here are some facts you may not know about it.

5 things to know about Charles de Gaulle's historic 'appel du 18 juin'

On June 18, 1940, then-General Charles de Gaulle spoke into a BBC microphone in London, proclaiming that “Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”

His words were broadcast on the BBC’s Radio Londres, the network’s French language programme.

General de Gaulle called on all officers, soldiers and engineers already in British territory or capable of getting there, to join the fight against Nazi Germany

The speech is widely considered to be the “founding act of the Free French Forces” that would be led by de Gaulle. 

De Gaulle had fled to UK the previous day, after Marshal Philippe Pétain, the new French prime minister, had promised to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany.

READ MORE: ‘Punished for daring’: Women journalists defied Allies to cover D-Day

Here are five facts about the famous speech;

It was actually a response to another speech – The previous day, on June 17th at 12:30pm, the new head of the French government, Marshal Philippe Pétain, made a speech announcing his plans to sign an armistice with Nazi Germany. De Gaulle fled France the same day, and met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who gave him the green light to record a speech.

There were not many listeners – In reality, de Gaulle’s appeal on June 18th is not thought to have been heard by many French people. After the British government went back and forth about whether to air the speech, it eventually was broadcast at 10pm, rather late for people to have heard it across the Channel.

On top of that, the BBC would not have been a first choice for radio stations amongst French people, historian Aurélie Luneau told France Bleu.

Instead, the notoriety of the speech instead came from the word of mouth and re-prints of its words in the international press in the days to come. It was also put into poster-form and placed on walls around London.

A reproduction, from August 1940, of the poster put on walls around London, with the words of de Gaulle’s June 18th speech (Photo by AFP)

But it did mobilise many French once they heard about it. One key example is the Isle de Sein, off the coast of Finistère in Brittany. The small fishing community mobilised, and from June 24th to 26th, 136 locals sailed to Britain, the youngest just 14 and the oldest 54.

No recording of the speech – As it was not widely listened to, the original speech made on June 18th was not recorded or filmed. However, de Gaulle repeated his message again on the radio again four days later (on June 22), and this one was recorded and more widely listened to. 

The BBC then went on to give de Gaulle and the Free French five minutes a day to broadcast to France, in an effort to organise the resistance.

In 2023, French newspaper Le Monde was able to use artificial intelligence to recreate a close version to what de Gaulle’s original speech may have sounded like.

De Gaulle’s nickname – The General won the nickname ‘L’Homme du 18 juin’ (The man of the 18th of June) due to his initial speech and the many more that were broadcast during World War II.

Commemorated with a coin and stamp – Upon the 70th anniversary of the speech in 2010, France commemorated the event with a special stamp (you can see it here), as well as a €2 commemorative coin (you can see/buy it here).

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