Shoot to kill order

[scottsmm]

For those prisoners you just don't feel like taking, or the ones who surrender and then decide they don't want to, and they keep jumping back and forth. Mainly though it's for the barbarian better known as Joachim Peiper, who always surrenders before you get the chance to make his body look like Swiss cheese. I do know prisoners are worth more than enemy KIA soldiers. This wouldn't change the game really, but it would help add a bit more realism (maybe have it be one of the effects of fanaticism).

[costard]

I've found I more often get the impulse to shoot my own men when they fail to execute orders as given; rampant frustration taking toll on my forebearance. I'm not too worried about prisoners going back to their own side - it tells me where my opponent has troops inside my lines.

[scottsmm]

Same, but when you play Wacht Am Rhein in CMAK, you really want to kill Peiper not take him prisoner, at least that's how I feel.

[scottsmm]

In more recent news I wish Obama would give the shoot to kill order on any pirates which open fire on any citizen, military official, military equipment, etc. I guess pirates just have no common sense, I mean who opens fire on a US helicopter with a rifle, and expects to meet a different fate then what the three three Somalia pirates brothers meet.

[Joachim]

Same, but when you play Wacht Am Rhein in CMAK, you really want to kill Peiper not take him prisoner, at least that's how I feel.

If you'd feel like that in RL, it probably wouldn't make you any better than him.

[scottsmm]

This is a game, not real life. Out of curiosity do you support the butchering Peiper did to the Americans at Malmedy? I didn't say shoot every German prisoner, but considering what he ordered and helped carried out; I believe he deserves this as his fate. I would consider myself a pretty humane person, and I'm fine with 99.999999% of Germans who surrendered to the Americans, but people like Goering, Peiper, Himmler (British), Ribbentrop all deserved to (once positively identified) be shot 100 times over at least. I like Germans as people, but these last 3 names along with a few others deserved to die.

[Sergei]

If you agree that it is a game, then maybe you agree that wanting to murder a binary character is rather childish.

[scottsmm]

True but why not let your inner child come out? You're only playing a game after all. Why not pretend when you play the game that you're actually in command of a WWII unit (whatever it is)? If you're playing the game that way it becomes a little bit more interesting, and ordering the death of an enemy SS leader seems quite appropriate, and to a degree historical. Anyway this is beginning to seem like it's not an idea that's worth carrying on.

[Tux]

Area Fire next to them with a spare crew member or something. Shouldn't be powerful enough to make them crawl away but should kill/ injure them before the crew's pistol ammo runs out. I imagine that will accomplish your aims, although it might take a few minutes.

[Dietrich]

when you play Wacht Am Rhein in CMAK, you really want to kill Peiper not take him prisoner, at least that's how I feel.

If you'd feel like that in RL, it probably wouldn't make you any better than him.

Out of curiosity do you support the butchering Peiper did to the Americans at Malmedy?

As soon as the bad guys do it first, that makes it okay for the good guys to do likewise thereafter. That's the reasoning, anyway.

To put the Malmedy incident into perspective, consider this alternate scenario: Let's say a company of battle-hardened Marines fresh from the Pacific Theater were advancing eastward through the Ardennes and overran a couple of German artillery batteries, capturing the several dozen personnel thereof. Now let's say these Marines had only a few days earlier heard the news about a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Philadelphia, in which hundreds of people were killed, thousands maimed, and tens of thousands rendered homeless. Now let's say the Marines' regimental commander drove by, saw the herded-together prisoners, and yelled at the Marines something along the lines of: "Just deal with 'em and get back on the move eastward!" As to how to "deal with" the Germans, what choice do you think these men -- hardened men accustomed to, perhaps embittered by, weeks of bloody, take-no-prisoners combat -- would be likely to make?

Indeed, the Malmedy massacre was a heinous thing, and killing POWs is about the worst thing one can do to help win a war (both tactically and strategically), but it wasn't simply a matter of "we're evil Nazi bastards, so we're going to machine-gun these prisoners".

