Massacre at Le Paradis

27th May 1940: Soon after their surrender ninety-seven British soldiers are machine gunned on the orders of an SS Totenkopf officer

‘The Final Attack - Rear of Battalion HQ’, a post-war drawing by Captain Charles Long, 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolks, who was wounded before the massacre. He was taken prisoner in a separate group of men. Out of ammunition, with the barn on fire, the Battalion HQ group were forced to surrender.

A photograph taken by SS Officer Herbert Brunnegger - the surrender scene shortly before the massacre of the 97 soldiers.

Another German image of the British POWs from the Norfolk Regiment after their surrender.

The 3rd SS Division (Totenkopf) was formed from many men who had served as guards at Dachau concentration camp. Serving alongside the Wehrmacht in France 1940, they were not regarded as especially skilful militarily, and had already sustained heavy casualties.

On 27th May, they attacked a line of villages held by British troops in France, including the small settlement of Le Paradis, where the 2nd Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment held a position in a farm. They defended this position all day; however, the tank and artillery support they had called for did not arrive. The main farmhouse where they fought was demolished around them, so they moved to a barn. After the final German attack, sometime after 5 pm, they were out of ammunition and the barn was on fire. The decision was made to surrender.

After the war Private Pooley made an affidavit¹ that was central to the evidence given at the war crimes trial of SS-Obersturmbannführer Fritz Knöchlein:

The first attempt to surrender was made by three men who walked into the open displaying a white cloth. They immediately came under heavy machine gun fire.