Le Paradis massacre - German documents

Discussion in '1940' started by Heimbrent, Jul 25, 2010.

  1. Heimbrent

    Heimbrent Well-Known Member

    x
     
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  2. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    Kate,

    Well found and posted.

    Regards
    Tom
     
  3. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Hi Kate,

    I've just noticed this as I re trawl through the 1940 section. Have you removed the link?

    Regards
    Andy
     
  4. Incredibledisc

    Incredibledisc Well-Known Member

    Sorry to resurrect an old thread but I’m currently in the process of listening to the audiobook of Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk: Fight to the last man” and have reached the section on the Le Paradis massacre. As well as the evidence from the two survivors and British war crimes investigation he also draws on two German investigations - one by the army and one by the SS carried out just after the event. The army investigation apparently took photographs of the massacre site as part of the evidence gathering - did any of the files survive? I’m guessing at least some did otherwise Sebag-Montefiore wouldn’t be quoting them.
     
  5. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Does he quote a source Bill?
     
  6. Incredibledisc

    Incredibledisc Well-Known Member

    He gives verbatim extracts from the Germans. I’ll need to look up the endnotes to see the sources.
     
  7. Incredibledisc

    Incredibledisc Well-Known Member

    Luckily he has made the endnotes available on his website - saved me going into the garage to dig out my paperback copy!

    “The 24 January 1947 report (‘Paradis War Crimes Report’) was brought to my
    attention by Kate Thaxton, of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service.
    17 Paradis War Crimes Report, p. 5.
    18 The Paradis War Crimes Report, p. 12, states that French witnesses found bodies
    of British soldiers who ‘had obviously been murdered after capture in this area’. Also included in this report is the statement by Walter Schmidt, dispatch rider, Totenkopf Regiment 2. He mentioned that a comrade, Ernst Weissinger, told him that he had helped capture seventeen Englishman who had been found sitting in a hayloft, and had taken them back to Battle HQ, adding: ‘But they have all had to bite the dust.’
    It is possible that they were the same men mentioned by Lieutenant-Colonel Scotland, author of the Paradis War Crimes Report, in a letter dated 5 December 1948, which he sent to the Norfolks’ Captain Hastings. Scotland mentioned that the French had dug up twenty-one bodies of Royal Scots soldiers who ‘all’ had neck wounds, implying they had been shot after capture.”

    “First, a German war correspondent, who stated that his name was Tenius and that he had been accompanying the 2nd SS Company at Le Cornet Malo, reported that early on 27 May he had witnessed the shooting of a British prisoner-of-war, whose only crime was to have shot at the Germans from a house. This is in a series of documents, subsequently referred to in this book as the ‘Paradis XVI Corps Investigation’, included in the Appendix to the German XVI Corps’ war diary, in BA-MA RH21–4/527.”

    If you want a better look at the notes you can get the pdf here - the notes from chapter on the massacre start on p73
    http://www.hughsebagmontefiore.com/images/SCAN26dun75annivwebappsdramabbrevnotes copy.pdf
     
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