Published in „Siegrunen“ Magazine - Vol. V, No. 5, Whole Number 29, January 1983
By Richard Landwehr
“I personally and a number of my comrades were tortured in the Cage in a most brutal and gruesome fashion, and refusing to make a written statement was the only means at my disposal by which I hoped to be heard by a higher authority. My personal complaint was made to Colonel Scotland, but the only result was that the torture became worse.” SS-Obersturmbannführer Fritz Knoechlein commenting on his British captivity. Prisoners held in the London “Cage” were required to sign a statement saying that they had not been ill-treated during interrogations. Since interrogations were routinely conducted through torture this was simply a device to get the Warden and his accomplices off the hook. Despite the further use of force, a few brave souls like Knoechlein refused to give in.
In October 1948 in the town of Altona in the British occupied zone of Germany, Fritz Knoechlein went on trial for his life, accused of having organized a massacre of British prisoners-of-war at Le Paradis, France in May 1940. The judge and jury were British Army officers; the legal proceedings were organized on the premise that the victors had the right to mete out justice as they saw fit. There was absolutely no international sanctification for such a proceeding, in fact past international conferences had tried to outlaw the practice of such “ad hoc” undertakings. The defendant and a number of the prosecution witnesses would be mercilessly tortured by the British authorities. Although little positive evidence linking the defendant to his ‘crime’ could be found, the ultimate verdict was never in doubt. Fritz Knoechlein was hung as a ‘war criminal’ in January 1949. Yet, as would later be revealed the British Army committed the same crimes that Knoechlein was charged with at the same time and the same place. Beyond that, the British were also admittedly in violation of numerous provisions of the Geneva Convention in the battle area around Dunkirk in May 1940.
As recently revealed through declassified British documents, the British soldiers defending the Dunkirk perimeter committed a number of criminal actions against both German soldiers and French and Belgian civilians. Some of the British soldiers were issued illegal “dum-dum” ammunition (a fact vehemently scoffed at during the Knoechlein ‘trial’), and they were under orders to take no prisoners except when needed for interrogation. Because of this the British soldiers worried that they might be shot as well if they fell into German hands. And this seems to have been the case in two separate instances at Le Paradis and Wormhout. At both these locations a number of captured British soldiers were executed in retaliation for the massacre of a large number of troopers from the SS “Totenkopf” Division. [For further details see “The Miracle of Dunkirk Reconsidered” by Charles Lutton in the Winter 1981 issue of the “Journal for Historical Review”].
Portrait of Ostubaf. Knoechlein.
It must be said that the British authorities were never really interested in prosecuting the Germans for the Le Paradis and Wormhout shootings, simply because their own evil doings might have been revealed in the process. The fact that the Le Paradis incident ever saw public light was due primarily to Press exposure, first in France and then in Britain, and the efforts of one of the “survivors.” The lid was kept on the Wormhout affair for 30 years and no effort was made to bring people to trial for it. But when, due to public pressure, the decision was made to go ahead with a Le Paradis trial, the British military authorities made sure that it would be a totally stacked deck from the start.
According to the official line, on the afternoon of 27 May 1940 a company from the I. Battalion/SS “Totenkopf” Infantry Regiment 2/SS “Totenkopf” Division, accepted the surrender of part of the British Royal Regiment at the town of Le Paradis. 99 of the British soldiers were then placed before a machine-gun firing squad and all save 2 were killed. The 2 'miracle survivors’ (remember there were always survivors at German 'massacres!’), both wounded, were later treated by German medics and became normal prisoners-of-war. They later served as the chief prosecution witnesses at the trial of Fritz Knoechlein, although both had trouble identifying him, and one had a long history of alcohol abuse (even while on duty in France!) and the other suffered from mental disorders.
In late 1946, after the story had broken in the newspapers, the British War Crimes Investigation Unit went to work on the Le Paradis story. They had a two-fold task: 1) to find someone to blame the 'crime’ on and 2) to maintain a careful cover-up of all related British war crimes. Through captured German Army files the appropriate “Totenkopf” regiment and battalion were quickly identified, but the job of finding the right man to blame was at first a tough one as most of the company commanders were long since dead, having been killed in action. After combing through the Waffen-SS prisoners still in Allied captivity (remember Waffen-SS captives were deliberately kept prisoner for many years after the capitulation!), the man who had commanded 3rd Company/I. Btl/SS “T” Rgt. 2, was located. He was of course, Ostubaf. Fritz Knoechlein. Being the sole surviving company commander from that battalion to have served in France in 1940, Knoechlein was the automatic choice to be blamed for the Le Paradis shooting. Of course, a certain death sentence went along with this ‘honor!’
