Le Paradis

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seaburn
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Re: Le Paradis

#76

Post by seaburn » 07 Jun 2015, 15:59

Hi 'Michael Mills' - As the files are accessible in the British Archives, can I ask if you have researched this incident yourself and come up with a different conclusion to that which has entered the public domain ? I have to admit that my personal knowledge on the events that day and the personalities involved is somewhat limited but I would be very swayed by the assertions of ZB37(t) as he has read through those files at length. Do you have reason to believe that those files themselves are corrupted by false statements/evidence or that all allegations were extracted under torture? If you have uncovered any rebuttal evidence, I'd love to hear it as you have piqued my interest in finding out more.

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Re: Le Paradis

#77

Post by michael mills » 07 Jun 2015, 16:38

I was just asking for information about the killing of Royal Scots soldiers on 27 May, the same day as the killing of the 97 soldiers at Paradis on the same day by Knoechlein's unit.

They seem to be two different incidents. There seems to be a lot of information about the killing of the 97 British soldiers at Paradis, since it was the subject of a post-war trial, but not so much about the killing of the Royal Scots soldiers that ZB37(t) accused me of ignoring. I did an online search but could not find anything significant.

The question as I see it is whether the killing of the 97 British soldiers at Paradis was an isolated incident by one unit of the Totenkopf Division, ordered by Knoechlein while under great stress, or whether there was a pattern of such killings as suggested by ZB37(t). I also think it important to determine whether Knoechlein genuinely believed on 27 May 1940 that some of his men had been killed by illegal ammunition, based on the size of their head-wounds, or whether that was a falsehood cooked up when he came under criticism by Wehrmacht commanders in the days after the massacre.

That is why I asked the question about when the German armourer-sergeant made his statement that the wounds were not caused by illegal ammunition. I am not suggesting that his statement made while undergoing post-war interrogation was coerced, but the crucial issue is whether he expressed that same opinion to Knoechlein on 27 May, when the head-wounds on the fallen Totenkopf men were initially observed.


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Re: Le Paradis

#78

Post by David Thompson » 07 Jun 2015, 23:42

Michael -- You wrote:
I also think it important to determine whether Knoechlein genuinely believed on 27 May 1940 that some of his men had been killed by illegal ammunition, based on the size of their head-wounds, or whether that was a falsehood cooked up when he came under criticism by Wehrmacht commanders in the days after the massacre.
The war crime here is the execution of prisoners of war without trial; not whether Knochlein was mistaken, honestly or otherwise. From the 1929 Geneva POW Convention:
Art. 61. No prisoner of war shall be sentenced without being given the opportunity to defend himself.

No prisoner shall be compelled to admit that he is guilty of the offence of which he is accused.

Art. 62. The prisoner of war shall have the right to be assisted by a qualified advocate of his own choice and, if necessary, to have recourse to the offices of a competent interpreter. He shall be informed of his right by the detaining Power in good time before the hearing.

Failing a choice on the part of the prisoner, the protecting Power may procure an advocate for him. The detaining Power shall, on the request of the protecting Power, furnish to the latter a list of persons qualified to conduct the defence.

The representatives of the protecting Power shall have the right to attend the hearing of the case.

The only exception to this rule is where the hearing has to be kept secret in the interests of the safety of the State. The detaining Power would then notify the protecting Power accordingly.

Art. 63. A sentence shall only be pronounced on a prisoner of war by the same tribunals and in accordance with the same procedure as in the case of persons belonging to the armed forces of the detaining Power.

Art. 64. Every prisoner of war shall have the right of appeal against any sentence against him in the same manner as persons belonging to the armed forces of the detaining Power.

Art. 65. Sentences pronounced against prisoners of war shall be communicated immediately to the protecting Power.

Art. 66. If sentence of death is passed on a prisoner of war, a communication setting forth in detail the nature and the circumstances of the offence shall be addressed as soon as possible to the representative of the protecting Power for transmission to the Power in whose armed forces the prisoner served.

The sentence shall not be carried out before the expiration of a period of at least three months from the date of the receipt of this communication by the protecting Power.
https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf ... enDocument

michael mills
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Re: Le Paradis

#79

Post by michael mills » 08 Jun 2015, 01:44

There is no question that the summary execution of 97 British soldiers at Paradis on 27 May 1940 was illegal.

