Perhaps the number 400 is based on an actual incident, but the number is highly exagerrated.
This is entirely possible. US memoirs record sporadic accounts of "No SS prisoner policies" being enforced after Battle of the Bulge Massacares. US Airborne forces were rumored on occasions to have stripped US paratrooper boots off German SS captives thus leading to frostbite amputations. Airborne and other units shot individual SS prisoners.
Thus the execution of say squads of SS prisoners probably occured on some occasions. The key difference between SS and allies is the scale of the events and whether it was offical unit policy. Allied actions were far fewer in number and far smaller in scale and the results of say platoon feelings.
SS murdered by the British in 1940
On the western front, that is debatable.Thus the execution of say squads of SS prisoners probably occured on some occasions. The key difference between SS and allies is the scale of the events and whether it was offical unit policy. Allied actions were far fewer in number and far smaller in scale and the results of say platoon feelings.
David,David Thompson wrote:Michael -- Moulded was no doubt referring to the quote he reproduced from Lutton's IHR book review ("courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review"), and not to Mr. Harman's work.
Spot on.Any review that gets the name of the author wrong is shoddy par excellence.
Now we have established it is Harman,not Harmon,perhaps a direct check of the book by those that have it available would clarify the 400 SS prisoner figure,their fate,plus other sensations like the use of Dum-Dum bullets being infered as BEF official policy.
Further to the 400 German POW figure at Arras,some also in French hands,Rommel's own narrative of the battle gives a figure of 172 'missing' for the 7th Panzer Division.Thus nearly half the POW total,if believed, would be Heer troops anyway.
-
Scott Smith
- Member
- Posts: 5602
- Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 22:17
- Location: Arizona
- Contact:
Maybe, but the campaign was over with soon and Hitler wanted a peace agreement with the British, so the Germans would not have wanted any incidents and might just as easily have swept it underneath the rug. Later it would have been small potatoes.Moulded wrote:Wouldn't Goebbels have a field day if such a massacre occurred?
For what its worth,here's a 6th DLI account of the prisoners being taken back to Brigade HQ:
http://www.pegasus-one.org/pow/david_parker.htm
http://www.pegasus-one.org/pow/david_parker.htm
Totenkopf tradition in France
I have no elements on the killing of Totenkopf SS by british troops.
But the killings of british POW by Totenkopf people is established in La Bassee and Templeuve, with graves existing. Totenkopf were also in Carvin, where part of town was put to fire, and civilians and british soldiers were killed, with no military action to explain it.
I can accept these events can be linked with adrenaline and post-battle reactions.
But Totenkopf is again cited as actor in the killing of french POW south of the Somme river, when one gabonese officer and his men, black in color but french in uniform, having fought two days in a strong point to stop the german june offensive, were all machine-gunned instead of sent to cages.
And this happened again with the same men, around Lyon, on the right side of the Saône and South toward Annonay, where Tirailleurs Sénégalais having resisted to the vanguard of the panzer column were hunted through the country, and killed immediately as niggers, around june 20, 1940. The abandoned corpses were collected by local autorithies along the roads and in the fields, and are buried in a specific military cemetery called the "Tata des sénégalais" by Limonest, near Lyon.
This monument is specific, and worth visiting, being a reproduction of a west african burying ground, with walls and mosk towers.
But the killings of british POW by Totenkopf people is established in La Bassee and Templeuve, with graves existing. Totenkopf were also in Carvin, where part of town was put to fire, and civilians and british soldiers were killed, with no military action to explain it.
I can accept these events can be linked with adrenaline and post-battle reactions.
But Totenkopf is again cited as actor in the killing of french POW south of the Somme river, when one gabonese officer and his men, black in color but french in uniform, having fought two days in a strong point to stop the german june offensive, were all machine-gunned instead of sent to cages.
And this happened again with the same men, around Lyon, on the right side of the Saône and South toward Annonay, where Tirailleurs Sénégalais having resisted to the vanguard of the panzer column were hunted through the country, and killed immediately as niggers, around june 20, 1940. The abandoned corpses were collected by local autorithies along the roads and in the fields, and are buried in a specific military cemetery called the "Tata des sénégalais" by Limonest, near Lyon.