Knoechlein (far left) at a change of command ceremony. SS-Totenkopf Division, France 1941.
“Totenkopf” Division medic treating wounded member of the division.
Fritz Knoechlein’s military record was unblemished. A recruit into the SS-Verfuegungstruppe in the 1930s, he had served as a platoon leader with the SS-Standarte “Deutchland” until his transfer into the newly forming SS “Totenkopf” Division in 1939. Several ‘atrocity’ writers blamed the influence of the “concentration camps” on Knochlein’s ‘deeds’ at Le Paradis, but in truth he had never seen the inside of one in use.
Knoechlein had also graduated from the SS-Junkerschule “Braunschwig” in 1935, so he had excellent military command credentials. From 1939 to 1941 he served as a company commander with the “Totenlopf” Division with the rank of Haupt- sturmführer (Captain) and from 1942 to 1944 he served as a battalion commander with the “Totenkopf” and “Reichsführer-SS” Divisions with the rank of Sturmbannführer (Major). In April 1944 he took over the command of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 24 “Norge” with the rank of Obersturmbannführer (Lt. Col.) and led the regiment with stamina and courage throughout the Narva Front fighting. He won the Iron Cross 1st Class in 1940, the German Cross in Gold in 1942 and the Knight’s Cross in November 1944. During his military service with the Waffen-SS he had received nothing but praise from his commanding officers for the manner in which he had carried out his duties. If he had any flaws, it was that he was not particularly close to his subordinates and was certainly far from the “father figure” that many commanding officers became to their men.
There were some problems with the selection of Knoechlein as chief villain; one of which was that his company lacked the heavy machine-guns needed to carry out the alleged deed. Only 4th Company of I. Battalion had these weapons. This meant some shuffling around had to be done, so that on paper at least, 4th Company had to be placed under Knoechlein’s jurisdiction even though he was not its commander! In the world of Allied ex post facto justice, this little technicality was simply maneuvered out of the way.
While there does seem to have been a shooting of British prisoners at Le Paradis estimates of the number shot have ranged from 30 to over 100. Many battlefield dead may have been tallied in the final count; at this point in time on one will ever know for sure. There is no doubt that there was savage fighting at Le Paradis; the British soldiers had been instructed to hold on at all costs. Now, due to declassified documents we know that the English had both used “dum-dum” bullets and shot prisoners. The “dum-dum” ammunition used was reported in the Divisional and Regimental headquarters of the “Totenkopf” Division at the time. In addition the regimental ordnance officer reported witnessing the shooting down of stretcher bearers by the British as they attended the wounded. Documents show that SS “T” Regiment 2 lost over 200 killed and missing on 27 May alone — an enormous figure — and that many of the bodies had either been shot in the back or showed evidence of “execution-style” slaying.
The village of Le Paradis was taken by SS “T” Rgt. 2 late in the afternoon of 27 May 1940 and on that day there were no reports of any mass shootings of British prisoners, nor was the name of Fritz Knoechlein ever mentioned in such a connection. After pleading “not guilty” at his arraignment on 28 August 1948, Knoechlein was placed on trial for his life on 11 October 1948. The Press from both ‘free’ and communist countries was on hand; the latter journalists were particularly interested in propagandizing the trial.
Knoechlein’s defense counsel, Dr. Uhde, was literally operating in the dark since he was denied most of the documentation and information that he needed for his case. The British War Office refused to cooperate with him (with good reason!) and the British Judge Advocate took on sole responsibility for determining what information would be “relevant” for the defense, so from the very start, everything was rigged to fit into the prosecution scheme. The popular British Press was used shamelessly to carry an endless stream of lurid accounts condemning Knoechlein.
On the first day of the trial, one of the British survivors of Le Paradis, embarrassed the prosecution by failing to make a really positive identification of Knoechlein. That prompted the Judge Advocate who ran the trial to order Knoechlein dressed in an SS uniform to parade about for the benefit of the witness! The witness had other problems with his testimony and blamed it on his extensive hospitalization. Prior to the beginning of the trial the witness had already been shown Knoechlein and yet had failed to remember him very well from that observation. Things then went from bad to worse for the side of the prosecution.