What I am trying to find out is whether the killings were part of a pattern of atrocities committed by the Totenkopf Division, arising from the ideological indoctrination of its members as concentration guards, or whether it was an aberration decided on by Knoechlein, and if the latter, what was the cause of that aberration.

I have read that some 16,000 prisoners were taken by the Totenkopf Division during the 1940 campaign in France, and that there were only two proved cases of summary executions of prisoners by the division, one the killing of the 97 British soldiers at Paradis and the other killing of some 200 French African colonial troops (I do not know the place or time). That suggests that the illegal executions of captured Allied soldiers was an aberration, but I am seeking further information.

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Re: Le Paradis

#80

Post by michael mills » 08 Jun 2015, 02:19

This is what ZB937)t wrote in his message of 20 May on page 4 of this thread:
Regarding the question of Dum-Dum ammunition being used by the British. An armourer sergeant attached to No.3 Kompanie stated that nearly all the 12 German dead had head shots and the wounds were large. In his opinion they were caused by normal bullets slightly flattening themselves before penetrating the steel helmets and not by Dum-Dum ammunition. I hope this helps to clear up some of the myths surrounding the Paradis Massacre. ZB37(t)
That strikes me as an adequate explanation of the issue of whether British troops were using illegal ammunition, ie they were not, but wounds observed on the bodies of fallen Totenkopf men could be mistaken for wounds caused by such illegal ammunition.

That in turn allows for the possibility that Knoechlein genuinely believed that men under his command had been killed by illegal ammunition used by the British troops against whom his unit had been fighting and who had been taken prisoner. If that was the case, then it provides a rational explanation for Knoechlein's action in ordering the summary execution of the surrendered British personnel, even though it does not diminish his legal culpability.

The alternative explanation, offered by a number of contributors to this thread when it was first discussed 10 years ago, is that Knoechlein and the men under his command were simply killers by nature or training, and therefore were predisposed to kill their prisoners. To my mind, that is an explanation based on prejudice, and is less rational than the explanation that Knoechlein genuinely thought that the captured British personnel had acted illegally. The latter explanation is also consistent with the fact that the Totenkopf Division did not make a general practice of killing prisoners during the 1940 campaign in France.

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Re: Le Paradis

#81

Post by David Thompson » 09 Jun 2015, 01:44

An off-topic post from Oushiney was moved to the "Comments & Announcements section of the forum at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=216100.

TH Albright
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Re: Le Paradis

#82

Post by TH Albright » 17 Jun 2015, 16:40

I must say that the history of the SS-Totenkopfdivision in France 1940 does indicate a distinctive trail of blood left by elements of the division somewhat unique even to the Waffen SS in that campaign, Wormhoudt aside, since that atrocity is generally attributed to one man, Wilhelm Mohnke.

From our own forum...Soldiers from SS-Totenkopf-Infanterie-Regiment 1 killed 92 civilians in Aubigny-en-Artois in France 22 May 1940. (4)

45 civilians in Vandelicourt / Berles-Montchel were killed by soldiers from SS-Totenkopf-Infanterie-Regiment 2 22 May 1940. (4)

Soldiers from SS-Totenkopf-Infanterie-Regiment 1 and SS-Pionier-Bataillon Totenkopf killed 48 civilians in Beuvry 24 May 1940. (4)
The background of the SS-Totenkopfstandarten in Poland maybe more relevant than their well known KL origins..thousands of Polish civilians were murdered as part of "security measures" by Thüringen, Oberbayern and Brandenberg, the three core regiments of the new SS-TK division..these were not combat-related atrocities or even reprisal killings; they were cold blooded operations of ethnic cleansing directed to terrorize the populace and liquidate designated members of Polish society. The atmosphere of National Socialist fanaticism and hardness fostered within the division by Theodor Eicke and three of his chief proteges from the pre-war SS-TV, Max Simon ,Hellmut Becker, and Eduard Deisenhofer, was harsh even by SS standards. So I must say that the division certainly did take many POWs without incident, and Knoechlein probably fit the Mohnke mold also, but the above atrocities, while committed early in the campaign, reveal a more wide spread poison within the division as a whole. There is no documented evidence of similar massive atrocities against civilians attributed to the LSSAH or SS-VT Division during the campaign.