This monument is specific, and worth visiting, being a reproduction of a west african burying ground, with walls and mosk towers.
-
michael mills
- Member
- Posts: 9000
- Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
- Location: Sydney, Australia
I now have the relevant sections from the book "Dunkirk: The Necessary Myth", by Nicholas Harman, which may provide an answer to the question by Andy H which started this thread.
Pages 88-90:
Harman also implies that, if the putative massacre did occur, it was a result of the poor quality of the DLI men, which he describes on page 94. He says that 6 and 8 DLI were Territorial Army battalions and below standard, being recruited from depressed mining and shipbuidling communities that had suffered ten years of unemployment and deprivation. The maximum height of the men was 5'2" (1.57 metres). They wre not expected to fight, and had spent the war up until the battle of Arras employed as labourers. The platoons were commanded by scond lieutenants, lads fresh from grammar school or clerks in their 40s who had served in the previous war. Most NCOs were World War I veterans in their 40s, or else new recruits. Most platoons had no sergeants, and the battalions had no radios or supporting artillery.
The overall impression is of a group of largely untrained, inexperienced men, lacking proper guidance and control, who, under the stress of their first experience of combat, for which they were ill-prepared, may well have cracked and massacred a large number of German prisoners who had been dumped on them. The record, as quoted by Harman, shows that were hostile to German prisoners, and obviously threatened violence toward at least one, having to be held at bay by force of arms. Their hostility may have been especially great toward SS men, given the general enmity toward Nazism that had been propagated in Britain since 1938, although Harman does not bring up that point explicitly.
The evidence pointing toward a massacre of German Totenkopf prisoners by men of the DLI is circumstantial, unlike the subsequent massacres of British prisoners by SS men, which as Harman points out are "well-authenticated". However, that difference might well be a result only of the fact that the latter incidents were fully investigated, first by the German Army at the time and later, after the war, by the Allies on the basis of testimony by the two British prisoners who survived, leading to trial and convictions of the perpetrators, whereas the putative massacre of German prisoners on 21 May does not seem to have been investigated at all.
It may well be that the German Army only became aware of a massacre of Totenkopf men some days after 21 May, as a result of its investigation of the two massacres carried out by the SS on 27 and 28 May. If that was the case, it may have decided not to take the matter any further, since the killing of German prisoners had been balanced by German retaliatory massacres, and it was therefore better to hush the whole thing up. Furthermore, the German Army's rivalry with the Waffen-SS may have prompted it not to do anything to help it.
Of course, at the end of the war, there would have ben no motive for the victorious Allies to investigate claims of a massacre of SS men by British troops in May 1940. The accounts in the war diaries of the British units concerned suggests that they may have known at the time what had happened, and covered it up by simply omitting any reference to what became of the at least 100 prisoners handed over to DLI by 7 RTR.
It is possible that investigations since the appearance of Harman's book have revealed what happened to the German prisoners after thay were handed over to the DLI, and have disproved allegations a massacre. If other members of the Forum have such information, perhaps they could post it.
It should be noted that although Harman mentions an upper limit of 400 men for the number of those allegedly massacred, he does not specifically endorse it. It would be better to speak in terms of at least 100.
Pages 88-90:
From pages 97-99, dealing with the fight at Arras on 21 May, involving an attack by 7 Royal Tank Regiment on German infantry in unarmoured trucks that were following the German tank spearhead:In the back of men's minds was the fear of being captured. They supposed that the enemy's orders would be the same as their own. Unarmed captives are a drag on a retreating army, especially when food is short. British fighting units had orders to take no prisoners except when specifically ordered to take in captive Germans for interrogation. Patrick Turnbull had better grounds for worry. "With my revolver I had eight rounds, two of them soft-nosed. justification I was told with relish for my instant execution were I captured with them in my possession". Soft-nosed dumdum bullets were banned by the Geneva Convention on the rules of war.
There are, moreover, two well-authenticated cases of mass murder by German soldirs of British prisoners of war. At Wormhoudt, on 28 May, over eighty men, mostly of the Warwickshire Regiment, wre slaightered after surrendering to troops of the SS Adolf Hitler Regiment. Ninety prisoners of war of the Norfolf Regiment were similarly slaughtered at the little village of Le Cornet Malo on 27 May. Their murderers were als SS men, this time of the Totenkopf, or Death's Head Division, which the German Army much disliked.
