Helmut Kämpfe was a Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer who was captured and executed in occupied France by the French Resistance. In response troops of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich killed 643 men, women and children in Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944. Adolf Diekmann, the SS commander who ordered the massacre, said the death of Kämpfe was the reason for the killings, although Kämpfe was still alive at the time. His car had been ambushed by communist partisans who then turned Kämpfe and his men over to the French resistance, who burned them alive in an ambulance.