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Re: Le Paradis

#83

Post by michael mills » 18 Jun 2015, 03:59

That is very interesting information. Such arbitrary killings of civilians must have created a sharp conflict between Eicke and the Wehrmacht leadership, since the latter was following a strict policy of avoiding atrocities against civilians, being mindful of the enormous propaganda advantage handed to Germany's enemies in August 1914 by the killings of civilians committed in Belgium.

It appears that summary executions of civilians by both sides during the 1940 campaign on the grounds that they were assisting the enemy in some way were not uncommon. My attention was recently drawn to this book by James Hayward, "Myths and Legends of the Second World War", containing a chapter "The Miracle of Dunkirk", in which a number of examples are given of British troops summarily executing persons believed to be spies or Fifth Columnists. It says this:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jbg ... 22&f=false

"There is anecdotal evidence that some BEF units were given orders to take no prisoners save for interrogation. Indeed at Arras orders were even issued to shoot stray dogs, following reports that they were being used to convey messages. Several books about the campaign published later in 1940, such as those by James Hodson, Douglas Williams and Bernard Gray, make a virtue of what amount to war crimes, with frequent references to supposed spies 'shot there and then', 'shot right away' and 'summarily dealt with'. The unpalatable conclusion is that British units were uniformly trigger-happy around alleged spies, and that the number of innocent people executed in France, Belgium and elsewhere probably ran into the low thousands. There is a sad irony in this grim statistic, given that the death of 5,000 civilians as the Kaiser's army marched through Belgium in 1914 led to the demonisation of the Hun as a barbaric, baby-spitting horde for the better part of half a century. "

There was also a large-scale execution of civilians by a French unit, described here:

http://historum.com/european-history/90 ... ost2201568

"In a bad fit of spy-itis, the Belgian police arrested around 5000 suspected 5th columnists.

On 15 May the prisons of Bruges in Belgium were overflowing with these people and with the approach of the German Army the 79 suspects were despatched to Abbeville in France.


The convoy included Leon Degrelle - the well known Belgian Fascist. He was lucky; he was recognised and dragged out and beaten-up by French soldiers and handed over to the Sureté.

Also included was Joris Van Severen, head of a party called Verdinaso, very right wing and advocates of Greater Belgium (based upon Charlemagne's "Frankish -Flemish" Empire of 800ish). This party, however, was very anti-German.

The remainder were a very mixed bunch:

14 Germans, 6 Dutch, 3 Luxembourg, 9 Italians, 2 Swiss, 1 French man (from Alsace - with a German accent), 1 Austrian, 1 Czech and 1 Canadian - Robert Bell, the trainer of the German icehockey team,and had left Germany,to return to Canada

The remainder were of mixed nationality - in most cases lack of "papers" had been sufficient to get them incarcerated.

This motley group arrived in Abbeville on night of 19th may 1940 and for want of anything appropriate were locked in the cellar of a large shop. An unfortunate Belgian who had refused to join the French Army was added to the group.

On the very next day, 20 May Guderian's Panzers arrived.

Capitan Marcel Digeon (Major rank in the US or British Army) and his 5th Company, 28th Regional Regiment was in charge. He orders Sgt Mollet to dispose of the prisoners.

Mollet was uncomfortable and returns to Dingeon who this time is more explicit "shoot the lot" is the answer.

To get it over with a French soldier throws a grenade into the Cellar but it does not explode. Then Lieutenant Rene Caron, whose Platoon is involved and who is believed to be drunk, joins the group.

The prisoners are taken out and shot in groups of two and four.

A total of 21 are summarily murdered without even an attempt at a Courts Martial.

The slaughter is only stopped when another French Officer, Lieutenant Leclabart also of 28th RR comes by - "are you mad" he exclaims and stops the massacre.

Too late to save the 20 men and one old lady who have already been executed. Those executed included, a Benedictine Brother (but German), four Anti-fascist Italian Refugees, the driver of the transport (shot by mistake) and the Canadian Ice Hockey Team Coach.

The Germans set up Trial in 1941 but Capitan Dingeon committed suicide immediately prior to its sitting.

(Source is a Flemish site: Het bloedbad van Abbeville, by Gaby Warris)

Gaby Warris was the last living survivor of the massacre,and wrote a book about the events in 1994.

