What the Waffen-SS Did to Captured French African Troops

The men on the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf murdered French Moroccan troops during the German campaign against France in 1940. These men were seen as racially ‘inferior’ by them. But their lust for killing did not stop there. British defenders put up stiff resistance. An SS company led by Obersturmführer Fritz Knöchlein managed to isolate 100 Allied soldiers of the 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment that eventually surrendered. They were marched to a barn, lined up in front of it and machine gunned without mercy. Survivors were bayoneted to death. A few survived and they lived to see Knöchlein hanged for this war crime after the war. In the last days of the Battle of France the men of the Totenkopf faced an Allied force that consisted of French and Moroccan troops. The surrender of the white French soldiers was accepted, the Arabs were slaughtered. They also murdered French Senegalese POWs. Totenkopf itself had suffered many losses and gained a reputation for reckless disregard for losses. They later fought on the Eastern Front.