Oradour - The Final Verdict

Relying on multiple eye witness accounts and thorough research in French, American and Résistance archives, the author describes in Part I, hour by hour, the massacre on June 10, 1944, by the Waffen-SS Division Das Reich, of 642 men, women and children in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane and the destruction of the village.. Who ordered the massacre? Why ? The book puts the tragedy in the context of the D-Day Landing and the period that precedes it. Part II is devoted to the conduct of the trial nearly nine years later. Of the 21 accused, only 7 were Germans. The others, all French/Alsatians, had mostly been forcibly inducted into the SS. None were officers. Were the Alsatians victims or murderers? And why were there no officers in the courtroom?