The massacre of 27 May was discovered on the following day by an elderly and well-born German officer from Sixth Army headquarters. Major Freiherr von Riederer's job was to act as gas security officer. As such he had not much to do other than to wander around amd see how things were going. He was horrified by what he found behind a farmstead wall at Le Cornet Malo. He counted the bodies of eighty-nine men in British uniform. "These people had almost all suffered head wounds from shots that must have been fired at close range. Some had their whole skull smashed in, an injury that can almost only be caused by a blow from a gun butt or similar means". Promptly he put in a report to army headquarters, having taken the precaution of identifying as an additional witness Signalman Tenius, a radio operator on press and propaganda duties.
At army headquarters the regular officers pursued their inquiries with speed and energy; on 29 May a medical officer, Staff Doctor Wihelm Haddenhorst from Army Corps Headquarters, was also sent to the scene, where he counted about ninety corpses in British uniforms and found five more in a pond and four in a nearby field. As usual the regulars were kn to bring the dspised SS troops under closer control. A stern message was sent to the SS division commander asking for an explanation.
The reply, signed by SS Gruppenfuehrer und Generalleutnant Eicke, is a curious and almost hysterical document. It does not deny that the British prisoners were killed. Indeed, it seeks deviously to justify the action. The British, said Eicke's letter, had been using soft-nosed dumdum bullets, contrary to the Geneva Convention. Moreover, they had hung out a swastika flag to draw the SS troops into a position, and had then fired upon them from the rear. Four German officers and 153 other ranks had been killed, 18 officers and 483 other ranks wounded, 53 Germans were missing, unaccounted for. It is clear that he was not referring to the engagement at Le Cornet, after which the British prisoners were killed, but to an event a few days previously. The SS commander's explanation ends with this peculiar passage whose grammar is a problem for translators: "The sneaking, rascally methods of combat of the English had to be expunged by the shooting, undr military law, of the rest of those concerned in this cowardly ambush, in the interest of our own troops".
The German Army's investigations, of course, led nowhere. The SS troops were soon moved to another command for the assault on Paris, and the matter was conveniently forgotten in the military bureaucracy. After the war two British privates, Messrs. Pooley and O'Callaghan, who had providentially escaped murdr and been tended by other German soldiers, were able to prove that the event had really happened. A former SS company commander was hanged.
Since this is a work of popular history rather than an academic work, Harman does not provide detailed sources. With regard to the two chapters from which the above extracts were taken, he gives the following:The Germans were doing even worse. Their soft-skinned vehicles were set alight, their men shot down as they ran. The unlucky German unit belonged not to the Army but to the Totenkopf Division of the SS. Despite their fierce name they were not trained soldiers, but young Nazis without proper officers. The "points of interest" in the British tank men's subsequent report noted as the first item "the poor fighting qualities of the German troops encountered. They were very young and large numbers were observed lying on the ground downwards feigning dead, others ran up to the tanks surrendering".
By four o'clock in the afternoon the exhausted and practically untrained men of the DLI had caught up with the tanks and were at last in action. The anti-tank guns and the support platoon of 8 DLI had a nasty exchange of fire with some French tanks. There were casualties on both sides. There followed some incidents for which there is no satisfactory explanation. The official history of the DLI has this to say, in its account of the advance of the Eighth Battalion:
"C" Company, in company with some French tanks, then attacked a cemetery near Duisans where some hundred Germans had taken refuge from the Royal Tank Regiment. When they occupied it, they found only eighteen alive and the French stripped them to the skin and made them lie face down on the road until it was time to take them away.
This brief account can be interpreted as supporting the German allegation (see page 89) that large numbers of men of the SS Totenkopf Division had been massacred after surrendering to the British.
The war diary of the First Army Tank Brigade (composed of the two RTR battalions) notes more vaguely: "At one time a large number of prisoners were taken - these were handed over to the infantry". The war diary of 6 DLI rcords that "large numbers of prisoners were taken". On the only surviving copy of this document, in the Public Record Office at Kew, the number of prisoners taken was recorded. In the process of clipping it into a file, the digit preceding the two zeros in the total has been cut out of the paper. Other sources, notably the semi-fictional Return Via Dunkirk, by Gun Buster, put the number of prisoners at four hundred. There is no subsequent trace of these prisoners.
