Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, 1944

Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, 1944

 

Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, October 1944.

This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter, Georges Blind, to talk. It didn’t work. Georges did not divulge any information. It’s interesting how they’ve placed him at the corner of the building rather than against the stereotypical flat wall. It must make ricochet injuries to the firing squad members much less likely.

 

This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter, Georges Blind, to talk. It didn’t work. Georges did not divulge any information. It’s interesting how they’ve placed him at the corner of the building rather than against the stereotypical flat wall. It must make ricochet injuries to the firing squad members much less likely.

 

This was a mock execution attempting to get the resistance fighter, Georges Blind, to talk. It didn’t work. Georges did not divulge any information. It’s interesting how they’ve placed him at the corner of the building rather than against the stereotypical flat wall. It must make ricochet injuries to the firing squad members much less likely.

 

Also, this was Hitler’s strategy in the East from the start. Any village suspected of hosting partisans would have all of its men executed, at the very least. The extermination of Communist Party commissars and Jews was also ordered and was mixed in with these “anti-partisan” activities in an effort to hide the reality of Hitler’s war of annihilation.

This is identical to the French response against Spanish partisans after Napoleon’s invasion of Spain. The French troops could not fight the English/Portuguese while the Spanish terrorized their supply lines. For every French soldier killed by partisans, X number of civilians would be executed.

The firing squads are large so that no one man is solely responsible for the killing. In some cases, one or more members of the firing squad may be issued a weapon containing a blank cartridge instead of one housing a live round.

No member of the firing squad is told beforehand if he is using live ammunition. This is believed to reinforce the sense of diffusion of responsibility among the firing squad members, making the execution process more reliable.

It also allows each member of the firing squad to believe afterward that he did not personally fire a fatal shot—for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the “conscience round”. However, a military firing squad in the field performing a martial execution ad-hoc, as seen here, is not likely to observe this nicety.