Depending on the situation, enemies who surrendered were sometimes shot without any further ado. But that was unique neither to the Wehrmacht nor to the Nazi approach to war. Examples of POWs being executed go all the way back to antiquity, although the dimensions expanded dramatically in the twentieth century. In other wars as well, there were standing official and unofficial orders to “take no prisoners,” and even when no such instructions existed, it was often more expedient for soldiers to simply kill enemies rather than have to disarm, care for, transport, and guard them. Reports about such executions often read “shot while attempting escape” or simply “no prisoners taken.” In World War I as well, POWs were killed out of revenge or simple jealousy, since many soldiers resented the fact that they would have to fight on, while the lives of the prisoners were presumably safe—or because keeping POWs was inconvenient or dangerous.867 The same was true in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and we can assume nothing has changed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars either.
Situational conditions in war often establish rules that violate those of the Geneva Convention. Soldiers may consider it inadvisable or superfluous to burden themselves with POWs, opting simply to eradicate them. This phenomenon occurred in all theaters of World War II, although with varying frequency. In those areas where fighting was particularly fierce, the numbers of POWs executed rose. Because of the prevailing cult of toughness, elite units were more likely to kill enemies who tried to surrender. The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division in Normandy, for example, did not behave all that differently in this regard than the SS division “Götz von Berlichingen.”868
The greatest eruptions of violence in World War II occurred in the Soviet Union and the Pacific. But extreme violence was also part of everyday life in the relatively “normal” European theaters of war in France and Italy,869 and it was perpetrated by both sides: “ ‘Even in hopeless situations,’ reported American Joseph Shomon, who saw many bodies as the commander of a graves registration unit, ‘the Germans would usually fight to the last, refusing to surrender. [Then] when their ammunition was gone, they were ready to give up and ask for mercy [but because] many American lives had been lost in this delay, our troops often killed the Germans.’”870 According to historian Gerald Linderman, the most frequent reason for American GIs to shoot German POWs was to avenge their own lost comrades. But Linderman also cites intentional and not just situational factors. Sometimes soldiers were ordered not to take any prisoners,871 and they were more likely to execute captured soldiers who conformed to Nazi stereotypes, yelled “Heil Hitler,” or belonged to the Waffen SS.872 For instance, four years after the fact, Ernest Hemingway still told with pride how he had boldly shot a captive member of the Waffen SS.873
To briefly summarize: A lot of what appears horrible, lawless, and barbaric about war crimes is actually part of the usual frame of reference in wartime. For that reason, stories about cruelty don’t attract any more attention in the World War II German surveillance protocols than they do in reports and commentaries by U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam. Such instances of cruelty rarely seem like anything spectacular to the majority of soldiers as long as they are not called to answer for themselves before a court of law. Such violence is instrumental in nature. It’s hardly any surprise, then, that it occurs in war.
Work is a crucial social activity in all modern societies. What we do is embedded within a veritable universe of desired end results, defined largely by people other than ourselves, be they bosses or those who set the rules for institutions, businesses, or military units. In the context of work, individuals per se only bear particular responsibility for that precise part of the total process to which they contribute. Ironically, division-of-labor arrangements are precisely what relieve individuals of accountability for what they do or are prepared to do. Commercial airplane pilots or reserve policemen can become murderers who kill civilians. Likewise, aviation companies, oven producers, or academic departments covering pathology can become instruments of genocide. Matrixes of social functions and institutions store up human potential like batteries.874 Never is this more apparent than in wartime. When societies are mobilized to fight a total war, institutions, businesses, and organizations that normally work harmlessly toward their respective peacetime goals become “essential to the war effort.” That’s because they can easily redirect their potential.