An officer of 7 RTR on a scouting mission captured a German non-commissioned officer, and carried him back for interrogation. "I continued into Dainville and handed over the prisoner to a captain of the DLI for conveyance to Provost personnel. The troops displayed great animosity towards the prisoner, and I was compelled to draw my revolver and order them off before I could reach their officer " *. [footnote marked by *: This officer's report is quoted in the official history of the war in France and Flanders; the passage extracted was, understandably, omitted by the official historian]. If the Germans had to rely on the Durhams' officers for their protection they were out of luck. By the evening of 21 May most of the DLI officers were dead, and every single one of the eight companies present was commanded by a second lieutenant.
The victims of this apparent large-scale murder by men of the Durham Light Infantry were Nazis, of the SS. On 27 May at Le Cornet, and on 28 May at Wormhoudt, SS men murdered at least 170 British prisoners (see page 88). They claimed they were acting in retaliation for British war crimes. These murders wore the dath's-head badge of the Totenkopf Division. Back in England in mid-June the surviving other ranks of 8 DLI, in base camp at Rugely, were "ordered to remove all unauthorised badges from clothing and equipment e.g. BEF on coloured shoulder-tabs, skull and crossbones on steel helmets etc. ".
It is apparent that Harman concludes that at least 100 men of the Totenkopf Division were taken prisoner near Arras on 21 May 1940 by the 7th Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment, that they were handed over to men of the 6th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, and that they subsequently disappeared. Harman implies that the vanished prisoners were illegally executed by the men of 6 DLI.Chapter 5
This is where I start to make use of personal reminiscences kindly given to me by veterans of the BEF. I also rely heavily on the war diaries and other papers of the Public Record Office. I have consulted, and sometimes disagreed with, Gregory Blaxland's monumental Destination Dunkirk (1973). The Reverend Leslie Aitken in 1977 published Massacre on the Road to Dunkirk, about the SS murders of British soldiers; he has some valuable original material. The Imperial War Museum has a folder of German papers on the same incidents, classified AL1520, from which I have quoted in translation.
Chapter 6
The Arras adventure has been described often, and many writers have followed Rommel's exciting account of what it was like to be on the receiving end, at which he got the impression that larger British forces were involved than the four battalions actually engaged. I was generously helped at the Durham Light Infantry Museum and the Light Infantry Office in Durham city. The war diaries of the units concerned are fascinating. Those who consult them in the PRO must promise not to reveal information about individuals named. I have treated some personal interviews about the fighting on the same basis.
Harman also implies that, if the putative massacre did occur, it was a result of the poor quality of the DLI men, which he describes on page 94. He says that 6 and 8 DLI were Territorial Army battalions and below standard, being recruited from depressed mining and shipbuidling communities that had suffered ten years of unemployment and deprivation. The maximum height of the men was 5'2" (1.57 metres). They wre not expected to fight, and had spent the war up until the battle of Arras employed as labourers. The platoons were commanded by scond lieutenants, lads fresh from grammar school or clerks in their 40s who had served in the previous war. Most NCOs were World War I veterans in their 40s, or else new recruits. Most platoons had no sergeants, and the battalions had no radios or supporting artillery.
The overall impression is of a group of largely untrained, inexperienced men, lacking proper guidance and control, who, under the stress of their first experience of combat, for which they were ill-prepared, may well have cracked and massacred a large number of German prisoners who had been dumped on them. The record, as quoted by Harman, shows that were hostile to German prisoners, and obviously threatened violence toward at least one, having to be held at bay by force of arms. Their hostility may have been especially great toward SS men, given the general enmity toward Nazism that had been propagated in Britain since 1938, although Harman does not bring up that point explicitly.
The evidence pointing toward a massacre of German Totenkopf prisoners by men of the DLI is circumstantial, unlike the subsequent massacres of British prisoners by SS men, which as Harman points out are "well-authenticated". However, that difference might well be a result only of the fact that the latter incidents were fully investigated, first by the German Army at the time and later, after the war, by the Allies on the basis of testimony by the two British prisoners who survived, leading to trial and convictions of the perpetrators, whereas the putative massacre of German prisoners on 21 May does not seem to have been investigated at all.
