Dunkirk massacres

[merlin]

I have just completed: 'Dunkirk' by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, an excellent book, well written, and well researched.

What I didn't know previously though was the German treatment of prisoners, and indeed Belgian civilains!

At Le Paradis 27 May '40, 97 British Pows were killed by members of the 1st Battlion, the SS Totenkopf Division's 2nd Infantry Regiment.

At Vinkt in Belgium, after a determined defense by the 1st Chasseurs Ardennais Division. The 1st Battlion of the 225 Division's 377th Regiment, was principally responsible for slaughtering seventy-eight civilians - 'including around forty in one short spell of frenzied killing in Vinkt's main street'!

Also at Wormhout, where after a long battle, again British Pows were killed. From the 1947 war Crimes interrogation Unit report -
"This report gives the known details of the wilful murder after capture by German soldiers of approximately 80 or 90 men of the 2nd Battlion, the Royal Warwickshire regiment, the Cheshire Regiment and the Royal Artillery on the 28th of May 1940 near the vilage of Wormhout in northern France."
It was the SS again - this time the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment.

So, it just happen on the barbarous Eastern Front, the SS & regular German Army seemed to have got some practise in before hand.

What was even more disturbing, was that it wasn't some isolated soldiers who just got 'carried away' but orchestrated by officers in a mad revenge for casualties incurred!

[syscom3]

Anyone who subscribed to the Nazi ideology was already a war criminal in waiting.

[RabidAlien]

In the Nazi's eyes, they were the only "humans", so the indescriminate killing of others (POW's or civilians) was probably no more, to them, than stepping on a roach or poisoning a rat. Total and complete psychopaths, all of them (Nazi's that is).

[Thorlifter]

It will never cease to amaze me how people can be so manipulated by others. Nazi's, Khmer Rouge, Jim Jones, etc.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by merlin

So, it just happen on the barbarous Eastern Front, the SS & regular German Army seemed to have got some practise in before hand.

Read up a bit on Normandy. Executing PoWs was quite regularly done by Allied units as well. It was Allied 'practice' as well.

Such incidents happened during - and even after - the war, on both sides. It is IMHO wrong to judge these by the results alone, without knowing all the details, and to make far-reaching conclusions about an entire army of several million men, without knowing if the criminals were punished later or it was accepted as a 'normal' conduct. Amongst a million men, there will always be a few hundred villains, no matter what side.

[RabidAlien]

Agreed, Kurfurst. And if Germany had won, our troops would be the evil ones held up for all the world to see our barbaric ways. The SS seemed to draw all the nutzoid villains, though.

[merlin]

I grant the likelyhood that in Normandy, Allied troops shot some Germans who were intending to surrender.
However, I think there is a distinction between what happened in the 'heat of battle' and what happened in the Dunkirk area. Where SS troops who had British troops in their custody - their surrender had been accepted, and later escorted them to a brick wall where a couple of machine guns mowned them down, to be followed by by the coup de grace of a rifle-butt to the skull or pistol shot for the wounded.
The regular German Army on finding the bodies investigated, but the report got filed!

[merlin]

For further information I will try to add the relevant links.




Hope that helps.

[trackend]

Imo you cannot exterminate millions on the scale of the Nazis/Germans with a few hundred villians here and there it was the Nazis/Germans who set out to deliberately exterminate entire races from the face of the planet and albeit very wrong for the war crimes metted out by the allies it never came close to the treatment handed out to the Jews,mentally ill, gypsies, Russians etc, etc, etc.

[JugBR]

Originally Posted by RabidAlien

In the Nazi's eyes, they were the only "humans", so the indescriminate killing of others (POW's or civilians) was probably no more, to them, than stepping on a roach or poisoning a rat. Total and complete psychopaths, all of them (Nazi's that is).

if was only the nazis...

[parsifal]

I have a book on the Dunkirk evacuation , "Dunkirk - The British Evacuation, 1940" Robert Jackson, Rigel Publications, 1974, 2002, revised 2004. It corroborates that the nazis were systematically murdering prisoners immediately after the finish of the battle.

It is still a war crime to excecute a prisoner without the right to a trial. I think the difference between the allied and German episodes is the magnitude of the crime. there was never any order to summarily kill German POWs. In germany ther was, the infamous "kill the commandoes" order of 1942. But as these reports clearly demonstrate, it did not take an order from Hitler to reduce the german army to the most animalistic behaviour imaginable.

[JugBR]

ill research about those massacres in dunkirk

what i know is that germans usually killed many russian soldiers that way, and russians did the same with germans.

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by merlin

I grant the likelyhood that in Normandy, Allied troops shot some Germans who were intending to surrender.
However, I think there is a distinction between what happened in the 'heat of battle' and what happened in the Dunkirk area. Where SS troops who had British troops in their custody - their surrender had been accepted, and later escorted them to a brick wall where a couple of machine guns mowned them down, to be followed by by the coup de grace of a rifle-butt to the skull or pistol shot for the wounded.
The regular German Army on finding the bodies investigated, but the report got filed!

14% of Canadian Fatalities in Normandy was the killing of surrendered troops by the Germans some where abouts a 150

[JugBR]

pb where i can find info about that ?

[pbfoot]

Originally Posted by JugBR

pb where i can find info about that ?

Gateway | March Issue Story 2
this link looks pretty good
Gateway | March Issue Story 2