execution of ss soldiers at dachau...

No they are not, in answer to all three of your sentences.
Certainly killing is a part of war but there are times when it is not necessary or even of utility. The whole modern concept of civilization involves a respect for other humans. The time for warfare as practiced by "The Great Khan" is passed.

 

There is a strong difference between killing and murder. For some, ethics will play a major roll in how they distinguish between the two.

 

all I can say is you guys that have never seen combat at it's most gruesome will not be able to understand .................

you have veterans of several different wars/theater of ops that can testify to this first hand

 

Not understand what? As it is this is one of the most useless posts I've seen on this board.

 

Iwd you are talking to a Nam Vet and a friend, so if you don't understand his statement you could at least respect him and avoid saying his posting is the most useless of the forum, especially as it isn't. I don't know if you saw combat, but if you did you'd understand he mentions there is nothing more horrible and that any human being could turn into a beast if thrown in the pit. This is my way to say I fully understand those who shot camps guards.

 

This bloke nails it:

Axis History Forum • View topic - Massacre of SS POWs at Dachau

They did this, or enabed it:
Photos Taken by Gilbert Pastche : Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota

F***em,
~A

 

Not Quite, Karl's Comments are justified and with good reason.
According to years of research The Human Male Sociological as psychological or personal characteristics must be included.

We're weird with a Defence as Attack Mechanism, when your bearing witness to human carnage or heard that many of your men taken prisoners and executed as the many Documented accounts that happened from D-Day to the Falaise-Pocket +++ through Normandy, the mind can only Handel so much stress and one tends to take personal matters into their own hands or as a collective Group. AKA Payback. We've all heard of Shell-Shock, Battle Fatigue, well PayBack works in the same matter your Mind and body conditions itself to accept your Actions, even thou once, never even consider or completely against your Beliefs. Which is a Natural Human response when your subjected to that type of environment, as proven by many Studies. Yes you have Pacifist that won't fight even if faced with death and would refuse to defend themselves, but those are far and very Few.

When you meet and talk to a Soldier's that has the Thousand Yard Stare
you'll undestand the Term S Happens.

Look at how many US Officers or NCO's Got Fragged in Nam by their own men trying to justify Payback.


In the real World these actions can't be Justifiable, There's nothing Worldly Real when it comes to War, You're in a surreal world.

 

Actually, this "bloke" nailed it:

"Many of the I Company men were also sickened by the
realization of what some of their comrades had done that day.
Hank Mills said, 'We came over here to stop this bullshit and
here we've got somebody doing the same thing. Once [the
German guards] were unarmed, they were prisoners. You
can't shoot 'em, you can't do that. That's an atrocity, I'm sure.'"

From page 385, "The Rock of Anzio", Westview Press edition, 1998.


Dave

 

When this topic has come up before I have considered what I would have done if I were one of those in the liberating force. I'm still not sure. I donot find their actions unreasonable however, they were against "the rules". I certainly haven't condemed them and indeed think Patton made the correct decision.

That is however irrelevant to my most recent post. While I'm sure that those (and I'm among them) who haven't been in combat cannot fully understand it I'm also pretty sure the different experiance and situations make it so that even those who have been don't neccessarily understand the full experiance of others whose situations and experiances were different. However that's not what we were talking about. Indeed it's not clear to me that anything that was being discussed required combat experiance to understand. Thus a blanket "you won't understand" especially with no details of what we won't undersand contains essentially no information relevant to the topic which qualifies as useless in my book.

By the way I'd say the same to a friend face to face.

 

That's precisely the point. There is no need and /or desire to say some things , there is an understanding or there isn't , this is why so many veterans pass away without having shared their memories, even with their own children.

 

lwd

with all respect.....useless posting you call it. you can imagine all you want but until you get "into it" you will contemplate until your azz falls off. sure I could tell you evil stories of which we did but do not think you would enjoy that.

will be blunt which I usually am, you call war having rules; there are no frickin rules when the bullets fly. Geneva convention, martha stewart having a tea party or whomever writing all the B.S. up it makes absolutely no difference, you defend yourself with the idea of self-preservation and you buds, this is something I know full well that is incomprehensible to the non-veteran that has not seen the horrors ( so literally as Skip has said why should we talk about it and thus not have pre-judgement calls upon us)........I was not there at Dachau and cannot fathom what through G.I.s minds but have seen enough to fill volumes.........and in fact am not even going to go there as it is full of intense emotions.

well if this does not fill your humble cup of tea oh well, lets carry one then...

 

It does? Sure can't tell by our laws which legalize murder because it is in the interest of society to permit it.

Laws of war are useless because law only matters if it can be enforced.How exactly do you go after those who committ crimes who happen to be on the winning side? How do you arrest men who are well armed and surrounded by other well armed men?

People on an individual and group level ignore laws that they find conflict with their interests. Both sides in WWII did so and in the allies, no oen suffered for it. Very few axis members did so as well.

I see no way of enforcing laws of war without the laws themselves being abused for political purposes.

 

This thread is going nowhere and has besides gone off topic and is therefore closed.