It was not until the civil proceedings, brought in Düsseldorf by Lammerding, against the Communist weekly "Die Tat", who had accused him in their 17 July 1965 edition of having been condemned to death in France for the murder of numerous hostages, that German courts established, though without real consequences, that Lammerding did bear responsibility in the massacre at Tulle. The legal findings quite clearly dismiss Lammerding's claims: "A group of 120 men, the bulk of them young, were selected, their group was reduced on the intervention of many French citizens of that village to number 99. These 99 were killed in a cruel manner, without trial and without having proved their participation in the partisan attack the day before. His assertion that the best part of the 99 killed were partisans and not hostages is inaccurate. [... Here, the victims were killed in revenge for a partisan attack already committed and to discourage partisan attacks in the future. The killing of these civilians can rightly be called the murder of hostages since these killings are even more objectionable than the killing of true hostages."