It may well be that the German Army only became aware of a massacre of Totenkopf men some days after 21 May, as a result of its investigation of the two massacres carried out by the SS on 27 and 28 May. If that was the case, it may have decided not to take the matter any further, since the killing of German prisoners had been balanced by German retaliatory massacres, and it was therefore better to hush the whole thing up. Furthermore, the German Army's rivalry with the Waffen-SS may have prompted it not to do anything to help it.
Of course, at the end of the war, there would have ben no motive for the victorious Allies to investigate claims of a massacre of SS men by British troops in May 1940. The accounts in the war diaries of the British units concerned suggests that they may have known at the time what had happened, and covered it up by simply omitting any reference to what became of the at least 100 prisoners handed over to DLI by 7 RTR.
It is possible that investigations since the appearance of Harman's book have revealed what happened to the German prisoners after thay were handed over to the DLI, and have disproved allegations a massacre. If other members of the Forum have such information, perhaps they could post it.
It should be noted that although Harman mentions an upper limit of 400 men for the number of those allegedly massacred, he does not specifically endorse it. It would be better to speak in terms of at least 100.
-
walterkaschner
- In memoriam
- Posts: 1588
- Joined: 13 Mar 2002, 02:17
- Location: Houston, Texas
Michael Mills wrote:
Is it that Americans have such an overwhelming quantity of praiseworthy qualities as to cancel out and thereby excuse their innate predilection toward shoddiness?
Or is it that Americans are born with a shoddiness gene and thereby must be excused for an inescapable quality, like red hair or large ears, impressed upon them by God or fate - depending on one's persuasion - which they can do nothing about.
Albeit from an obviously biased standpoint, I personally believe that, although Americans commit their fair share, they certainly have no monopoly on shoddiness, as I think any objective reader of the posts on this site over the years would be compelled to testify.
In something of a low dudgeon, but with regards, Kaschner
I'm not sure that I understand that remark.Moulded's attempt to tar it with the IHR brush is revealed as a shoddy tactic. Would that he were American! Such shoddiness would then be excusable.
Is it that Americans have such an overwhelming quantity of praiseworthy qualities as to cancel out and thereby excuse their innate predilection toward shoddiness?
Or is it that Americans are born with a shoddiness gene and thereby must be excused for an inescapable quality, like red hair or large ears, impressed upon them by God or fate - depending on one's persuasion - which they can do nothing about.
Albeit from an obviously biased standpoint, I personally believe that, although Americans commit their fair share, they certainly have no monopoly on shoddiness, as I think any objective reader of the posts on this site over the years would be compelled to testify.
In something of a low dudgeon, but with regards, Kaschner
One day people will value your remarkable modesty, Mr. Kaschner, through all these years.walterkaschner wrote:(...) Albeit from an obviously biased standpoint, I personally believe that, although Americans commit their fair share, they certainly have no monopoly on shoddiness, as I think any objective reader of the posts on this site over the years would be compelled to testify.
In something of a low dudgeon, but with regards, Kaschner
-
michael mills
- Member
- Posts: 9000
- Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
- Location: Sydney, Australia
Just indulging in a bit ethnoentrism. Surely you will allow me that from time to time.
Perhaps we can now get down to discussing the central issue of this thread. Was there a massacre of 100 or more captured SS men on 21 May 1940 by men of the Durham Light Infantry?
I have taken the trouble to track down the relevant passages in the book by Nicholas Harman, which present the rather scant circumstantial evidence for the rality of that incident. I admit that in my previous messages I was a little waspish, being peeved by the fact that other contributors had reacted to the suggestion of a war crime by British troops by simply dismissing the possibility, or casting doubt on the source, without actually examining the material on which the suggstion was made.
As I see it, the evidence for the claimed massacre consists of the apparent disappearance of 100 or more captured SS men after their hand-over to men of the DLI, coupled with the documented threats of violence by DLI men against German captives. As I stated previously, the way forward in this matter is to look for evidence about what happened to the missing German POWs. Perhaps other contributors have material that may have emerged since the date of Harman's book (1980) that might shed some light on the matter.
