The End of the Gleiniger Mystery — August 1944, the Liberation of Limoges

On 21 August 1944, the German authorities occupying the Limousin region had a meeting at 8 p.m. with representatives of the Resistance to sign the act of surrender of the city of Limoges, thus allowing the Maquisards of Georges Guingouin, who surrounded the city, to enter without bloodshed. But there was only one German captain to receive them at the Hôtel de la Paix, and only soldiers far from the command centre or the many men forcibly conscripted into the German army were still in Limoges. Brigadier General Walter Gleiniger and his chief of staff Von Liebich had allegedly been taken prisoner by the SS police of Limoges, who had allegedly broken through the city's blockade, taking with them hundreds of German soldiers and the last remnants of the local militia.

What became of General Gleiniger? Suicide of a soldier of honour? Execution by the SS police, who may have wished to continue the fight against the Resistance despite Von Kluge's directives ordering, from 18 August onwards, the withdrawal of German troops from southern France? This is how history has been recorded, until today, in the collective memory of the region.

But there was no signing of the act of surrender by the German Army. It was not necessary for the German Army to break through the blockade to the east: the gates of Limoges closed after the departure of the Germans and the local militia. There was no ambush by Guingouin's Maquisards until after Sauviat-sur-Vige, the last obstacle to cross before reaching the Creuse department, under the control of the Armée Secrète of Commandant François.

Georges Guingouin, a great strategist, had fulfilled his dream: to liberate Limoges without any fighting. He thus spared the population from the Allied bombardments that would have been indispensable before any final assault. He also saved the lives of his hundreds of Maquisards crammed into the 82 cells of the Champ de Foire prison in Limoges — all those remaining being under sentence of death by the Germans, and in many towns those condemned to death were executed before the departure of the occupying forces. Was there, then, a tacit agreement between Guingouin and General Gleiniger?

From the moment the column entered the Creuse, the fleeing column encountered the first assaults of the Maquisards of that department. And the first ambush may have cost General Gleiniger his life — commanding the column or under close surveillance by the SS police. Walter Gleiniger was buried with three other German soldiers in the cemetery of Guéret on 23 August 1944, then exhumed in 1969, "the skull struck by one or more projectiles", and transferred to the German cemetery of Berneuil in Charente-Maritime, where he now rests, close to his three companions from the fleeing German column.

This book aims to shed new light on what remains "the Gleiniger mystery" — this general who had the audacity to condemn the atrocities of the SS during the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane, perhaps to protect his soldiers from local reprisals, and who may well be one of the contributing factors that led to that massacre: the decision to place the town of Saint-Junien under a state of siege on 8 June 1944 in preparation for reprisals — a decision transferred on 9 June to Diekmann.