Qualla: Tulle Massacre

Tulle Massacre: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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.

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Tulle Massacre: Liberation and Its Cost

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 t...

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Tulle Massacre: The Nooses on Every Street

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 follo...

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Tulle Massacre: The Machinery of Cruelty

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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.'...

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Tulle Massacre: A Street Named for the Date

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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. ...

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