A French woman who owned a farm at Le Paradis described being threatened at the time of the Le Paradis shootings by an SS officer in a peaked cap, with a facial twitch, who carried a large revolver and spoke broken French. After a dramatic, and completely irrelevant burst of testimony she made a theatrical identification of Knoechlein as that SS officer. The author who recorded the events of the trial had the audacity to state that: “She obviously did not know where to look for the accused.” The accused was seated at the time in the dock with two hulking armed guards on either side of him! One would have had to have been totally blind not to have picked him out. Additionally, all of the woman’s descriptive comments given about Knoechlein were at variance with the truth!
The defense counsel was able to extract from the woman the following points: a) she suffered from “head illness” at the time of the alleged events, b) she had memory problems and c) that the officer who threatened her had a cheek twitching problem (an affliction that Knoechlein never had!). The woman apparently had been questioned by German soldiers in 1940 for harboring British soldiers after hostilities had ended, and was released unharmed.
The next prosecution move was to call former SS men (in British captivity) to testify. The first of these witnesses, one Emil Stuerzbecher, a former adjutant of the I. Battalion/SS “T” Regiment 2, gave a long-winded testimony directly implicating Knoechlein in the shooting. Stuerzbecher’s comments have since become the principal mainstay of “atrocity” writers, yet any objective examination of them reveal them to be impossibly ludicrous. Here is his version of a conversation with the I. Battalion commander, SS-Standartenführer Heinz Bertling: Bertling speaking: “These stories that have been going around are correct. Some frightfully dirty work has been going on in Number 3 Company. Knoechlein is a blackguard and a showman, but no soldier. He actually maintains he is in the right. There was never anything like it in the World War and the whole thing springs from the mad ideas of the Führer. In any case, this swinish trick spoils the day’s success for me.”
Staf. Berling went on to become an SS General. According to all of the “atrocity” writers, the SS “Totenkopf” Division was “ideologically pure” and anyone saying bad things about the Führer was cashiered on the spot. This brief commentary attributed to Bertling did not take place of course but was a product of one of Stuerzbecher’s “interrogation sessions!” In fact all of Stuerzbecher’s testimony was “coached”; it absolutely bears no relation to reality as we know it today. Note also that Number 4 Company — not Number 3 Company (Knoechlein’s) mentioned above had the heavy machine-guns that supposedly did the shooting!
The clincher in Stuerzbecher’s testimony was the remark that he had some “doubts as to the genuineness of these (dum-dum) bullets” that had been gathered up all over the battalion sector. There is no doubt that the “dum-dum” bullets were genuine, but for the purposes of this “kangaroo court,” Stuerzbecher had instructions to discount them. The next two prosecution witnesses gave similarly incriminating accounts of the shooting, placing Knoechlein on the scene, but failing to explain how he managed to commandeer a machine-gun section from 4th Company. They also followed their interrogator’s coaching about the alleged British use of “dum-dum” bullets, etc. A third witness confessed to being the section commander of the machine- guns that had done the dirty work, but as luck would have it he had just happened to be relieved of command at the time of a shooting by another NCO who was later killed in action. The defense counsel was able to extract from this witness, Theodor Emke, tacit admission that he had been beaten during his interrogations. The Judge Advocate moved with alacrity to curtail this line of thought! After some browbeating, fraught with hidden meaning, by both the prosecutor and the Judge Advocate, the witness got back in line.
On 15 October the prosecution placed the second “survivor” (William O’Callaghan — the first survivor was Albert Pooley), on the witness stand. After having been exposed to photographs of Fritz Knoechlein in advance, O’Callaghan was easily able to pick him out of a courtroom “line up.” Unfortunately for the prosecution, O’Callaghan’s description of the German officer who ordered the execution at Le Paradis did not match that of Knoechlein. In his preliminary report O’Callaghan gave Knoechlein a hooked nose (not true), a peaked cap (not true) and red lapels (impossible). The whole appearance of this witness proved to be another embarrassment for the prosecution.