Perhaps we can now get down to discussing the central issue of this thread. Was there a massacre of 100 or more captured SS men on 21 May 1940 by men of the Durham Light Infantry?
I have taken the trouble to track down the relevant passages in the book by Nicholas Harman, which present the rather scant circumstantial evidence for the rality of that incident. I admit that in my previous messages I was a little waspish, being peeved by the fact that other contributors had reacted to the suggestion of a war crime by British troops by simply dismissing the possibility, or casting doubt on the source, without actually examining the material on which the suggstion was made.
As I see it, the evidence for the claimed massacre consists of the apparent disappearance of 100 or more captured SS men after their hand-over to men of the DLI, coupled with the documented threats of violence by DLI men against German captives. As I stated previously, the way forward in this matter is to look for evidence about what happened to the missing German POWs. Perhaps other contributors have material that may have emerged since the date of Harman's book (1980) that might shed some light on the matter.
Charles Sydnor's Soldiers of Destruction ,a history of the Totenkopf, 1990,gives the following details of German casualties at Arras:
SSTK Div
39 Killed
66 Wounded
2 Missing
7th Pz Div
89 Killed
116 Wounded
83 Missing
395 Total
This locks up with other works that quote total German losses at Arras as around 400 men.Sydnor's figures are supported by SSTK and 7th PZ Div after action reports and casualty returns.Finalised 'missing' were determined after roll calls and battlefield investigations.
Therefore:
(1)the bulk of the missing,assumed prisoners,were Heer not SS.
(2)elements of the inexperienced SSTK broke and ran on that day--they subsequently turned up humilated and dejected.
(3)Killed in action rates are not excessive,when compared with the wounded ratio.Any finding of a massacre site after the battle would have skewed the figures towards deaths exceeding other losses.
(4)Eicke himself was ashamed of the performance of his Division at Arras and vowed some form of retribution against the 'wily ways' of the British.
SSTK Div
39 Killed
66 Wounded
2 Missing
7th Pz Div
89 Killed
116 Wounded
83 Missing
395 Total
This locks up with other works that quote total German losses at Arras as around 400 men.Sydnor's figures are supported by SSTK and 7th PZ Div after action reports and casualty returns.Finalised 'missing' were determined after roll calls and battlefield investigations.
Therefore:
(1)the bulk of the missing,assumed prisoners,were Heer not SS.
(2)elements of the inexperienced SSTK broke and ran on that day--they subsequently turned up humilated and dejected.
(3)Killed in action rates are not excessive,when compared with the wounded ratio.Any finding of a massacre site after the battle would have skewed the figures towards deaths exceeding other losses.
(4)Eicke himself was ashamed of the performance of his Division at Arras and vowed some form of retribution against the 'wily ways' of the British.
Andy
I have had a look through everything I've got, and I've had a go at tracing a lot of Allied War Crimes (you may have seen my previous posts naming the names and dates) but I cant find anything on this.
I have an incident of an as yet unnamed WO2 (BSM) attached to a Field Security Police (MI) who summararily executed 5 men who were regarded as Fifth Columnists but were most likely Totenkopf prisoners.
cheers
Pete
I have had a look through everything I've got, and I've had a go at tracing a lot of Allied War Crimes (you may have seen my previous posts naming the names and dates) but I cant find anything on this.
I have an incident of an as yet unnamed WO2 (BSM) attached to a Field Security Police (MI) who summararily executed 5 men who were regarded as Fifth Columnists but were most likely Totenkopf prisoners.
cheers
Pete
-
walterkaschner
- In memoriam
- Posts: 1588
- Joined: 13 Mar 2002, 02:17
- Location: Houston, Texas
Dan, I did not intend my reference to red hair to be taken in any perjorative sense. Indeed, I find red hair extremely attractive, at least on members of the opposite sex. I simply meant it as an example of a characteristic determined by one's gene pool which one can do nothing about. Probably not a very apt example, as one can of course bleach or dye it if so minded, though I can't concieve why anyone would wish to. But I have already strayed far from topic, and risk at best a scolding (well deserved.)
Regards, Kaschner
Regards, Kaschner
-
walterkaschner
- In memoriam
- Posts: 1588
- Joined: 13 Mar 2002, 02:17
- Location: Houston, Texas