Using enemy uniform, flying enemy colors, or responding to enemy challenges as if you were on their side are all considered legal ruse de guerres, as long as you don’t actually engage while the deception is taking place, nor use the deception for gathering information.
In WWII, the international law governing this would have been the 1907 Hague regulations, and they specifically outlaw “improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy”.
Not much in the way of definition of what is “improper”, though, but at Skorzeny’s 1947 trial, he was in fact acquitted because the military tribunal drew a distinction between wearing enemy uniform and fighting in it.
My dad was a medic (pharmacist’s mate) in the Navy in the Pacific. He carried the same weapon everyone in his team did. But since that team was underwater demolition (frogmen, predecessors to the SEALS) it was just a dive knife.
OK, so you’re allowed to take weapons from enemy soldiers. Does that also apply to ceremonial weapons, like the swords some Japanese (and British) soldiers carried? I mean, they are weapons, after all, just as much as a bayonet is, but their primary value to their wielders is sentimental, and to their enemy, as souvenirs.
I’d say that winning a defeated enemy’s sword (and armor) is one of the oldest military customs there are, dating back at least as far back as Homer. If you’re old-fashioned enough to carry a sword into battle, you should be old-fashioned enough to follow the ancient laws of war.
As a general rule agreed upon be the GC, medics were classified as non - combatants and were to be protected as such. From what I’ve e read the Germans mostly abided by this rule and did not target medics intentionally, although it isn’t unheard of that medics would be specifically targeted on occasion.
However, this is not the case in the Pacific, where the Japanese wound completely ignore any protections provided by the Red Cross. It was very common to see American medics armed in the Pacific.
In fact wounded Japanese would frequently hide a pistol or grenade and when an American medic would attempt to render aid to them would shoot the medic or blow both themselves and the medic up with a grenade. It happened so frequently that it became standard operating procedure to shoot wounded Japanese after a battle rather then risk helping them.
I get to be a pedant. Some get touchy if you say the MoH is “won” or if you call a recipient a “MoH winner.” Just one of those things.
It’s obvious that in the past it was allowed and easy to bring home souvenirs. Now war trophies are strictly forbidden and all shipments and mail are searched. It’s a big deal and very illegal. There were lots of hoops to jump through just to bring back items to be displayed at our unit headquarters. In the early parts of the Iraq war it may or may not have been much easier to sneak things through.
Ernie Pyle supposedly said “The British fight for their homes, the Germans fight for glory, Americans fight for souvenirs.”
The Red Cross visits in Germany were just for show. The head of the German Red Cross was a brutal mass murderer.
My uncle was in a Luftwaffe camp. (So better than a Heer stalag.)
They knew when the Red Cross was coming because they got new blankets and their Red Cross packages. The inspectors took a quick peek around, left satisfied, and then everything was taken away. He hated the Red Cross’s phony inspection nonsense. And there was no Red Cross around during the death marches the winter of 1945.
Don’t kid yourselves. The Nazi’s treated US prisoners quite inhumanely.