civilian victims in Tulle. "Somehow, the SS General had achieved his goal: the discrimination of the Resistance and the terror of the population." Analysis Historical research The public proclamations and explanations given by the Germans to the French authorities reliably refer to the potential for the murder of unarmed German soldiers. According to the German argument, reprisals conformed with international military law, under the Armistice of 22 June 1940 and under the second Hague Convention. Following the trial conducted in Belgium on the execution of hostages by German troops and one conducted in Italy for the Ardeatine massacre, one can conclude that the Tulle massacre violated the law of armed conflict., notably of articles 40, 41, 46 and 50 of the annexation regulation to the 4th Hague convention of 1907 concerning the laws and customs of war on land as well as the "Martens Clause" of the preamble of that convention. Meanwhile, Bruno Kertheuser contests the use of the term "reprisals" in the Tulle case: "the death and deportation of hundreds of inhabitants of Tulle on the 9th and 10th of June are very clearly a war crime. Any other name, like that of reprisals, is a white-washing, an absolving measure, belonging to the jargon of perpetrators of these crimes and participants in their logic with them." The massacre at Tulle was carried out in order to punish a capital of the Resistance, in order to terrorize other regions, in accordance with the established practices of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front; it resulted "from the action and the inaction of many people", be they members of the Wehrmacht, the Waffen-SS or the SD. Revisionism According to the self-published accounts of the SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Weidinger, many dozen German soldiers were killed after their surrender and numerous cadavers bore evidence of mutilation. This thesis is repeated and amplified by two other revisionists, Sadi Schneid, pseudonym of former Waffen-SS member Elimar Schneider, and Herbert Taege, former official of the Hitler Youth. For these historians, the account of Weidinger has no merit. Eberhard Jaeckel "doubts the veracity of these claims and asks whether the alleged atrocities were not used to justify the behavior of the SS." For G. Penaud, "various testimonies of military or civilian Germans found by Bruno Kartheuser are somewhat contradictory on the question of "mutilations" of victims, according to the rumor, German victims; to tell the truth,