[Joachim]

Himmler, Göring, Eichmann, Goebbels, ... Yes, I'd even do it myself. With my own hands if necessary. Yet after a guilty verdict that is 100% clear of any "vae victis" justice. Which in these cases is pretty easy.

Peiper. Hmmm. German authorities are not allowed to examine allied war crimes. Hmm. A similar number of personnel from the LAH is sentenced than there are victims at Malmedy. Most death sentences resulting from Malmedy are turned into prison. Peipers death sentence is not carried out, turned into jail sentence in '51. Hmmm. Just wondering why.

Another question:

Ever heard of the "Rheinwiesen"? German ex-soldiers in early '45 dying in the open, without being feed. Thousands. They were declared "Disarmed enemy forces" to evade the Geneva convention regarding POWs. Would you kill Eisenhower for that?

Can you condemn somebody from the "bad" side for something you accept from your own "good" soldiers?

This is war. The first victim in a war is innocence. Judging from outside is pretty easy.

[Sergei]

I don't remember whether it was an official order or just creative interpreting by troops, but at D-Day the US airborne troops, or some units anyway, were acting under the understanding that they were not to take any prisoners during the first day, as that would drag them down. That doesn't make the war crimes of Germans any better, but people easily hold the enemy against higher standards than themselves.

[scottsmm]

How many Germans surrendered to any airborne personnel (most where just single soldier actions), so the truth was Germans didn't surrender to Airborne forces.

Joachim, I'll give you this much the Soviet forces weren't to kind to Germans, but except for some scattered instances in the West (US, England, Canada, France, etc) we were quite happy to take prisoners. Now I ask where in America could you find a place like Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, and many other Death camps (they should never be called concentration camps, that's just ridiculous Nazi propaganda). Peiper deserved the death penalty no questions asked (one of the major injustices), especially because this is just one instance of such a crime, he had a habit of doing the same thing in the USSR repeatedly. Also when the Russians committed war crimes, you must understand that after 20 million deaths, Russian countryside destroyed, over 20 million rapes, everyone who lived in the USSR lost someone in their family by mid 1943. Not to mention they didn't even want this war in the first place, most Russians had a problem that they couldn't handle already and that of course is Stalin.

Joachim place yourself in Eisenhower shoe's, you've just been involved in the most devasting war the earth has ever witnessed. Now you literally have millions of people with no home, no water supply, no food, etc. There is just no way that you are going to be able to save this population overnight, and with summer just one month away, well what can I say. Now the Germans on the other hand they had supplies water, food, etc they were even set aside for prisoners, but guess what the German sadistic hordes are just going to watch as 2 or 3 year old kids starve to death, and this is done in mass production for roughly 5 years, oh yeah I forgot to mention the German soldiers massacred (totally annihilated) the kids family in front of him, what nice people! I know Germans aren't even remotely like this today, but back then millions of them were.

One last thing why should someone who kills a couple of hundred of your soldiers (not prisoners) either directly or indirectly, or kills innocent people (elderly, POW, women, children, etc) deserve to be taken prisoner something I've never understood.

[Joachim]

That's the Geneva convention. You sign it, you obey it. You break it after your country signed it - you're a criminal. Morally and legally.

Pretty easy on paper. RL is another matter. But if you state that you are the Good Guy you gotta live it. If you don't live it - which right (except vae victis, of course) makes you the judge over others?

Soviets did not sign the Geneva convention pre-WW2, so the eastern front (regarding SU and anybody fighting the SU) was not subject to it. No law - no crime to judge under that law. So it's hard to judge Peiper on that (legally that is, morale is another matter).

Regarding naming the concentration camps - well, initially they were concentration camps for prisoners of many kinds. Just use the same name as the Brits did. A quick solution if you don't have the time to build real prisons but face lots of fresh prisoners - just like the Brits did. Somehow those concentration camps have a tendency for high death rates in many nations. But in GE some turned into "Vernichtungslager" - which means annihilation camps. But the majority remained labor camps. Death thru labor there is another matter, but not the industrial scale mass extinction.