Following one more German witness who added little to the story. The prosecution introduced a number of supposedly original documents from captured German files that confirmed that some sort of shooting of British prisoners probably took place in the Le Paradis sector on 27 May 1940. The following document was released only in an edited version since it hinted at possible shooting of German prisoners by the British:
Document 3.
To XVI Army Corps: Battle HQ/SS “T” Inf. Rgt. 2
29 May 1940 1055 hours
1. The English used dum-dum bullets which was proved by our own wounded and by the evidence of our own officers.
2. Furthermore a swastika flag was exhibited luring our soldiers from cover, whereupon they were wiped out by machine-gun fire from ambush. The result at Malo:
4 officers, 153 NCO’s and men killed.
18 officers, 483 NCO’s and men wounded.
Most of the wounds were in the back...(at this point the Judge Advocate terminated the transcript!). Another 52 NCO’s and men were listed as missing, but they were most certainly killed, probably most of them — as we now know — in captivity!
On 18 October, Knoechlein voluntarily took the witness stand in his own defense and testified in English and German. He described in some detail the battlefield action of his battalion on 26 and 27 May 1940 near the La Bassee Canal and reported several instances that he had either heard of or observed where the British failed to “fight according to the laws and usages of war as laid down in the Geneva Convention.” He asserted that the location of the alleged massacre was in the sector of 2nd Company, which did most of the fighting for the town of Le Paradis, and not in his 3rd Company sector. He claimed not to have heard of the shooting incident until 28 May, while attending a conference at the regimental HQ in Bailleul. His own opinion of the Le Paradis shooting was that it probably was a spontaneous outburst on the part of the men who had been embittered by the inhuman methods of British fighting. Knoechlein had no alibi for his whereabouts between 1300 and 1500 hours on 27 May 1940 (the alleged time of the shooting), except that he was with the 1st Platoon of his Company, first around the Le Paradis crossroads and then to the east of the town.
At the regimental conference in Bailleul on 28 May, reports were circulated on the British “dum-dum” ammunition and samples were examined. Knoechlein denied wearing a peaked cap at Le Paradis (as the French woman and O’Callaghan stated he was), since this item of dress had to be left behind far to the rear at the SS “T” Division motor transport park. There is no doubt that Knoechlein was telling the truth on this part. During the combat engagements in France, he wore only a steel helmet and/or a soft field cap and photographs bear him out on this.
Knoechlein also mentioned that he wore a camouflaged jacket, which made him difficult to distinguish from an enlisted man. The prosecution witnesses all missed this, yet again, he was undoubtedly correct. Testimony then revolved around his alleged facial twitch (he never had one), his inability to speak a word of French at the time and the fact that his service revolver never left his holster. Knoechlein then ripped apart the absurd testimony given by some of the prosecution witnesses.
The prosecuting counsel then took over and tried to get Knoechlein to recant his testimony about “illegal British methods,” including the “dum-dum” bullets. Knoechlein refused to do so, and 33 years later his testimony was fully borne out! So helpless was the prosecutor to “score any points” that he tried next to give Knoechlein the “facial twitch” that the French woman had attributed to him in this little absurd “question”: Prosecutor: “When you get rather excited you have a little bit of a nervous twitch in your face, haven’t you?” Knoechlein: “I have never noticed it, nor have my relatives.”
Needless to say, no observation of Knoechlein in court turned up such a trait! Next a futile effort was made to bestow upon Knoechlein a silver-braided, peaked cap in the battle area, but the prosecutor again could gain no ground. In a discussion of the movements of Knoechlein’s 3rd Company, the closest that the prosecutor could place the Company to the massacre site was 600 yards and even at that point the Company was clearly passing by. It did not bivouac in Le Paradis. In the end, the prosecutor again tried to get Knoechlein to disavow the “dumdum” stories and this line of questioning continued on into the next day. He responded fully and accurately and at no time gave any ground to the prosecution’s assertions that the use of such ammunition was improbable. Knoechlein has been thoroughly vindicated in this regards, but it showed the interest of the British in covering up their abuses through a sort of ridicule, because at this time no one in the Allied camp gave any credence to the idea that their ‘noble’ soldiers could have done such things!
