Still today there are many war crimes and
stories which are being uncovered about the Second World War.

On a daily basis, different soldiers are being
exhumed from the battlefields of Europe, 80 years after the conflict had gripped the continent.

But many resistance elements emerged during
World War 2, as the Germans captured different lands and territories and the people living
in those countries did not want to tolerate the evils of the Nazis.

But it has emerged recently that there are
executions that were carried out by the French Resistance which still haven’t been spoken
about, and many of those who fought for the French resistance took their secrets of the
war to their deaths.

But recently a 98 year old surviving member
of the resistance spoke out and told of the executions of up to 40 German soldiers who
were executed by the French Resistance following D-Day.

But what is the story of this? Join us today as we look at this, and to support
our channel please make sure to subscribe.

In the build up to D-Day, the British and
the allied nations were planting spies inside of France to work with the French Resistance.

They would play a key role in the normandy
landings disrupting and delaying the Germans who would make their way to the north of France
following the landings.

But the French Resistance were known to have
been a brutal foe for the Nazis, and they were a feared enemy.

If members of the resistance were discovered,
then usually they were executed quickly and swiftly by the Germans with very little questions
asked.

Some were sent to concentration camps where
they were then killed by the conditions there.

They did play a key role in the rapid advance
for the Allies through France following D-Day, and there had been activity inside of France
for many years, even as soon as the Germans occupied France.

There were many hardline policies taken by
the Nazis against the Resistance, and different elements such as the Maquis went to live and
take up actions in the mountains and the forests.

These men were difficult for the Germans to
hunt down, and 1944 in particular was a key year for the resistance.

But one man who was a member of the French
Resistance was Edmond Reveil.

He was a man who had lived with a secret for
decades, and at a meeting of the National Veterans Association in 2019, he stood on
his feet and spoke to the other veterans about a mass execution of German soldiers that he
had been apart of.

It was said it was like a weight had lifted
from his shoulders, and the Mayor said ‘Over the years he had plenty of opportunities to
tell the story and he never did.

But he was the last witness.

It was a burden to him.

He knew that if he did not speak out, then
no one would ever know.

’ What this elderly Frenchman was talking about
was the executions of around 40 German soldiers that had taken place at the hands of the French
resistance.

Following D-Day on the 6th June 1944, Resistance
fighters had staged a small uprising in Tulle, the capital of the Correze department, and
during this between 50 and 60 German soldiers were taken prisoner by the resistance.

3 days after D-Day, the Germans fought back
and they then publicly hanged and executed 99 of their own hostages.

In the days following D-Day, more horror would
occur as the Germans would discover the charred remains of Helmuth Kempfe, an SS commander
who had been locked inside a field ambulance and this was then set on fire.

Following there, the SS Das Reich Division
massacred 643 people inside the village of Oradour-Sur-Glane.

Women and children were locked in the church
which was then set on fire, and men were locked in a barn and were shot by machine gun fire,
before the barn was then set on fire.

The village became a ghost town, and it still
stands today as a memorial, but Edmond Reveil who had taken part in the Tulle Uprising then
joined a party of resistance members that then went towards the east.

He said, ‘none of the resistance groups
wanted anything to do with the prisoners they had taken, we didn’t know what to do with
them.

’ So these men accompanied the German prisoners
they had captured, and they then took them to Meymac.

Some of the prisoners had become separated
from the main group, and it was said ‘If a prisoner wanted to take a pee, he needed
to be guarded by two of us.

We hadn’t planned anything for food.

We were under the orders of an Allied Command
Centre, and they were the ones who gave the orders to killed them.

’ Edmond Reveil is today the last surviving
member of the local resistance group of the FTP, and he would then personally witness
the executions of up to 40 German soldiers at a place referred to as Le Vert.

Amongst the inmates and the prisoners were
other members of the Wehrmacht, but also other collaborators including a French woman who
had collaborated with the Gestapo.

But after receiving the orders to kill them,
the resistance members did not want to shoot her, and they drew straws and the loser had
to shoot her.

The commander of this group who was guarding
the soldiers was codename Hannibal and it was said he ‘cried like a kid when he got
the order, but there was discipline in the resistance.

He asked for volunteers to carry out the order.

Every fighter had someone to kill.

But there were some of us, and I was one of
them recounted Reveil who said we wouldn’t take part.

’ Reveil then told of what happened with the
executions.

In the countryside he said, ‘it was a terribly
hot day.

We made them dig their own graves.

They were killed and we poured quicklime on
them.

I remember it smelled of blood, we never spoke
again.

’ For over 75 years this secret would remain
close with the witness, and it’s clear that it must have played on his mind and that if
he didn’t get it off his chest then it would have gone with him to the grave.

The rest of the executioners who massacred
the dozens of soldiers had died, but this would not be the end of the story.

It was believed that in the 1960s, a group
of archaeologists uncovered the remains of 11 German bodies from Le Vert, but then the
excavations came to a close, and there were no records stating the exact place of the
dig.

This was done in complete secrecy, and a local
man remembered seeing the excavations and discoveries, and he has collaborated with
modern archaeologists.

This is became in the next few weeks the German
War Graves Commission are going to be searching for the remains of the missing German soldiers
who were executed.

The 98 year old Resistance member’s testimony
has also been used to try and pinpoint where these people’s remains are.

There has been a lot of discussion in the
media regarding the search for the remains of the executed German soldiers and collaborators.

The thought by Reveil the 98 year old man
is that he wants these dead soldiers to be remembered and for their stories to be told
to the families so that a memorial can be placed near the spot.

But there are many other atrocities and war
crimes that were committed by the French Resistance, but also there are war crimes that have been
committed by German soldiers.

Many of these still today have not been uncovered,
and the victims remain in their graves under the ground.

Still around Europe there are huge mass graves
of victims who were executed by the einsatzgruppen or who were killed inside of the concentration
camps.

Many of these people have been exhumed and
laid to rest inside of a proper burial site.

There are also some unknown German soldiers
who have been buried inside of Britain who died inside the prisoner of war camps here.

But whether the 40 German soldiers who were
executed at Le Vert can be found or have been found is yet to be known.

It’s believed that 11 were exhumed, but
that leaves about around 30 to be discovered.

But the testimony of a 98 year old man has
brought executions of the Second World War into the forefront of the world’s mind and
consciousness, decades on from the end of the deadliest conflict in history.

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