And I don't believe in 20m rapes in Russia. Torture, murder, yes. But rape would have been "Rassenschande". "Crime against race" - Aryan blood was not allowed to be mixed. One could face the death penalty for it. From a pure morale pov, I'd punish those just inventing that word.

Regarding Soviet war crimes - no Geneva convention, no crime. But Soviets are not the topic I want to discuss here.

Please note that I am devil's advocate here. Everybody has the right for a lawyer (though I am a mathematician).

Gruß

Joachim

For those able to read German, there is an interesting article and further sources here:

http://www.welt.de/kultur/article4541402/Neue-Studie-belegt-duestere-Wehrmachtsgeschichte.html

[Dietrich]

why should someone who kills a couple of hundred of your soldiers (not prisoners) either directly or indirectly, or kills innocent people (elderly, POW, women, children, etc) deserve to be taken prisoner something I've never understood.

So you're saying that only enemy combatants who surrender without a fight "deserve to be taken prisoner"? That the only people who "deserve to be taken prisoner" are those that don't need to be taken prisoner at all? Are you really saying that if you were a battalion commander (a unit any smaller would be wiped out if it took at least 200 casualties in a battle) and your unit took 200-plus casualties, you would order all surviving enemy combatants to be killed? *shrug* It's your choice. But do you really want an implacable enemy? Just because the enemy kills POWs and one is righteously indignant, even outright enraged about it, that doesn't provide any justification for killing enemy POWs.

[scottsmm]

What I'm saying is you can't have some sniper with 50 bullets, use all 50 bullets on you're men, and when he runs out of ammo, he puts up a white flag. That's just simply not right.

Joachim anyone minus Hitler could face the death penalty for anything in Nazi Germany. You're also right that at first the concentration camps weren't terrible annihlation camps which they turned into later in the war. With that said I still wouldn't want to be an inhabitant of them.

Now 20m was just a figure I throw out there. However are you seriously going to tell me that no German soldier raped a Russian? Note it seems like you are totally indifferent to the deaths of over 20 million Russians, many unarmed POW's, Jews, Gypsies (although I have to admit they are extremely annoying), etc. btw out of curiosity is that German law now (everyone has a right to a lawyer)?

[Dietrich]

What I'm saying is you can't have some sniper with 50 bullets, use all 50 bullets on you're men, and when he runs out of ammo, he puts up a white flag. That's just simply not right.

Uh-huh. So if one of the snipers under your command ran out of ammo and then surrendered, you would be fine with the enemy summarily executing him on the field?

Besides, just because an enemy sniper "uses 50 bullets on [your] men" doesn't necessarily mean that he kills or even wounds any of them.

Even if it the surrendered enemy soldier that you kill is a sniper who had just inflicted casualties on your men at a 50-to-1 ratio, killing POWs makes the enemy want to not surrender, to fight to the death. Would you really want pretty much all enemy soldiers to fight to the death, thus inflicting even more casualties on your men than they would otherwise?

If killing POWs is one of the things that makes the enemy evil, what about the 'good guy' when he kills POWs?

[Joachim]

Question: Did the US POWs killed near Malmedy have any ammo left?

Cause then you say you would have been tempted to kill them - if you were in Peipers place.

I do not state that not a single German soldier raped Russians/Soviets. Of course there were rapes. I only state that rape was forbidden as such and due to "race theory" and thus doubt the numbers.

I ain't indifferent to the death of anybody (well, a few exceptions, but if I had to judge them I would force myself to get rid of emotions). And it does not matter much whether there were large scale rapes or not. There were enough crimes just as worse.

But I believe that one of the most important laws is that anybody has the right for a lawyer. Including freshly captured POWs. If you want to shoot them on the spot, that is plain wrong. Just as wrong as the "Kommando-Befehl" ordering to wipe out any commando troop by killing them in action.

If the death penalty is "acceptable", it at least needs a neutral court. Emotions lead away from neutrality and thus are not acceptable when judging about lifes.