On 19 October 1948, Knoechlein spent further time describing the British “dum-dum” ammunition to the Judge Advocate. Two defense witnesses that had served in Knoechlein’s 3rd Company during the Le Paradis fighting were then called to the stand. The first witness, Walter Fripes, had been a corporal in 3rd Company’s 2nd Platoon. He described the fighting that took place on 27 May, as very hard and made mention of the fact that all prisoners taken by the Company at Le Cornet Malo were immediately sent to the rear. He testified to having handled some of the British “dum-dum” ammo, and to having submitted a report on same to the platoon leader. He further noted that 3rd Company did not reach the Le Paradis church until 1700 hours (or four hours after the shooting) and that Knoechlein was wearing either a steel helmet or a soft forage cap on that day. Fripes noted that the Company had been lectured about the proper treatment of prisoners and that no orders had ever been issued that “prisoners were not to be taken.” He first heard about the shooting incident when the Company reached Bailleul.
The second witness, Franz Backwinkel, also a corporal in the same platoon more or less reiterated Fripe’s testimony and also confirmed the British use of “dum-dum” bullets. On the next day of the trial, 21 October, Captain Charles William Long, Adjutant of the 2nd Battalion/Royal Norfolk Regiment (the unit which allegedly suffered the massacre), testified for the defense. He noted that he and about 30 other soldiers from the Battalion had received “extremely good” treatment from the members of the SS “Totenkopf” Division company who took them captive; they had even let them go about unguarded to pick up British wounded. Captain Long placed the surrender of his battalion in Le Paradis at 1700 hours on 27 May, or hours after witnesses had said the massacre took place. The testimony was certainly damaging to the British position, although he also denied the use of “dum-dum” ammo by the battalion’s soldiers.
Earlier, on 19 October, Fritz Knoechlein made one important statement to the court that bears repeating: “I want the court to know I was a professional commissioned soldier with many years experience. I have always been trained to accept responsibility. None of my officers or NCO’s was concerned in this matter.” Knoechlein was probably well aware that he was a condemned man from the start, and by making this brave statement (which was totally within his demonstrated character), he hoped to make sure that at least none of his subordinates would go to the gallows with him!
On 22 October, Knoechlein made his statement about being tortured with his comrades in the “London Cage,” so the prosecution spent the whole day trying to defame his character and behavior and once again brought up the famous “dum-dum” bullets. The next day, 23 October, Knoechlein’s defense counsel, Dr. Uhde, made his final address to the court. His first points are worth repeating:
“The main charge against my client is quite clear. But the authorities are trying to find a responsible person to fit this crime and the only person they can find who is sufficiently implicated is my client. Firstly, I would point out that it happened eight and a half years ago. Secondly, most of my witnesses are either killed or cannot be traced.
“...I submit the Prosecution have not proved that the accused was responsible for the shooting, and only that he was present in the village where it took place. Nor have they proved that he knew of the shooting but did not prevent it. Even if both these points are answered in the affirmative then one asks: was the shooting legally justified for some reason or other?”
On the last point, we now know that the British massacre of SS “Totenkopf” prisoners touched off the Le Paradis shooting and if a field tribunal had been carried out asserting that the British were acting as “irregulars” through their action, a reprisal shooting could have been legally (perhaps not morally), justified.
The defense counsel then attempted to prove that Knoechlein was not present at the shooting. In a devastating address he tore apart the testimony of the prosecution witnesses, in particular by pointing out their inability to identify Knoechlein and their bestowal upon him of all sorts of weird uniform designs and physical characteristics. He noted also that the given time for the shooting was impossible since the British hostilities did not cease until hours later. His closing remarks were as follows:
“What [Captain] Long said is highly remarkable. He has mentioned treatment that was on the whole irreproachable, and given facts which make it even more certain the accused was not at the place at the time.
“My client Knoechlein had hoped for proceedings before a military court to clear his name of the shameful charges against him. I have shown that he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Classes, for the fighting in May 1940. I hardly believe he would have been awarded these honors had he committed an irregular action.
“Before closing, a word remains to be said in connection with British fighting methods. It appears to me that “dumdum” ammunition and white flag incidents [at one point near Le Paradis, some British soldiers ambushed some SS troopers after having pretended to surrender with a white flag], had taken place...In that case it would have been possible to put the guilty British prisoners before a court martial. If a court was held the German officer passing sentence would not be liable for punishment. We know that a group of commissioned and non-commissioned officers were present at the place of the shooting. It can neither be disregarded nor disproved that these men had formed a court martial, but if a German court martial had sentenced the British prisoners to death for a violation of international law the presence of these German soldiers at the shooting would not have been a war crime.
