Heinz Lammerding
Heinz Lammerding was a German Waffen-SS officer and civil engineer who commanded the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich during World War II, overseeing reprisal operations that included the massacre of civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944.[1][2]
As the division advanced from southern France toward Normandy following the Allied D-Day landings, Lammerding's forces conducted brutal retaliations against suspected Resistance activity, such as the public execution of 99 men in Tulle on 9 June 1944 and, the following day, the roundup, shooting, and burning of 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane—nearly the village's entire population of men, women, and children—while razing the settlement.[2][3][1] Although SS Major Adolf Diekmann directly led the Oradour assault, Lammerding bore responsibility as divisional commander.[1][3]
Following Germany's defeat, Lammerding returned to civilian life in West Germany, founding a prosperous construction company in Düsseldorf despite repeated French demands for his extradition.[2] A French military court sentenced him to death in absentia in 1951 for his involvement in the Tulle atrocities, with similar culpability established for Oradour, but West German authorities declined to extradite him, invoking constitutional protections against handing over nationals and citing expired statutes of limitations under a 1954 Allied agreement.[2] He remained unprosecuted in Germany and died of natural causes in 1971.[2]