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So, it just happen on the barbarous Eastern Front, the SS regular German Army seemed to have got some practise in before hand.
In the Nazi's eyes, they were the only "humans", so the indescriminate killing of others (POW's or civilians) was probably no more, to them, than stepping on a roach or poisoning a rat. Total and complete psychopaths, all of them (Nazi's that is).
14% of Canadian Fatalities in Normandy was the killing of surrendered troops by the Germans some where abouts a 150I grant the likelyhood that in Normandy, Allied troops shot some Germans who were intending to surrender.
However, I think there is a distinction between what happened in the 'heat of battle' and what happened in the Dunkirk area. Where SS troops who had British troops in their custody - their surrender had been accepted, and later escorted them to a brick wall where a couple of machine guns mowned them down, to be followed by by the coup de grace of a rifle-butt to the skull or pistol shot for the wounded.
The regular German Army on finding the bodies investigated, but the report got filed!
Gateway | March Issue Story 2pb where i can find info about that ?
For further information I will try to add the relevant links.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinkt_massacre
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhoudt_massacre
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Paradis_massacrehttp://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/le_Paradis_massacre
Hope that helps.
there was never any order to summarily kill German POWs. In germany ther was, the infamous "kill the commandoes" order of 1942. But as these reports clearly demonstrate, it did not take an order from Hitler to reduce the german army to the most animalistic behaviour imaginable.
I feel increasingly unpleasant with judging people without ever becoming close to experiencing what they had lived through...
Pretending it happened only on one side, or that even it happened it was an exceedingly rare even is to kid ourselves. War is not clean, its brutal. I will even risk that we, sitting confortably in our armchairs, sipping cofee in our air conditioned offices, have very little right to judge those men 60 years ago, fighting for their very life.
How does it works in practice that in one moment, you are being fired at and fight for your life, the next moment you are to forget about the taboo, built up in decades in your civil life that stabbing the other human being in the stomach with a bayonett is forbidden, and the next moment if he raised his hand he is a human being again and you are not to stab in him in the stomach all the sudden...?
I feel increasingly unpleasant with judging people without ever becoming close to experiencing what they had lived through...