Disturbing pictures from Life Magazine: Nazis Meet the Firing Squad
On August 25, 1944, Allied forces and French Resistance fighters liberated Paris after four desperate years of German control and a week of intense street battles. French citizens celebrated like never before … but they also doggedly hunted down those who had collaborated with the Nazis.
On September 2, 1944, legendary LIFE photographer Carl Mydans and John Obsborne, a war correspondent for LIFE and Time, were in Grenoble, at the foot of the French Alps, when they witnessed a grim, bloody proceeding: A group of Resistance fighters (known as Maquis) gathered to execute a half-dozen Nazi collaborators who had worked for the despised, feared Milice — the Vichy police. Mydans’ unflinching photos and Osborne’s haunting description of the event ran in the October 2, 1944 issue of LIFE.
Click here to view the photos. WARNING: they are graphic and disturbing.
I saw this this morning (perhaps it came up on Reddit?) – the photos shocked me more than I expected.
Perhaps it’s because those boys (and boys is all they were) seem so calm – almost as though it was all posed.
But it wasn’t posed, it was real!
Frightening stuff but it does need to be seen.
All the best
Keith
You’re right — it was on Reddit
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