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I can’t imagine the balls and levels of patriotism these men had. If caught their deaths would have been incredibly gruesome, and almost certainly would have i

I can’t imagine the balls and levels of patriotism these men had. If caught their deaths would have been incredibly gruesome, and almost certainly would have involved their extensive torture, and murder of many other prisoners. Reminds me of a story Dan Carlin related on his latest Supernova In The East. During the early fighting in New Guinea with green Australian troops, the Japanese troops would tie captured Aussies to trees, torture them to death, and leave their bodies for other Australian troops to find with signs reading “he took a long time to die” on them. A captured Japanese soldier explained why. The Japanese soldiers did this under their unit leaders orders, to convince every Japanese soldier to fight to the death knowing that surrender would only get them the same treatment from the Australians. Japan had not signed the Geneva convention on prisoner treatment and refused to be bound by any of its principles.

smitty1e 6y ago
This is among the reasons why putting people in the position where they have nothing to lose is a terrible idea.
- nicbou 6y ago
  A good example being the Allies declaring that they wouldn't accept anything short of an unconditional surrender. You can imagine how Germany reacted to that.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    Nazi Germany's leadership and the German people are two different entities. Western allies also treated German POWs relatively well. The eastern front was a different scenario though, surrender for German and Soviet soldiers and civilians was very unpleasant.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      Indeed, my grandfather (German) spent the better part of the war in an American POW camp in Kentucky after being captured in North Africa. He learned English there, got along with his guards, and didn't hate the Americans. Coming home to Mainz and seeing what the French and British had done to his ancestral home and the civilians who lived there, he had other things to say about them. After escaping from a French POW camp (they were still being held despite the war being over and there were reprisal killings, etc.) he made his way back to Mainz (French occupation) but fled across the river in the dead of night to Wiesbaden, which was under American occupation and thus considered safer. A similar story for my Oma. He was actually my father's adopted father. My dad's biological father I don't know much about, but he served on the eastern front and came home a broken man with a missing leg.
      - ithkuil 6y ago
        Badly treated pow do hold a grudge for life, and (try hard to) pass on that grudge to next generations. My grandfather happened to be on the losing side of wwii in yugoslavia and hot harassed for decades because of that. Having tons of people like him, kindling hatred and privately teaching their children that the state you're living in is run by / controlled evil people, ultimately reignited a conflict half a century later.
        dki27 6y ago
        Yeah, Nazi Grandpa was a good man and Serb genocide could have been prevented if we had just been nicer to fascists after they lost the war they started to annihilate everyone else.
        ithkuil 6y ago
        It's all about identity. Croatian fascists rose to power riding a nationalistic sentiment that was brewing in the country which has been under foreign rule for centuries. Not sure where you get the "started the war to annihilate everyone else" angle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan too, but I don't think it's a good idea to paint everything with a rough brush and miss the nuances. It's important to understand people and what motivates them and what are the phycological forces at play. And you can do that without having to concede a "good people on both sides" bullshit. Honestly I don't think my grandfather had any idea about politics and -isms. He was just a kid been dragged into the war merely by belonging to a given tribe in a given place in a given time. When I was a kid his whole spiel about fascists va communists, christians vs party, was just our people vs their people. He used the same words and arguments I heard of people when the enemy was the "american imperialists". There was no ideology whatsoever, just the feeling of being oppressed. I don't see anything wrong punishing actual war criminals and top level brass, but when you stigmatize a whole population do you really expect people not holding a grudge and distorting facts to paint themselves in the best possible light?
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Well, it doesn't matter what Germany's reaction was. The Allies wouldn't accept anything short of an unconditional surrender because they tried otherwise with the Treaty of Versailles after WW1, and that resulted in WW2. In addition, democracies cannot just start, stop and restart wars on whim for political reasons - they need to start and finish them. And for the Russians, invading Berlin was very, very personal. To be more detailed, the German army wasn't going to surrender because: 1) Goebbels heard that the Western Allies had considered either decimating or castrating German men and turning Germany into stoneage farmers. So he was able to broadcast that into German homes using his household radios. 2) Germans knew what the Russians had planned for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Sun Tzu said something to this effect. Always allow your enemies to at least believe they can escape.
bhickey 6y ago
Spartacus did something similar. After being betrayed by pirates, he was cut off by the legions at the southern tip of what's today Calabria. He crucified a soldier before the Roman earthworks, both to demoralize the soldiers and to warn his fellow slaves what fate awaited them on defeat. His men breached the wall and, if I'm remembering my chronology, fought their way to the Alps (before things turned out badly for them.)
gabereiser 6y ago
I can’t imagine the balls and levels of patriotism these men had. If caught their deaths would have been incredibly gruesome, and almost certainly would have involved their extensive torture, and murder of many other prisoners. I hear this argument a lot for acts of valor in war. The counter to this is imagine what would happen to the hundreds if not thousands of lives if they didn’t act. It’s a mental game you play.

