Posted on 06/06/2005 8:03:09 PM PDT by FreeKeys
Is that true?
This is a direct quote from the article (above); Dr. Sowell did the research; I didn't.
Why do you doubt it?
I know, but I assume there's a more complete recounting than the author's vague references to the History Channel. I'm certainly not saying it's false (it's just a newspaper column, not a scholarly article), but I'd like more details if anyone knows them.
During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.
This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.
This part needs to stop:
"The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray(edit: portray?) an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us."
Let them do their job: Kill Terrorists!
People of the future will not fail to notice that today's people willingly massacred 40,000,000+ unborn babies because 5 judges said it was OK with them to do that.
There seems to be a general misunderstanding about the purpose of the Geneva Accords.
These were not some flower-power feel good rules about how to conduct civilized war. They were hard-headed rules that applied between and among the signatories that were first and foremost designed to provide some limited protection to civilian populations in war zones.
To accomplish this, combatants needed to be distinguishable from civilian populations. Hence the requirements that combatants be clothed in distinguishing uniforms in order to be afforded the protections embodied in the treaty.
Conversely, soldiers fighting out of uniform NEEDED to be shot in order to give force and meaning to the provisions of the treaty. After all, if spies and saboturs, and others fighting out of uniform were afforded protections equivalent to those following the rules, the treaty is made a contempible and ineffective joke.
Good article!
We called 'em "Krauts", and no one screamed "Bigot!" either;)
It's absolutely true. Executed as "spies" was the term.
Hey, guess what . . . if a foreign country invaded my home town, you can be damn sure that I'd fight them off -- and I wouldn't have a uniform, either. I probably wouldn't even know how to put one on!
The basic premise of a "citizen militia" is that an armed citizenry makes a country extraordinarily difficult for an invading army to conquer. That works for Iraq as well as it did for 230 years of U.S. history.
Thomas Sowell is a great writer, but he ought to stick to economics.
The reference in the article was to the Geneva Convention, not gun control. Read much?
I understand exactly what the article said. My response addresses the point of the Geneva Convention in the context of armed citizens. There are tens of millions of people in the United States who own firearms, and almost every one of them would pick their guns up and shoot any foreign invading forces -- and they would all be considered in violation of the "rules of warfare" under the Geneva Convention, too.
If you were the subject of a dictatorship, liberators came to rescue you, and you decided to fight to defend the dictatorship, you'd deserve to get shot for any damned reason. What are you, some kind of moral relativist or something?
What are the "liberators" coming to rescue me from? And what are they going to replace it with?
Yes, it is true.
There was one very well documented case that occurred during or just after the Battle of the Budge. During the opening seconds of at doomed offensive, Germany parachuted several detachments of special troops behind American lines for the purpose of sabotage and what we would now be called terrorism. These men were clothed as Americans, carrying American equipment, and spoke English, colloquial American to be precise.
Not all were captured, but several were. They were captured wearing American uniforms behind American lines. Military justice was quick and final; death by firing squad. Not only were pictures, motion pictures and stills, taken but there is a well known painting by an Army Combat Artist of one of the executions - it appeared in a Life book on the history of World War II art printed in either the 1960s or 1970s.
What was not mentioned in the article was the post surrender combat operations by elements of the German Army; they went under the name of “Werewolves”. Working in occupied territory, wearing civilian clothing they stage ambushes of small American and British patrols and executed Germans who were cooperating with the occupation authorities. This went on for 5 to 8 years. When these people were captured military justice was just as quick and final; death by hanging.
Why the difference? The pre-surrender cases were at least some kind of military operation. Hence the military death. The post-surrender cases were treated as criminal cases by the military occupying authorities; hence the civilian death.
Yes. ...And the Geneva Conventions specifically excluded protections for such.
A major goal of the Geneva Conventions was to protect civilians from being directly subject to military actions, and as such a clear line between military and civilian was made. Those fighting out of uniform destroy that line and create a situation where there are no civilians. This was considered a bad thing, and so persons doing this were deliberately left unprotected.
A distinct and visible arm-band would do. Traditionally, Militias have had uniform markings as well. When you don't wear a uniform, you subject the civilian populace to military attacks. If someone invaded the U.S., it would probably be a moot point - most invaders I can think of probably wouldn't bother with the Conventions.
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