Tango01 | 26 Jun 2022 4:57 p.m. PST |
In WW2. Of possible interest?
Free to read
link Armand
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doc mcb | 26 Jun 2022 5:35 p.m. PST |
If you want to surrender, you'd better still have rounds in your weapon. |
Cardinal Ximenez | 26 Jun 2022 5:59 p.m. PST |
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Bunkermeister | 26 Jun 2022 6:41 p.m. PST |
2 million Americans served in Europe in WWII. Only a tiny fraction need to have participated or condoned such behavior for the numbers of German dead to be in the hundreds, killed a few at a time. There is a difference between a small percentage of soldiers murdering POWs and organized or official killing of POWs. No one on the American side would ever say that the unlawful killing of the enemy is a morale or proper act. And it was prosecuted when it was brought to official channels with sufficient evidence to achieve a conviction. With 2 million young men some of them are going to be psychopathic violent individuals in war or peace. Going to war will only give them more opportunities. I would also suggest that if this were common, why were the Germans so willing to surrender to American units? Mike Bunkermeister Creek Bunker Talk blog |
Editor in Chief Bill | 26 Jun 2022 7:59 p.m. PST |
There's an eyewitness account of a surrendering German soldier being killed at Bastogne, when some soldiers believed surrendering soldiers could not be accepted while the Americans were surrounded. |
Artilleryman | 27 Jun 2022 1:32 a.m. PST |
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Germans preferred to surrender to the British, then the Americans and last and very much least, to the Russians. Having said that, I know from an old family anecdote that even surrendering to the British could be risky in the heat of battle. |
doc mcb | 27 Jun 2022 3:46 a.m. PST |
Remember the scene in ROUGH RIDERS where the Spanish soldier empties his rifle and then throws up his hands to surrender? Sorry, doesn't work like that. |
doc mcb | 27 Jun 2022 3:49 a.m. PST |
Was Henry V justified in ordering the slaughter of French prisoners at Agincourt? Another French attack seemed imminent. They were still in armor and the ground was littered with weapons. |
42flanker | 27 Jun 2022 6:37 a.m. PST |
I know from an old family anecdote that even surrendering to the British could be risky in the heat of battle. "Too late, chum…" |
Murvihill | 27 Jun 2022 6:48 a.m. PST |
I read the introduction, then skimmed the rest hoping to find statistics but I didn't find any. Maybe they are buried in there somewhere. |
Thresher01 | 27 Jun 2022 7:08 a.m. PST |
I suspect at Bastogne that may have been after news got out that the Germans were machinegunning their prisoners. Doesn't make it right, but is understandable. |
Londonplod | 27 Jun 2022 8:02 a.m. PST |
My sister in law's late father was in the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry in the war,his unit helped liberate a death camp, not many Germans were taken prisoner after this experience. |
0ldYeller | 27 Jun 2022 12:33 p.m. PST |
Hard to take a thesis seriously when it has so many spelling and grammatical mistakes. |
AndreasB | 27 Jun 2022 2:40 p.m. PST |
"There's no hard evidence but here are a bunch of unverifiable anecdotes" isn't how you should approach a Masters Thesis, but I guess standards aren't everyone's thing. All the best Andreas |
Tango01 | 27 Jun 2022 3:46 p.m. PST |
I surrended to the British… fortunately to the Marines and not the Paras… (smile) Excellent soldiers and people…
Armand
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Bismarck | 28 Jun 2022 1:14 p.m. PST |
Londonplod, Had a family member with a similar experience and his comment that they didn't take many prisoners after that either. |
Legion 4 | 28 Jun 2022 2:46 p.m. PST |
The Western Allies' war crimes were very small in number, but yes still some occurred. Yes is was wrong … As was said, "War Is Hell" … |
Zoltar | 28 Jun 2022 3:53 p.m. PST |
The author states there are countless incidents of POW killing at least three times but is still very short on specific instances for a thesis (to prove his thesis). He also clearly did not read the rules of war he sites multiple times and the allowance for human reaction times as they relate to surrender. Also, lumping accepting surrender under fire…even when part of a "surrendering" group is still engaging you and a psychopath who kills unarmed men in a camp in the US…far from the warzone together is just stupid (I am sure there are more eloquent ways to say it but stupid fits). Did it happen. Absolutely. Is it troubling…absolutely. But it smacks of modern, revisionist history searching for moral equivalency or perceived "myth destruction" (the allies were good, Axis bad) to me. |
42flanker | 29 Jun 2022 3:00 a.m. PST |
