late morning to the Hotel Moderne. At this time, the highest-ranking officer of the SS was Sturmbannführer Kowatsch, an intelligence officer from the division headquarters. Throughout the night of 8 June, the SS patrolled in town and encircled it. On 9 June, at 6 in the morning, the Germans searched the prefecture and threatened to execute the prefect, Trouillé, after finding weapons and ammunition abandoned there by the Mobile Reserve Group. He was to be shot by the most senior SS officer present, a sergeant, but escaped execution by arguing that his position afforded him a rank equivalent to that of a general and demanded to speak to a more senior officer before being shot. He managed to get an audience with a senior officer who had come to visit the German wounded being treated at the hospital. During the visit, a wounded German confirmed to the officer that the prefect had prevented a resistance fighter from shooting them: "This man saved our lives". Massacre Mass arrests Residents of Tulle, you have followed my instructions and remained calm in exemplary fashion during the difficult days that your city has just gone through. I thank you. This attitude, and the protection of wounded German soldiers were the two things that enabled me to obtain assurances from the German command that normal life will resume within the day. – Proclamation of Prefect Pierre Trouillé, broadcast by loudspeaker on 9 June 1944 at 10 o'clock in the morning. On 9 June, between 9 and 10 am, SS-Sturmbannführer Aurel Kowatsch declared to Prefect Trouillé and the Secretary General of the prefecture, M. Roche: "Your gesture [care of wounded Germans] will not be ignored by the German commander who will take this into account in favor of the population in the inevitable crackdown following the crime committed against our comrades of the Tulle garrison." He told them that the mass arrests had already begun, detaining all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty and authorizing only "the release of all essential elements after verification of their loyalties." According to Trouillé and Roche, Kowatsch took his orders directly from General Heinz Lammerding, presumably by radio. The mass arrests affected a population already distraught from the battle: "In small groups, the SS scoured the homes and the streets; they entered lodgings, examined the men that they found there; to the women, they claimed that it was