smitty1e 6y ago

This is among the reasons why putting people in the position where they have nothing to lose is a terrible idea.

nicbou 6y ago
A good example being the Allies declaring that they wouldn't accept anything short of an unconditional surrender. You can imagine how Germany reacted to that.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  Nazi Germany's leadership and the German people are two different entities. Western allies also treated German POWs relatively well. The eastern front was a different scenario though, surrender for German and Soviet soldiers and civilians was very unpleasant.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    Indeed, my grandfather (German) spent the better part of the war in an American POW camp in Kentucky after being captured in North Africa. He learned English there, got along with his guards, and didn't hate the Americans. Coming home to Mainz and seeing what the French and British had done to his ancestral home and the civilians who lived there, he had other things to say about them. After escaping from a French POW camp (they were still being held despite the war being over and there were reprisal killings, etc.) he made his way back to Mainz (French occupation) but fled across the river in the dead of night to Wiesbaden, which was under American occupation and thus considered safer. A similar story for my Oma. He was actually my father's adopted father. My dad's biological father I don't know much about, but he served on the eastern front and came home a broken man with a missing leg.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      Badly treated pow do hold a grudge for life, and (try hard to) pass on that grudge to next generations. My grandfather happened to be on the losing side of wwii in yugoslavia and hot harassed for decades because of that. Having tons of people like him, kindling hatred and privately teaching their children that the state you're living in is run by / controlled evil people, ultimately reignited a conflict half a century later.
      - dki27 6y ago
        Yeah, Nazi Grandpa was a good man and Serb genocide could have been prevented if we had just been nicer to fascists after they lost the war they started to annihilate everyone else.
        ithkuil 6y ago
        It's all about identity. Croatian fascists rose to power riding a nationalistic sentiment that was brewing in the country which has been under foreign rule for centuries. Not sure where you get the "started the war to annihilate everyone else" angle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan too, but I don't think it's a good idea to paint everything with a rough brush and miss the nuances. It's important to understand people and what motivates them and what are the phycological forces at play. And you can do that without having to concede a "good people on both sides" bullshit. Honestly I don't think my grandfather had any idea about politics and -isms. He was just a kid been dragged into the war merely by belonging to a given tribe in a given place in a given time. When I was a kid his whole spiel about fascists va communists, christians vs party, was just our people vs their people. He used the same words and arguments I heard of people when the enemy was the "american imperialists". There was no ideology whatsoever, just the feeling of being oppressed. I don't see anything wrong punishing actual war criminals and top level brass, but when you stigmatize a whole population do you really expect people not holding a grudge and distorting facts to paint themselves in the best possible light?
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Well, it doesn't matter what Germany's reaction was. The Allies wouldn't accept anything short of an unconditional surrender because they tried otherwise with the Treaty of Versailles after WW1, and that resulted in WW2. In addition, democracies cannot just start, stop and restart wars on whim for political reasons - they need to start and finish them. And for the Russians, invading Berlin was very, very personal. To be more detailed, the German army wasn't going to surrender because: 1) Goebbels heard that the Western Allies had considered either decimating or castrating German men and turning Germany into stoneage farmers. So he was able to broadcast that into German homes using his household radios. 2) Germans knew what the Russians had planned for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels
bigbubba 6y ago
Sun Tzu said something to this effect. Always allow your enemies to at least believe they can escape.

bhickey 6y ago

Spartacus did something similar. After being betrayed by pirates, he was cut off by the legions at the southern tip of what's today Calabria. He crucified a soldier before the Roman earthworks, both to demoralize the soldiers and to warn his fellow slaves what fate awaited them on defeat. His men breached the wall and, if I'm remembering my chronology, fought their way to the Alps (before things turned out badly for them.)

gabereiser 6y ago

I can’t imagine the balls and levels of patriotism these men had. If caught their deaths would have been incredibly gruesome, and almost certainly would have involved their extensive torture, and murder of many other prisoners. I hear this argument a lot for acts of valor in war. The counter to this is imagine what would happen to the hundreds if not thousands of lives if they didn’t act. It’s a mental game you play.