THe author of the thesis, of which this is appears to be a draft before copy editing, is not merely testing the fact of POW killing, which has been already been acknowledged, but the attitudes to such acts, as discussed in the historiography and as revealed in official records as well as soldier's memoirs. He does assert that these killings were more widespread than generally believed and for reasons that went beyond the heat of battle and retribution according to unwritten codes. The intention seems not to point fingers at a moral failure, but to consider the erosive effect of prolonged exposure to strains of battle, and, specifically in the case of WW2, when encountering the bestiality of the Nazi regime, on the ethics of civilised,civilian life. I think it invites a serious discussion, "Goals of the study ….this study argues that a wide range of external and internal factors, each with subtle variations, motivated the killing of POWs. Furthermore, it argues that these were not merely isolated incidents or calculated acts of retribution. The cumulative effects of combat stress, and the frequency with which soldiers encountered situations providing motive and opportunity, indicates that POW killing was systemic to American combat behavior. Officially forbidden at the highest levels, but tacitly condoned by the men at the front, it was the "open secret" of the war. The scarcity of official documentation of POW killing means that the majority of the evidence utilized in this study comes from veterans‘ memoirs, letters, interviews, and oral history projects. This is not to say that official documentation is unavailable —it is simply hard to find. A lengthy search of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. uncovered numerous after-action reports, several Inspector General investigations, two courts-martial records, and a post-war investigation into POW treatment initiated by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. These sources, along with the observations of some of the aforementioned historians, serve as the foundation for the discussion." |
Murvihill | 29 Jun 2022 5:40 a.m. PST |
And yet he only provides anecdotal evidence for his thesis (that it got worse because of the erosive effects of combat on the human psyche). Without statistical proof it will be a hard sell. |
AndreasB | 29 Jun 2022 11:06 p.m. PST |
Without statistical proof it will be a hard sell. Yup. Right now this is good enough as a research note. There are some interesting questions, and lots of anecdotal stuff. It should be the starting point for an inquiry, and not the basis for the rather outlandish claims being made. All the best Andreas |
sidley | 03 Jul 2022 1:33 p.m. PST |
It's never easy. If an American company was clearing a German position and the Germans in the lead trenches were surrendering and the in depth positions were still firing, it makes it difficult to secure those prisoners. Nothing is simple in combat. Easy for academics with no understanding of warfare to make outrageous unsubstantiated claims based on anecdotes. Love the phrase "killed countless numbers of Axis POWs", how many are countless, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand? Ridiculous article. |
Nine pound round | 03 Jul 2022 5:44 p.m. PST |
It went the other way, too. My father recently shocked me with a story from my late grandfather, who fought in the 11th Armored (which gets some unfavorable comment in some histories for giving SS prisoners short shrift at the Bulge). Apparently, toward the end of the war, he came across a very young German, maybe 14, armed and in uniform. He took the boy's rifle and told him, "go home." And that was that. |
WarpSpeed | 04 Jul 2022 8:31 a.m. PST |
Canadians dont have a very favourable rating either. |
Zinkala | 05 Jul 2022 3:04 p.m. PST |
Something about going head to head with the 12th SS and other elite units made many canadians not so forgiving. I heard from one veteran that it wasn't unknown for them to get rid of prisoners just because of exhaustion. A lot of the battles in Normandy were incredibly bloody and they didn't have the manpower and energy to properly watch all the prisoners. It wasn't officially condoned but "shot while trying to escape" happened. Didn't help the situation when there's many accounts of germans pretending to surrender and then shooting allied soldiers when they came out to accept. The same man that told me about things like this also said he owed his life to a german soldier. He was caught by surprise and could have easily been shot and the german looked at him for a bit and then put down his rifle and surrendered. |
Tango01 | 06 Jul 2022 3:19 p.m. PST |
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Legion 4 | 09 Jul 2022 6:00 p.m. PST |
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