One of the country's leading war historians has amassed disturbing evidence that German troops trying to surrender during the First World War were "frequently executed" by Canadian soldiers gripped by fear or hungry for revenge. In a lengthy article that appears in the latest Journal of Military History, the field's top scholarly publication, Canadian War Museum historian Tim Cook explores the complex and volatile "politics of surrender" that, in a startling number of cases, led to "unlawful" killings of Germans after they had given up the fight, laid down their guns and thrown up their hands.
"Becoming a prisoner was one of the most dangerous acts on the battlefield of the Great War," Cook writes in an essay filled with detailed accounts of prisoner killings unearthed from letters, diaries and post-war interviews or collected from previous writings. "The pleading of mercy and the downing of weapons did not always stop the bloodshed," he observes. "The moment of capitulation for a potential prisoner was of crucial importance: would the surrender be accepted or would it result in a bayonet thrust?" In one example Cook highlights as "an inexcusable act of cruelty," a Canadian soldier escorting a group of German prisoners to the rear lines is described as having "casually dropped a Mills No. 5 grenade into the greatcoat pocket of one of the prisoners, which dismembered him seconds later."
Noting that "the desire for revenge was the most common reason why a prisoner might be executed," Cook quotes an August 1918 letter from Lieut. R.C. Germain to his parents in Canada that describes the grim aftermath of a bloody battle for a strategic ridge: "After losing half of my company there, we rushed them and they had the nerve to throw up their hands and cry, 'Kamerad.' All the 'Kamerad' they got was a foot of cold steel thro' them from my remaining men while I blew their brains out with my revolver without any hesitation. You may think this rather rough, but if you had seen my boys go down you would have done the same and my only regret is that too many prisoners were taken." Cook describes the war as one of "nearly unparalleled brutality," and stresses that Canada's infantrymen from the 1914-18 war are not being "condemned for their actions almost a century later by an historian comfortably employing hindsight and gathered material from the safety of an archives."
But he does target earlier generations of war historians for largely "burying this harsh reality of Western Front war-fighting," and challenges mythic portrayals of Canada's First World War soldiers as inherently more humane than their German enemies, or as patriotic innocents sacrificed to the seemingly senseless trench-to-trench holocaust that consumed millions of men on all sides. "How does the execution of prisoners fit into this view of innocent victims caught in war's vortex?" Cook asks, concluding that "the Great War soldier was as much an executioner as he was a victim." In an interview, he said the question of how soldiers deal with prisoners at the moment of surrender is still a controversial issue in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's why, he added, it remains important to analyze and understand from history the dangerous "grey area" between trying to kill an adversary one minute and, after he drops his weapon, "holding his life in your hands."
Continued at link.............
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimes....html?id=93a75181-0327-4d66-892a-4b450be95e11
"Becoming a prisoner was one of the most dangerous acts on the battlefield of the Great War," Cook writes in an essay filled with detailed accounts of prisoner killings unearthed from letters, diaries and post-war interviews or collected from previous writings. "The pleading of mercy and the downing of weapons did not always stop the bloodshed," he observes. "The moment of capitulation for a potential prisoner was of crucial importance: would the surrender be accepted or would it result in a bayonet thrust?" In one example Cook highlights as "an inexcusable act of cruelty," a Canadian soldier escorting a group of German prisoners to the rear lines is described as having "casually dropped a Mills No. 5 grenade into the greatcoat pocket of one of the prisoners, which dismembered him seconds later."
Noting that "the desire for revenge was the most common reason why a prisoner might be executed," Cook quotes an August 1918 letter from Lieut. R.C. Germain to his parents in Canada that describes the grim aftermath of a bloody battle for a strategic ridge: "After losing half of my company there, we rushed them and they had the nerve to throw up their hands and cry, 'Kamerad.' All the 'Kamerad' they got was a foot of cold steel thro' them from my remaining men while I blew their brains out with my revolver without any hesitation. You may think this rather rough, but if you had seen my boys go down you would have done the same and my only regret is that too many prisoners were taken." Cook describes the war as one of "nearly unparalleled brutality," and stresses that Canada's infantrymen from the 1914-18 war are not being "condemned for their actions almost a century later by an historian comfortably employing hindsight and gathered material from the safety of an archives."
But he does target earlier generations of war historians for largely "burying this harsh reality of Western Front war-fighting," and challenges mythic portrayals of Canada's First World War soldiers as inherently more humane than their German enemies, or as patriotic innocents sacrificed to the seemingly senseless trench-to-trench holocaust that consumed millions of men on all sides. "How does the execution of prisoners fit into this view of innocent victims caught in war's vortex?" Cook asks, concluding that "the Great War soldier was as much an executioner as he was a victim." In an interview, he said the question of how soldiers deal with prisoners at the moment of surrender is still a controversial issue in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's why, he added, it remains important to analyze and understand from history the dangerous "grey area" between trying to kill an adversary one minute and, after he drops his weapon, "holding his life in your hands."
Continued at link.............
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimes....html?id=93a75181-0327-4d66-892a-4b450be95e11
