British Army execution of fifth columnists in 1940

[keith A]

Years ago I read a thread on this or another forum which documented a number of summary executions of French or Belgian civilians by British Army soldiers in 1940.

Can anyone identify the thread? Or otherwise contribute to this topic? I do not believe these incidents were widespread but I seem to remember there were several.

regards

Keith

[Knouterer]

There were indeed numerous such incidents, as related in various accounts of the campaign, such as The British Expeditionary Force 1939-40 by Edward Smalley.
Tired, hungry and frustrated soldiers were increasingly prone to believe all sorts of wild rumours as the retreat went on. Many believed stories that Belgian civilians were cutting arrows in grass or grain pointing the Luftwaffe to British positions. From then on any Belgian who went out to cut some grass to feed his rabbits was taking his life in his hands.
Corporal Edgar Rabbets of the 5th Northamptonshire Regiment summarily shot two farmers ploughing their fields, without reference to higher authority, because he detected a suspicious pattern in their furrows, or thought he did.
There were also numerous reports of civilian snipers, who however never seemed to hit anybody. That did not stop some British troops from shooting people if a .22 rifle was found in their house (very common in Belgian households, then and now), even without any evidence that it had been fired.

With hindsight, it is clear that at least 95% of the victims, and quite possibly all of them, were innocent. Apparently, the soldiers of the BEF never stopped to ask themselves whether the German occupation of Belgium in WWI had really been such a pleasant experience that the Belgians couldn't wait to repeat it.

It's interesting that in such circumstances old previously debunked rumours often resurface in slightly different form. British soldiers were told that metal signs on the sides of buildings advertising Pernod carried directions for the advancing enemy. Sure enough, when some were taken down there were mysterious signs, letters and numbers on the back. Obviously a code of some sort.
In 1914, French soldiers had been told the same thing about ads for Bouillons Kub, a Swiss brand of beef stock cubes. Foreign, therefore suspect. Then too mysterious inscriptions were found on the back. But it was soon realized that these were nothing more than directions for the workmen who had put up the signs, indicating where precisely on a building they should be affixed.

[Sheldrake]

It may have been me. I have posted details on several forums about incidents I found.

1. I posted the details of Corporal Rabbetts A soldier in the Northamptonshire Regiment admitted shooting a Belgian or French tractor driver after becoming convinced that he was ploughingin such a way to point out the direction to battalion HQ. It is in this the recordings in the Imperial War Museum sound archives.https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80030272 You cannot download it, probably because of this this admission

2. The War Diary of the Welsh Guards has an account of the murder of a priest, drowning him in in Boulogne harbour after becoming suspicious of the names in his bible.

[Knouterer]

Other examples are mentioned in Dunkirk 1940 by Tim Lynch (p. 134-135). A divisional provost officer played judge, jury and executioner all by himself and shot several suspects. A battalion of the Grenadier Guards allegedly executed as many as seventeen people in a single day.
The French were not behindhand. In a couple of cases groups of "enemy aliens" held in prisons were massacred. Tragically, the victims were mostly German Jews and political refugees.

If there really had been widespread 5C activity, organized by or coordinated with the Germans, there should be traces of it in German literature about the war, for example in the memoirs of former Abwehr officers, but personally I have never read anything like that. The only thing that comes to mind is that some members of the Dutch national socialist movement (NSB) supplied bits of Dutch uniform clothing and equipment to be used by the Brandenburgers in their coups de main against various bridges in the early morning of 10 May.

[Pips]

Curious to know if Rabbets, or anyone else for that matter, was held responsible for such atrocities. I would be surprised if they had.

The British are really quite ruthless in war, it's just that they are for more adept at portraying themselves in a saintly light than other belligerents eg the Germans.

[yantaylor]

The British are really quite ruthless in war, it's just that they are for more adept at portraying themselves in a saintly light than other belligerents eg the Germans.

Wow, you really don't like the British do you, ruthless in war? did you know what other nations did in WW2?
I suppose that acting all "saintly" after losing a generation of young men on the battlefields of Europe is too much for you.
We would have been better not getting involved in the last two world wars and watch the Europeans fight it out for themselves, because if that what people from the otherside of the world say about the Brits, then the Europeans must be out of their minds to need our ruthless help, especially when their country is being took over by an even more ruthless force.