Her father was a Dutch protestant living in Bruges and had influential enemies in Bruges, which was dominated by a francophone catholic establishment .On 10 may 1940,the police arrived at his house, but he was absent, in Holland with his sick mother. However, his wife ,his daughter (18) and his mother-in-law; all were arrested and deported . "

I wonder the killings of French civilians perpetrated by Totenkopf units were of a similar nature to those apparently committed by French and British units, ie the persons killed were believed to have been assisting the enemy in some way.

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Re: Le Paradis

#84

Post by David Thompson » 18 Jun 2015, 04:20

The subject matter here is the killing of prisoners at Le Paradis. Please stay on it. Feel free to start a new topic on other reports of summary killings by soldiers elsewhere, but this thread deals with a specific unit and a specific incident.

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Re: Le Paradis

#85

Post by David Thompson » 18 Jun 2015, 15:20

An off-topic post from Michael Mills on killings of civilians by Waffen SS troops in occupied Poland was removed, along with a response by TH Albright.

michael mills
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Re: Le Paradis

#86

Post by michael mills » 19 Jun 2015, 04:00

I would think that the question of whether the previous involvement of the men of the Totenkopf Division in a pogram of targeted killing of perceived enemies of Germany during the campaign in Poland in September-October 1939 predisposed them to kill enemy civilians and captured soldiers during the 1940 campaign in France, as suggested by TH Albright, is relevant to a discussion of the reasons why a Totenkopf unit committed the specific illegal killing that is the subject of this thread.

The essential issue is that there was no program of targeted killings being carried out by German forces in France in May 1940, and the Wehrmacht leadership was anxious to avoid counter-productive atrocities, so the killing of surrendered British soldiers by Knoechlein's unit stands out as an egregious act of violence that requires explanation.

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Re: Le Paradis

#87

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jun 2015, 07:45

Michael -- You wrote:
I would think that the question of whether the previous involvement of the men of the Totenkopf Division in a pogram of targeted killing of perceived enemies of Germany during the campaign in Poland in September-October 1939 predisposed them to kill enemy civilians and captured soldiers during the 1940 campaign in France, as suggested by TH Albright, is relevant to a discussion of the reasons why a Totenkopf unit committed the specific illegal killing that is the subject of this thread.
Again the war crime here is the extrajudicial killings of disarmed POWs at Le Paradis. It isn't extrajudicial killings of civilians in occupied Poland. Whether other killings by this command were the result of poor troop discipline, psychopathic officers or ideological indoctrination is a different topic, which might be properly discussed in a thread on all of the crimes of the SS-Totenkopf division, with an emphasis on pattern evidence. You will need to establish the definition of "targeted killings," and show how the actions of the SS-Totenkopf division in Poland correspond to that definition, and are not simply lawless death squad operations directed against noncombatant groups of civilians. The title of this thread invites readers come here to find verifiable information about the Le Paradis murders, not the psychology of military atrocities generally or of this unit in particular.

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Re: Le Paradis

#88

Post by phillip burke » 21 Jun 2015, 21:03

Hello all, hello David, usually agree with your managing of this forum, but on this one i dont agree, i think the actions of Totenkopf units in Poland is especially pertinent as a number of uniTs of these early formations went on to commit numerous crimes against civillians. Even Peipers SPW unit evolved from one of these units and lok at their record, prob deserves seperate thread but i for one would like to know more.

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Re: Le Paradis

#89

Post by ZB37(t) » 30 Jul 2015, 18:09

For the benefit of Michael Mills:

"War diaries, witness statements and documents have revealed that 21 soldiers from the Royal Scots were massacred after surrendering to German SS troops in May 1940.

The men were part of a desperate rearguard trying to hold back the advancing Germans to buy time for the evacuation of the main British army from the beaches in and around Dunkirk.

It had previously been believed that 97 members of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were the only victims of the SS Totenkopf Division in a known atrocity near the village of Le Paradis in northern France.

Now Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, the author of Dunkirk - Fight to the Last Man, has uncovered evidence that local French civilians later dug up a mass grave containing the bodies of Scottish troops.

All showed signs of having been shot, execution style, through the back of the head or neck.

The information was contained in a Norfolks' officer's war diary that had lain unread for more than 60 years.

