The story of Dunkirk is often remembered as a moment of defiant heroism, a miracle of rescue from the sands of northern France. While it is true that around 330,000 soldiers were saved to fight another day, the reality of the operation was far darker. The beaches and the surrounding town were scenes of intense death, aerial bombardment, and brutal ground combat.
The success of the evacuation depended on a desperate rearguard action. British and French forces had to hold back the rapidly advancing German army, but the cost was immense. The British Expeditionary Force was forced to abandon nearly all of its tanks, vehicles, and heavy equipment, leaving them for the enemy to seize. For every seven soldiers who escaped from the shore, one man was left behind to become a prisoner of war.
Those who were captured faced horrific conditions. They were forced into vast death marches toward Germany, where they reported brutal treatment at the hands of their guards. Many were shot and executed on the roadside, but there were also specific and chilling reports of British soldiers being murdered by German forces, particularly the SS, in the immediate vicinity of Dunkirk.
One of the most infamous atrocities occurred on May 27, 1940. As British troops fought to reach the Dunkirk perimeter, the SS Division Totenkopf carried out the Le Paradis massacre. They used machine guns to execute 97 British and French prisoners near the La Bassée Canal. The prisoners were from the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. The SS lined the men up against a barn wall and opened fire, leaving only two survivors.
One survivor of the execution recalled the terrifying moment of the ambush. He described turning off a dusty French road through a gate into a meadow beside farm buildings. He saw two heavy machine guns inside the meadow, aimed directly at the front of the column. As the guns opened fire, the screams and cries of the wounded men mixed with the sound of gunfire. Men fell like grass before a scythe, and the survivor felt a burning pain as he fell forward onto a pile of dying men. Even in that moment, he vowed that if he ever got out alive, the men who did this would pay.
The executed men were unarmed and posed no threat whatsoever. After the killing, the Germans forced French civilians to bury the bodies in a shallow mass grave. A witness later reported seeing the bodies of British soldiers lying in a yard near the buildings, their posture suggesting they had been killed by machine gun fire. The dead soldiers were not wearing helmets and had no equipment.
The fighting around Dunkirk continued with incredible ferocity. Erwin Rommel proved his effectiveness during this phase, encircling five divisions of the French First Army. These men defended their position for four days, a stand that saved an estimated 100,000 Allied soldiers. Even the Germans acknowledged their bravery, with General Kurt von Wagnar granting them the honors of war and saluting them.
The perimeter held until the end of May, but the situation remained desperate. At one point, two British commanders were forced to operate a Bren gun themselves, with one firing while the other loaded the magazines. Elsewhere, British forces were routed near Veurne, and panic set in. Troops from the Coldstream Guards had to restore order, forcing retreating men back into the line at bayonet point and even firing on those who refused to turn and face the German assault.
In total, between 30,000 and 40,000 French soldiers were forced to surrender, many having reached the port too late to be evacuated. The last British troops to be rescued were part of the rearguard fighting German attacks on June 1. These forces were finally evacuated on the evening of June 2.
However, the executions of British troops did not end with Le Paradis. For a long time, it was believed that the 97 men killed at Le Paradis were the only victims of the SS Totenkopf in that area. This was proven false when French civilians later uncovered a mass grave containing the bodies of Scottish soldiers. All of the men showed signs of execution, having been shot in the head or the back of the neck.
This method of killing, known as *Genickschuss*, was a standard German execution technique used throughout the war, particularly during Operation Barbarossa. An officer from the Royal Norfolk Regiment later documented this discovery in his war diary. Around the same time, a German postman claimed that a colleague had told him about the capture of 17 British soldiers who had been hiding in an area occupied by the Royal Scots. After their capture, the prisoners were taken to an SS battle headquarters, where a witness claimed to have seen them all killed in a field execution.
Another German soldier later reported a separate field execution of a single British soldier near Le Cornet Malo, a village in the Royal Scots sector. The man was reportedly a sniper who had been firing on SS troops from a house before being overpowered. Despite surrendering, he was executed because his skills were considered too dangerous a threat. This act was still a clear war crime.
The Royal Scots were part of the 4th Brigade, one of the rearguard units that halted the German advance at the Dunkirk perimeter. Very few of these men made it back to Britain. By the end of the evacuations, 292 Royal Scots soldiers had been captured and taken as prisoners of war. The men had fought fiercely, sometimes hand-to-hand, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. This resistance damaged the morale of the SS Totenkopf division, which may have been another reason the German troops executed their prisoners in revenge for their own losses.
Later, SS commander Fritz Knöchlein was brought to trial for war crimes related to the Le Paradis massacre. He was accused of ordering the executions that killed around 90 prisoners of war. He was sentenced to death and hanged within the walls of Hamelin Prison. He remains the only man ever convicted or tried for involvement in that specific massacre.
Dunkirk was a war zone in every sense of the word. While the rescue of hundreds of thousands of soldiers was a monumental achievement, the town witnessed an immense amount of horror, death, and execution. German forces carried out repeated massacres of their enemies’ prisoners, possibly driven by frustration after being held back by the Allied defense time and again. The executions at Le Paradis and the later killings of the Royal Scots stand as grim examples of the brutality and war crimes committed by the SS from the very beginning of the conflict.