May 27, 1940: The Le Paradis Massacre and its Connection to the 2026 Maine Governor’s Election

Eighty-six years ago today, on May 27, 1940, German troops, under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein, gunned down between 97 and 99 (recollections vary, but not by much) Norfolk Regiment British soldiers who had used up all their ammo and had been hiding in a farmhouse in the small hamlet of Le Paradis, about fifty miles from Dunkirk, and who had agreed to surrender to the Germans by walking out.

When they marched out of the farmhouse waving a white flag tied at the end of a bayonet, they were mowed down by German machine-gun fire. Some retreated to the farmhouse and later came out into a field where their personal possessions were removed and they were marched into a pit which had been prepared, again, in the line of machine-gun fire. Those who survived the bullets were either shot with hand-held pistols or stabbed with bayonets.

Two men survived by lying among the dead. They surrendered again and became prisoners of war, one of whom was repatriated in 1943 in exchange for some German soldiers. What was thought to be his unlikely tale of the event was dismissed until the other finally returned home and confirmed it. After the war, a tribunal was held, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein, the man who'd given the orders to fire on surrendering British soldiers, was found guilty of a war crime and hanged.

The German division led by Fritz Knöchlein was the 3rd SS Panzer Division, also known as the Totenkopf Division. Their divisional insignia is the one that Graham Platner--the Democrat candidate for the governor of Maine--voluntarily had tattooed on his chest almost 20 years ago. He's indicated that he was drunk and on leave at the time, and that he randomly selected the image, not recognizing its ugly significance.

An inebriated and ignorant state that Platner would have us believe continued for eighteen more years, until October 2025 (a mere two months after declaring his candidacy for the office of governor of the State of Maine), when reality and history--he says--finally broke through his thick head and he got the image tattooed over by something else, I neither know nor care what. Along the way, he displayed his physique, and his Totenkopf tattoo, proudly and often on social media with--apparently--ne'er a whimper of complaint nor a moment of self-awareness for what it really was.

Sorry, not sorry, I don't buy it. I've known quite a few United States Marines as friends, and was related by marriage to another, and I know that they are quite picky about their officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned. As a sergeant, Platner would have been required to do his bit of annual reading from the "Commandant's Choice" reading list, one that's heavy on the history of the USMC, on world history in general, and on the history of warfare in particular.

I doubt that Platner was so drunk, so ignorant, or so dumb that he didn't know what he was looking at when he perused the wall of possible tattoos on offer in the parlor in Split, Croatia in 2007.

Sometimes, when people tell you who they are, you should believe them. (As with Platner's 2019 Reddit post calling an American soldier a "dumb MFer," "fat a**" and "mouth breather" who "didn't deserve to live," and mocking that soldier's tactical decisions--decisions which may well have saved the lives of his brothers-in-arms at the time. Last week, in May 2026, Platner refused to apologize to the soldier for his disgusting remarks.)

Crimenutely. Graham Platner is telling you who he's always been, and who he still is.

Voters of Maine, please believe him.

I know it's a widely held precept, inside and outside the Corps, that there is no such thing as an "ex-Marine."

Perhaps the Corps should consider, just this once, making an exception that might prove the rule.

Just saying.

PS: The photo at the top of this article is from the Wikipedia page about the massacre, and shows the location of same. You're welcome to look up the Totenkopf insignia, both the original from the Panzer Division, and the one displayed via social media on Graham Platner's manly chest. The mainstream media has, until now, hidden behind the story that Platner's tattoo only "resembled" the original. You be the judge.