“I would revert to what I said before, namely, to ask the court to find the accused ‘not guilty’ because he was neither present at, nor concerned in, the shooting of the British prisoners-of-war.”
In reading all of his statements one can only conclude that the defense counsel, Dr. Uhde, did the best possible job under the circumstances. It should be remembered also that the Allies shot German prisoners whenever they felt that they had breached international law. The case of Otto Skorzeny’s commandoes in the Ardennes in December 1944 is but one example.
The summing up of the prosecution was simply a “go through the motions to get the thing done with” affair, and has nothing in it that is even worth quoting. All the Prosecutor tried to prove was that: a) British prisoners were shot at Le Paradis, b) it was a war crime, and c) the accused (Knoechlein) was on the scene and was thereby guilty for either “ordering the massacre” or for “failing to prevent it.” It mattered not, which charge stuck, Knoechlein would be hung either way!
On 25 October 1948, the Judge Advocate who ran the trial, somewhat dissatisfied with the ineptness of the prosecution, then told the panel/jury of British military officers why Knoechlein was guilty! In the process he made it clear that he considered any possible British provocations [such as the “dum-dum” ammo] to be irrelevant. To have the administrator of the ‘trial’ present such a lopsided and biased report against the defendant is somewhat unusual, but he wished to make absolutely sure that there would be no foul-ups: Knoechlein must hang!
After an extremely brief recess, the jury delivered up the expected guilty verdict, to the surprise of no one but Knoechlein’s wife who was in attendance. The defense was then entitled to call character witness in an effort to stave off the death penalty. The first witness was the former SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, who had commanded all Waffen-SS formations in Italy. Wolff knew Knoechlein from the year 1933, or one year before he had entered the SS. The questioning went as follows:
Dr. Uhde: “What was the impression you got of Knoechlein?”
Wolff: “He was a nice young man. He knew how to behave in public, and was popular and a good comrade.”
Dr. Uhde: “What was his character as a soldier?”
Wolff: “When I made enquiries he was an officer with his heart and soul in his job. I have never heard anything unfavorable about Knoechlein. I only heard he was a brave soldier and commander.” [Wolff subsequently underwent numerous ‘war crimes’ proceedings and spent most of the rest of his life in and out of Allied prisons].
The next character witness was the former Standartenführer Otto Wilhelm Kron, who had been a regimental commander in the “Totenkopf” Division with Knoechlein as one of his direct subordinates. He noted that Knoechlein was one of his best officers and that he was very careful and beyond reproach in his conduct. Kron denied every hearing that anyone in Knoechlein’s units had ever violated the rights of prisoners-of-war. Kron died not long after the trial, under mysterious circumstances, at the age of 38 in Dachau. Two other witnesses testified on behalf of Knoechlein, and the last, Gunter Putze, mentioned that Knoechlein had used his own staff vehicle to take care of wounded prisoners-of-war around Anzio in Italy.
Of course what the witnesses had to say was immaterial to this trial; Knoechlein was a dead man from the beginning. But it was important to the afore mentioned witnesses since they found themselves repeatedly harassed by the Allied Occupation Authorities for years afterwards as a result of their having come forth to testify. Their treatment helped keep down the number of defense witnesses who were willing to testify at subsequent ‘war crimes’ trials!
Knoechlein was then sentenced to “death by hanging,” with the sentence carried out on 28 January 1949. As usual, he com-ported himself with complete dignity and courage right through to the end. The British authorities, moral hypocrites all, had extracted their “pound of flesh.”
It is the opinion of this writer, after years of studying the matter, that Fritz Knoechlein was guilty of being only the sole company commander in his battalion in France 1940, to survive the war! At no point could it be proven that he conspired to or had directly ordered the execution of the British prisoners. He had been placed on the scene of the shooting by some German eyewitnesses, but they could not say for a certainty that he gave the fatal orders. Besides all of the German witnesses for the prosecution had been tortured and beaten during their interrogations by the British, and their testimony was highly suspect to say the least.