Ian

[Linkagain]

Darncy France was a de facto concentration camp set up by the French even before the Germans invaded in 1940...filled up of course by those most under suspision...Spanish republican refugees...or German Jewish refugees....for example Leon ASkin aka General Burkholder of Hogan Heros or Maurice Meier author of Refugee,,,{WHo was a German Jew who resided in France after World War I but was forced to flee} In regard about the report of Enemies....invading a country because of Cut Grass...{30 years after Peal Harbor for example one surviovr mentioned a rumor of the local Japanese cutting grass to guide the planes...{!} In Walter Lord History of Pearl Harbor he mentioned a group of soldiers the night after the attack investigating a Blue light signal to the japanese...in fact the blue light was in accordene with agricaultural regulations that Farmers use this type of light do their cows can give birth to caves...the signal was in fact a plam tree branch moving by itself,,,,,Id also heard vague reoports that the in WWI French would arrest and shoot anyone who was even suspected of aiding the Germans even it was a case of laudnry blowing in the wind {rumor or actual fact?] Iroinic about how some publications of WW I still continuely write of the Belgiums shot by the Germans in 1914 [either as hostages or beccause the Germans though they were guerrilias or both],,,,yet this is the first time the BEF and French also had their share of "killings" of 'suspected Spies" a full generation later...Commet about Message # 5 is quite true...the story of Ediths Clavell a civilian who helped British POWS escape and was exectuted by the germans...yet at the same time I remember a short sentence in a WW I history after the Clavell story that the British did the same thing to two german Female nurses who helped German POWS escape...yet the sasenech have not been continuely reminded and hounded for what their ancestors did a 100 years ago...

[wm]

Arrests or executions (resulting from the massive spy scare among the common people and soldiers) happened frequently in Eastern Europe too, especially during the invasion of Poland and later the invasion of Russia. There are literally Polish books and movies based on it. It wasn't just the "bad" British.
Such events were frequent during the Great War too.

[gebhk]

Sadly all of this falls psychologically into the same bracket with those sad sacks who attacked daschunds during WW1 (though oddly not German shepherds - perhaps because the latter could bite back?). It is perhaps most beautifully satirised in a Polish children's book by Janusz Korczak: Krol Macius 1 (called King Matt the First in English translation). War is declared on Blablacja (Blablatia). A tismith (blacharz) is beaten up by a 'patriotic' mob because his trade, suspiciously, begins with 'bla'.

[yantaylor]

Three very sensible, unbiased and adult answers from three grown up members.
I thank you.
Ian

[LineDoggie]

Curious to know if Rabbets, or anyone else for that matter, was held responsible for such atrocities. I would be surprised if they had.

The British are really quite ruthless in war, it's just that they are for more adept at portraying themselves in a saintly light than other belligerents eg the Germans.

WAR itself is ruthless

However I dont recall the British murdering 6 million+ civilian people in concentration camps because of their religion or society. Nor apparently did they have Einsatzgruppen wandering liberated areas and performing mass executions of civilians

[Sheldrake]

Curious to know if Rabbets, or anyone else for that matter, was held responsible for such atrocities. I would be surprised if they had.

The British are really quite ruthless in war, it's just that they are for more adept at portraying themselves in a saintly light than other belligerents eg the Germans.

WAR itself is ruthless

However I dont recall the British murdering 6 million+ civilian people in concentration camps because of their religion or society. Nor apparently did they have Einsatzgruppen wandering liberated areas and performing mass executions of civilians

I do not defend the war aims and policies of Nazi Germany, Facist Italy or Imperial Japan in the conext of twentieth century moraility. However, oin their own eyes they were doing little different tp the British, French Spanish and Americans in the creation of their Empires. Areguably there was little to distinguish German policy in Eastern Europe from , say the exansion of the US across North America, the British in Australia and various other quarters of the globe or the Belgians in the Congo. But,by the time the opportunity arose for the Axis powers to attempt to copy them the world had moved on.

The Zulu war led to the deaths of some hunderd thousands. British counter insurgency in Ireland, South Africa and Palestine could be brutal. Some would argue that the British allowed several millions of Bengalis to die of starvation in 1942-43 through neglect. Errors of omission rather than commission. This was nothing like the callousness of the German food plan for the east or of course the holocaust.

The key point I take from this thread is that the Germans weren't unique in perpetrating military crimes.

[wm]

The difference is the British actions were mostly legal, the Nazi ones illegal from the point of view of international law.
At the beginning of the 20th-century international law changed a lot - basically overnight.

[Knouterer]

The belief in fifth columnists persisted after the British had withdrawn from the continent. As the country prepared to resist invasion, many people were arbitrarily arrested and held by the military, often for no better reason than that they had German-sounding names.
MI5 (responsible for counterintelligence) was worried by reports that military units were drawing up lists of "suspects" in their area whom they intended to round up and shoot in case of invasion.

[wm]

See the movie at 3:00