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)
The evidence by the armourer sergeant suggests that the claim that British troops had been using illegal ammunition was not a falsehood concocted by Eicke to excuse the summary execution of surrendered British personnel carried out by men under his command, but a genuine misunderstanding of the cause of the large wounds observed on the 12 German dead.
So far as I know, there is no evidence that Knöchlein committed further killings of captured enemy personnel, which suggests that in the case of this one illegal execution he is known with certainty to have committed, he was in an unusual emotional situation. It is possible that he genuinely thought that the British troops against whom his unit or other Totenkopf units had been engaged had indeed been using illegal ammunition.
It is noteworthy that although the Division Totenkopf took some 16,000 prisoners during the campaign in France, so far as is known its members committed only two illegal executions of surrendered enemy personnel, the 97 British soldiers summarily executed at Paradis, and some 200 French colonial troops executed on a different occasion.
The two illegal executions therefore stand out as exceptions to the normal practice of the Division Totenkopf during the campaign in France, and as such were likely to have been reactions to some sort of unusual provocation. It is known that the summary executions of French African colonial troops was provoked by the practice by those troops of mutilating their enemies, a custom brought by them from their African homelands (the reality of that practice is shown by the records of instructions from the French high command to the French officers in command of African colonial troops, warning them that acts of mutilation were being committing, and ordering them to suppress such actions and educate the men under their command in the rules of war in the European context).
So it is likely that Knöchlein had been provoked in a way that he believed was real, even if it was a mistake on his part.
It is crucial to know to when the above statement by the German armourer sergeant was made. Was it made during a German investigation of the incident? Did he claim that he had told Knoechlein before the summary execution of the captured British personnel that the large wounds observed on the German dead had not been made by illegal ammunition? Or was his statement made while in post-war captivity, under hostile interrogation by British investigators?
The value of the armourer sergeant's statement depends on the circumstances under which it was made.
