- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; 1st ed. edition (7 Mar 1988)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747500827
- ISBN-13: 978-0747500827
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 545,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
On June 10 1944, four days after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the inhabitants of a remote village in South-west France were rounded up by a company of SS soldiers and all but a handful were shot or burnt to death - 642 in total. The atrocity and its particularly disturbing details have never been adequately explained. In 1982, Robin Mackness met the one man left alive who held the knowledge which made sense of the massacre. It cost Mackness 21 months in prison. Convinced that he was not embarking on anything illegal, Mackness agreed to carry out an unusual task for a Swiss bank, of which he believed he was about to become a director. The "task" swiftly became a nightmare as he found himself falling foul of the French and Swiss law. He made the painful decision not to reveal the names of his banking colleagues or their client and was thereby sentenced by the French authorities who were deprived of an even bigger catch. In prison, Mackness began to research the background of the extraordinary story he had been told by the bank's client and five years of investigation convinced him that he had discovered the true secret of Oradour. His sources include members of the French Resistance as well as ex-members of the SS.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Hmm...well it is quite gripping and adventurous stuff. Mixes two stories about the authors investigations into the massacre, with the original WW2 storyline. Mr Mackness was a Banker, and much of the first half of the book deals with international banking practices which I found very tedious and didn't add to the story. As far of the telling of the story, its obviously well intentioned, but I felt there was some glossing over of detail, and a lack of exploration of other avenues of enquiry , or cross referencing to established historical fact to paint a really complete picture. I felt the ending was rushed; a conclusion was reached and it was all over without any discussion. Given the geographical slant to the story, more (detailed) maps would be nice.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Oradour is somewhat of an anomaly, in that, in dealing with the population of France, the German occupiers of WW2 were often very "correct" and rarely took mass reprisals (although many many hostages from areas perceived as hostile, like Brittany, were sent to work in Germany alongside youths conscripted into the more or less forced labour service, after 1943). Very few incidents even approaching this type occurred in France, which is why this large village is kept, unrepaired, as a monument to the (in France at least) rare SS atrocity.
The author was arrested more like kidnapped) by French Customs near Lyons, carrying a carload of gold including (he says) bars stamped with the letters "RB" meaning "Reichsbank". He was told, he says, by he who provided the gold, that that person, a Jew terrorist with the "Maquis" and "Resistance", had buried the gold after an ambush in 1944, that the gold belonged (if you like) to an SS General who had misappropriated the non-Reichsbank part of it and that the massacre was an attempt by a few SS officers to recover that gold. The official story is different: the SS General was friendly with an officer caught and tortured to death by the Maquis rabble. The massacre was a reprisal for that.
The author was sentenced to 2 years in a French prison for attempting to smuggle gold, but none of it, officially, was Reichsbank gold.
The author's story (this book) was (is?) banned in France, he says. The (mainly recently recruited and Alsatian) SS troops indicted after WW2 were, after a long trial, sentenced variously to death or imprisonment but all save one NCO, were released in 1954 after a year, following a law passed by the French legislature. The SS General was sentenced to death in absentia but lived until his death in Germany in 1971.
A very interesting story which might or might not be true in some or all particulars. What strikes me, though, is that the town itself still stands as a monument to the 400-odd people killed that day in mid-1944 (and who until then had scarcely seen a German officer or soldier), yet to take two examples, the British shelled and bombed Le Havre in 1944 and killed 35,000 people; the Americans bombed Cannes (that's why it is mostly postwar in architecture) and killed, it is said, 100,000 French civilians. Truly, what we call "History" is in the hands of the victors to a large extent...
The author was arrested more like kidnapped) by French Customs near Lyons, carrying a carload of gold including (he says) bars stamped with the letters "RB" meaning "Reichsbank". He was told, he says, by he who provided the gold, that that person, a Jew terrorist with the "Maquis" and "Resistance", had buried the gold after an ambush in 1944, that the gold belonged (if you like) to an SS General who had misappropriated the non-Reichsbank part of it and that the massacre was an attempt by a few SS officers to recover that gold. The official story is different: the SS General was friendly with an officer caught and tortured to death by the Maquis rabble. The massacre was a reprisal for that.
The author was sentenced to 2 years in a French prison for attempting to smuggle gold, but none of it, officially, was Reichsbank gold.
The author's story (this book) was (is?) banned in France, he says. The (mainly recently recruited and Alsatian) SS troops indicted after WW2 were, after a long trial, sentenced variously to death or imprisonment but all save one NCO, were released in 1954 after a year, following a law passed by the French legislature. The SS General was sentenced to death in absentia but lived until his death in Germany in 1971.
A very interesting story which might or might not be true in some or all particulars. What strikes me, though, is that the town itself still stands as a monument to the 400-odd people killed that day in mid-1944 (and who until then had scarcely seen a German officer or soldier), yet to take two examples, the British shelled and bombed Le Havre in 1944 and killed 35,000 people; the Americans bombed Cannes (that's why it is mostly postwar in architecture) and killed, it is said, 100,000 French civilians. Truly, what we call "History" is in the hands of the victors to a large extent...
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