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Old 23rd Mar 2022, 07:36
  #3507 (permalink)  
beardy
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: UK
Age: 69
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Originally Posted by Tartiflette Fan
Highly doubtful. Look at what happened to the members of Das Reich who were prosecuted for the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944. Excellent German records of personnel, many admitted their involvement, the country affected was one of the Allied powers and the trial was held in that country, but the prison terms served were very light. One or two may have hanged but i am not certain.

If there is any retribution, then most likely of a summary nature after capture by the Ukranians;
Not quite, although there are similarities to the situation in Ukraine. From Wikipedia:

On 12 January 1953, a military tribunal in Bordeaux heard the charges against the surviving 65 of the 200 or so SS men who had been involved. Only 21 of them were present, as many were in East Germany, which would not permit their extradition. Seven of those charged were German citizens, but 14 were Alsatians, French nationals whose home region had been annexed by Germany in 1940. All but one of the Alsatians claimed to have been forced to join the Waffen-SS. Such forced conscripts from Alsace and Lorraine called themselves the malgré-nous, meaning "against our will".

On 11 February, 20 defendants were found guilty. Continuing uproar in Alsace (including demands for autonomy) pressed the French parliament to pass an amnesty law for all the malgré-nous on 19 February. The convicted Alsatian former SS men were released shortly afterwards, which caused bitter protests in the Limousin region.

By 1958, all of the German defendants had also been released. General Heinz Lammerding of the Das Reich division, who had given the orders for retaliation against the Resistance, died in 1971, following a successful entrepreneurial career. At the time of the trial, he lived in Düsseldorf, in the former British occupation zone of West Germany, and the French government never obtained his extradition from West Germany.[9]

The last trial of a Waffen-SS member who had been involved took place in 1983. Former SS-Obersturmführer Heinz Barth was tracked down in East Germany. Barth had participated in the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre as a platoon leader in the "Der Führer" regiment, commanding 45 SS men. He was one of several charged with giving orders to shoot 20 men in a garage. Barth was sentenced to life imprisonment by the First Senate of the City Court of Berlin. He was released from prison in the reunified Germany in 1997 and died in August 2007.

On 8 January 2014, Werner Christukat,[10] an 88-year-old former member of the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion of the "Der Führer" SS regiment was charged, by the state court in Cologne, with 25 charges of murder and hundreds of counts of accessory to murder in connection with the massacre in Oradour-sur-Glane.[11] The suspect, who was identified only as Werner C., had until 31 March 2014 to respond to the charges. If the case went to trial, it could have possibly been held in a juvenile court because the suspect was only 19 at the time it occurred. According to his attorney, Rainer Pohlen, the suspect acknowledged being at the village but denied being involved in any killings.[12] On 9 December 2014, the court dropped the case, citing a lack of any witness statements or reliable documentary evidence able to disprove the suspect's contention that he was not a part of the massacre.[13]
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