Heinz Lammerding

War-crimes trial

In 1953, Lammerding was tried in France for war crimes, for ordering two massacres in 1944: at Tulle and at Oradour-sur-Glane. He was sentenced to death in absentia by the court of Bordeaux, but he was never extradited from West Germany nor was he ever sentenced by a German court. According to Danny S. Parker, Lammerding had already been tried in West Germany, convicted of war crimes and had served a prison sentence. He, therefore, was not subject to extradition under the Bonn constitution, much to the consternation of the French. They threatened to send in a commando unit to seize him, as the Israelis did in the case of Adolf Eichmann. However, before this could occur, Lammerding died in 1971 from cancer.