Helmut Kämpfe

Helmut Kämpfe (31 July 1909 – 10 June 1944) was a Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer who was captured and executed in occupied France by the French Resistance. In response troops of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich killed 643 men, women and children in Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944 (the Oradour massacre). Adolf Diekmann, the SS commander who ordered the massacre, said the death of Kämpfe was the reason for the killings, although Kämpfe was still alive at the time. His car had been ambushed by communist partisans who then turned Kämpfe and his men over to the French resistance, who burned them alive in an ambulance.

Kämpfe was a commander in 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich. He received both the Close Combat Clasp in Gold and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. He was known for executing 99 French men in the Tulle massacre.

Biography

Kämpfe was born in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (now Thüringia), German Empire in 1909. He trained to be a typographer like his father, but after Hitler took power in 1933 he became a Leutnant in the Heer, and transferred to the Waffen-SS in 1939. Canou handed him over to Guingouin, who ordered him executed the following day. According to a French informant Kämpfe was burned alive in front of an audience, but the exact circumstances remain unclear.

When it was discovered that the officer had been kidnapped, troops from the Das Reich division and members of the Milice began a brutal search of the surrounding area for Kämpfe. Two local men were shot dead east of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat. Later that day troops of the 1st Battalion, Das Reich committed the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.

The commander of the 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, SS-Standartenführer Sylvester Stadler ordered a court martial into the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, and a personal friend of Kämpfe, was charged over the killings. He said he found Kämpfe's handcuffed body inside a German field ambulance with the remains of other German soldiers just outside the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. The vehicle had been set alight, burning alive everyone inside. All charges were dropped when Diekmann was killed fighting in Normandy on June 29, 1944. A monument designed by the artist Jean-Joseph Sanfourche, commemorates these events; the capture it is located alongside departmental road 941 in Moissannes