It can be said that a shooting of some British prisoners did take place at Le Paradis as a direct reprisal for similar British actions. The soldiers responsible for this shooting came from 4th Company/I. Btl./SS “T” Inf.Rgt.3 and not from Knoechlein’s own 3rd Company. The company commander for 4th Company, Hauptsturmführer Schroedel was present at the site of the executions and it could have been he, and only he that gave the orders for the 4th Company machine-gunners to open fire. It is possible that Knoechlein was at the scene, but his responsibility for what transpired can now never be fully determined. Under the British logic, he deserved to die simply because he might have been in the area and was therefore an accessory to the crime. But of course, the people who ran the trial saw to it that all of the blame was bestowed on Knoechlein. It is interesting to note that a majority of the survivors from Knoechlein’s own 3rd Company felt that he probably bore the sole responsibility for the shooting, but a minority of the survivors dissent rather vigorously. In any case, none of them own up to having been on the scene and all of their opinions were formed therefore through either rumor or hearsay.
Unfortunately, the documentation that would have proved British culpability in war crimes against the “Totenkopf” Division was deliberately kept from Knoechlein’s defense attorney, although, as has been noted many times, it is now available today. If this evidence had been presented at Knoechlein’s trial it is hard to see how the proceedings could have led to a guilty verdict for the defendant. At any rate, we must also note again, that Knoechlein was consistently misidentified by the primary prosecution witnesses, his company did not take part in the shootings and he had no command authority over 4th Company, which carried out the shooting, whatsoever. Had the battalion commander been disabled (which he was not), Knoechlein in his position as senior company commander/assistant battalion commander then would have had authority over 4th Company, but this never came to pass.
There is nothing in Knoechlein’s service record to indicate that he ever acted in a manner contrary to law or authority. He rapidly moved up in rank and command position on the basis of his proven military ability. The fact that he was awarded the Knight’s Cross to the Iron Cross, also demonstrates the quality of his character. While in captivity, Knoechlein vehemently protested his innocence over the Le Paradis shootings to his fellow prisoners. This writer fully supports this conclusion. A brave and superior military officer, with still much to contribute, was deliberately sacrificed to 1) stir up British public opinion and 2) help maintain a cover-up of the British misdeeds and crimes committed in the defense of the Dunkirk perimeter.
From the perspective of 35 years in the future, I feel that it is past time for the mask of hypocrisy to be shredded off the “Le Paradis Massacre.” Fritz Knoechlein’s name should be exonerated from the onus of bearing sole blame for the incident. That is the least that honest historians can do!
***
Readers are invited to read the “authorized” account of Fritz Knoechlein’s trial in the book titled, The Vengeance of Private Pooley by Cyril Jolly. Printed in Britain in 1956, the text at the time seemed convincing enough for the East German communists to bring out a translated edition of this work as an example of how a good “anti-Fascist” trial should function! In retrospect, the book has now taken on a distinctly ludicrous and hypocritical tinge at points — given what we now know about how such trials were run and the activities of the British forces near Dunkirk. It is possible to say that parts of the book are fair as far as they go and that read today, Fritz Knoechlein comes off as a far more sympathetic character than Mr. Jolly had originally intended.
To further emphasize some of the points made in the article, the author felt that it would be constructive to quote from Nicholas Harman’s detailed work entitled, Dunkirk: The Patriotic Myth.
On the question of the “dum-dum” ammunition found by the Germans but denied and ridiculed by the British at Knoechlein’s ‘trial,’ comes this quote from Harman:
“Patrick Turnbull had better founds 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 rule of war.” (p. 88)
Page 98 details a large-scale massacre carried out by men of the Durham Light Infantry on 21 May 1940. Records were subsequently doctored, but on that day at least 400 German soldiers were slaughtered in British captivity, a good many of them from the SS “Totenkopf” Division.
This was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. On page 230, a soldier in the Coldstream Guards, James Langley, provided this bit of information: “He remembered the strict orders given to all platoon commanders of the Coldstream Guards: take no prisoners, unless specifically ordered that they are needed for interrogation.” The same orders were apparently given to most of the British units defending the Dunkirk perimeter. Also according to Harman and recently revealed military records, British troops in Flanders murdered civilians upon the slightest pretext, conducted mass executions of suspected “fifth columnists,” and looted to their heart’s content.
Who were the real “war criminals” in France in May 1940? In any event, Fritz Knoechlein was not the perpetrator of a “war crime,” he was the victim of one!
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