Sur les traces de l'Armée Allemande

Editor's note:

If the actions and packages of the German units are well known, and for a long time, through various writings relating to the Resistance of the interior which was illustrated in the South-East of France, the reality of the combatant is, as for it, very largely ignored (and not free from errors, like the alleged commitment of Waffen-SS). This is mainly due to an almost general absence of iconographic sources of the time, and of public archives ... If the maquis of Glières and Vercors have an essential place in the epic of the Liberation, the soldier in face, whether he was an officer or a simple troop man, has not been the subject of any detailed study for 75 years now, and few veterans have spoken…

Drawing on the few works on these mountain clashes, on German and French archives, on many personal documents of German soldiers who served in Grenoble, the Dauphiné and Savoie - including the Soldbücher, very rich in information, or again the Sterbebilder -, Michel Lallemant describes the composition of the German forces involved; it accurately restores the chronology of events, the journey of the main executives and managers. Having grown up in Grenoble, he has been trying for several decades to restore part of this reality of former adversaries, their origin, their unity, their destiny ... a long, tortuous journey, with caution. Sometimes, he may have faced surprising hazards. During the operation "Vercors", intended to destroy the maquis in July 1944, in addition to the airborne component of KG.200, the bulk of the ground engagement fell to the 157. Reserve-Division, a formation little known, very heterogeneous, composed in part of Gebirgsjäger, often very young men from Bavaria: without pathos and no apology, the author takes us back to these tragic facts. Also worthy of interest, he notably analyzed, very closely, the losses of this division from the start of the Occupation to retirement at the end of August 1944 ...