On June 10, 1944, as the German army was routed and its last battalions were retreating towards Germany, soldiers from Nazi units entered the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane (near Limoges), locked the inhabitants of the village in the church and set it on fire. All those who tried to flee were machine-gunned. Today it is a “martyr village”, where nothing has been moved so that visitors can imagine the massacre. When we took our daughters to visit France when they were still teenagers, we wanted to show them around Oradour so that they could understand what war could be like.
I have the impression that the massacre of the inhabitants of a village or a city is the final reflex of routed armies. When you feel victory is within reach, you try to preserve the place and subjugate its inhabitants rather than razing everything and massacring the families.
What if Boutcha in Ukraine was a sign that the war is lost for Putin…
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