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To: Allegra

Sailors will save drowning enemy sailors in wartime. At least civilized nations will do so. Syria appealed to Israel. Will Biden lift sanctions on Syria ? Doubt it.


109 posted on 02/06/2023 12:30:38 PM PST by csvset (tolerance becomes a crime when attached to evil)
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To: csvset
Sailors will save drowning enemy sailors in wartime.

One of the all time movie scenes that will always stay with me was from "Das Boot", when the Germans were looking on in horror realizing there was nothing they could do the save the British sailors, they had torpedoed, they expected them to have abandoned the ship earlier.

I saw this from a Q&A about Das Boot:

War Order 154, issued by the German Navy in late 1939, explicitly prohibited U-boats from rescuing survivors. It was reaffirmed in 1942 after the Laconia incident, where three German U-boats rescued hundreds of survivors of the torpedoed transport ship Laconia, and were subsequently attacked and sunk by US bombers. Adm. Dönitz ordered in the Laconia order, that from that point on, no survivors were to be rescued, nor should they be given assistance. Prior to that, even though all sides had prohibitions in place, U-boats of all sides would assist survivors if possible (providing food, navigational aid and medical help, sometimes taking survivors aboard). Even if not for the order, there simply wasn't enough room for prisoners on his boat. The whole movie has been shot in such a way as to convey how tight the quarters were on board a WWII German sub, there was barely enough room for the crew, their supplies, food, fuel, torpedoes, etc. Taking on prisoners would mean having to feed and quarter them on the boat. Also, it might have been days or weeks before they could dock in a safe port to drop them off. Not to mention the possibility of a prisoner escaping, causing sabotage or at least giving away the sub's position. So the Captain sails off, leaving them to their fate.

113 posted on 02/06/2023 12:37:25 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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