It also corroborated a statement taken from a German dispatch rider after the war that he had been told by a comrade that 17 British soldiers were captured hiding in a hay loft in the area occupied by the Royal Scots.

The prisoners had been taken to the SS battle headquarters, where the witness stated that "they all had to bite the dust".

A report by another German soldier, found in archives after the war, reported the summary execution of a lone British soldier near Le Cornet Malo, a village in the Royal Scots' sector close to Le Paradis.

This man's only crime was that he had sniped at SS soldiers from a house and had then been shot in revenge for his lethal marksmanship.

The contents of the new documents are given further credibility by the account of Sergeant-Major Johnstone, a Royal Scots NCO interviewed by war crimes investigators seeking evidence on the Le Paradis massacre.

Johnstone testified that he and a group of his soldiers had been lined up by a roadside ditch after they surrendered and were disarmed and that SS troopers were preparing to machine-gun them.

The party was reprieved at the last minute when a passing German staff officer intervened and ordered the men be treated as prisoners-of-war.

The officer then congratulated the Scots on staging such a courageous last stand. "You fought like tigers," they were told before being marched off to captivity.

The Royal Scots were part of 4 Brigade, one of the rearguard units that fought the Germans to a standstill on the Dunkirk perimeter.

Unknown at the time to the soldiers battling German tanks with little more than rifles and machine-guns, their sacrifice allowed more than 300,000 men to be taken off the beaches behind them by an armada of warships and small boats.

The slaughter of the Norfolks was thoroughly investigated not only by allied authorities but also by the regular German army.

A German major assigned by the Wehrmacht's 16th Corps to look into allegations of an atrocity reported that he had seen the bodies of 89 British soldiers who had been shot in the head at close range or bludgeoned to death by rifle butts.

Despite probing questions on the conduct of the SS, his report was shelved when the Totenkopf Division was transferred from army control.

Documents from the Totenkopf (Death's Head) Division headquarters reveal that senior officers were aware of what had taken place, but dismissed the killings as a response to British troops using outlawed dum-dum bullets doctored to inflict horrendous wounds. No evidence was presented to support this claim.

General Theodor Eicke, the divisional commander, also claimed that some of his own men had been shot in the back and insisted that the British soldiers had been executed after a field court-martial proved their "villainous tactics".

Mr Sebag-Montefiore said yesterday: "I would very much like to hear from former Royal Scots or their descendants who have any information on the incidents near Le Paradis.

"This was a terrible atrocity carried out in cold blood and should be documented accurately for posterity."

Knoechlein was tried on the basis of his actions and not on the basis of his thought processes. He was a professional soldier and could not claim ignorance as an excuse for a War Crime. To return to the question as to whether the British were using Dum-Dum:

If the Brits had been using Dum-Dum, Goebbels' propaganda machine would have had a field day. Imagine the headlines in the German Press! Instead, Himmler visited the Totenkopf Division at Bailleul on 30 May, 1940, and ordered that the massacre at Paradis be kept a state secret. With immediate effect, the Division was transferred to a different Army Corps, thereby sidestepping the investigation of Hoeppner, XVI Corps Commander.Himmler did those things because he knew full well that Dum-Dum had not been used. There is no doubt that he was hugely embarrassed by the massacre. Additionally, if the Royal Scots at Le Cornet Malo were using Dum-Dum, why didn't 1st Battalion, 3rd TIR shoot a number of Royal Scots prisoners from the same British Battalion who were positioned in Paradis itself, especially as 3 TIR had just lost their popular C.O. Col. Hans Friedemann Goetze?

The 21 Royal Scots at Le Cornet Malo were captured by 2nd Battalion, 2 TIR and were taken to that Battalion's Battle HQ. So more than one Battalion was in the habit of shooting prisoners.

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Re: Le Paradis

#90

Post by ZB37(t) » 30 Jul 2015, 18:28

P.S. I have found out from a friend who has lived in Paradis all her life that before or during Knoechlein's trial, the Creton family was visited by a German lady, who offered them money if they would say at the trial that the British had used Dum-Dum ammunition. Perhaps the lady was Frau Knoechlein. She was told, In the immortal two words which the British Army always uses to tell a person their presence is not required, to get lost and fast!

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