May 1940. As Allied troops retreat toward Dunkirk, a small British unit makes its final stand in the French village of Le Paradis. Surrounded and out of ammunition, the men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment surrender—expecting the rights of prisoners of war. Instead, ninety-nine soldiers are led to a nearby farmyard and machine-gunned by SS troops under the command of Fritz Knöchlein. Ninety-seven are killed; only two survive to tell the world.
The Le Paradis massacre became one of the first Nazi war crimes in Western Europe—a brutal warning of what was to come. Years later, survivor testimonies would bring Knöchlein to justice, while his commander, Theodor Eicke, fell on the Eastern Front. The massacre’s perpetrators met violent ends, but their crime stands as a lasting reminder of the ruthlessness of the Waffen-SS and the high price of humanity’s early stand against Nazi tyranny.