1. Adolf Rudolf Reinhold Diekmann was a Nazi officer in the Waffen SS during World War II who orchestrated the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France on 10 June 1944.
19 Facts About Adolf Diekmann
1. 2.
Adolf Diekmann said he committed the war crime in retaliation for the killing of a fellow SS officer named Helmut Kampfe by the French Resistance.
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Adolf Diekmann was born on 18 December 1914 in Magdeburg, Prussia in the German Empire to Heinrich and Anna Diekmann.
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Adolf Diekmann was the second of four children, two girls and two boys.
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Adolf Diekmann then completed his high school education at a Nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalt, a Nazi secondary boarding school, in Naumburg, earning his degree on 12 December 1935.
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At the age of 21, Adolf Diekmann joined the SS on 1 March 1936 and was assigned to the Signals Corps stationed in the Adlershof neighborhood of Berlin.
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Adolf Diekmann was then sent to the SS-Junkerschule, the SS's leadership training facilities, at Bad Tolz in Bavaria in October 1937.
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Adolf Diekmann then completed a course for platoon leaders at the Junker School's Dachau branch in August 1938 and was designated an SS-Untersturmfuhrer, the most junior commissioned officer rank of the SS, in SS-Verfugungstruppe, a mechanized infantry unit at the disposal of the Fuhrer.
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When Germany, the UK, France, and Italy signed the Munich Agreement ceding the Sudetenland to Germany on 30 September 1938, Adolf Diekmann's division marched into Czechoslovakia to annex the land for Germany.
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Adolf Diekmann returned to the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, which was assigned to Army Group Center.
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Adolf Diekmann was given command of the 1st Battalion, 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, in the Das Reich Division.
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German military commanders like Adolf Diekmann who had seen service on the Eastern Front had become conditioned by the extraordinary brutality of anti-partisan measures there.
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Adolf Diekmann told his superiors that he ordered his men to raze the village and kill the inhabitants because he had become enraged after he had found Kampfe's handcuffed body inside a German field ambulance with the remains of other German soldiers.
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Adolf Diekmann believed the vehicle had been set alight, burning alive everyone inside.
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However, all charges against Adolf Diekmann were dropped after he was killed near Noyers-Bocage while fighting in Normandy against British troops on 29 June 1944.
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Adolf Diekmann, who was not wearing a helmet at the time of his death, was killed by shrapnel to his head from a British artillery shell.
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Adolf Diekmann was buried at La Cambe German war cemetery in block 25, row 4, grave 121.
18.
Almost 70 years after the massacre, former soldiers from Adolf Diekmann's command were still being investigated over the killings.
19.
Adolf Diekmann met Hedwig Meindle, a medical student, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.