I hope so. Morally, the right thing to do has little to do with my personal feelings.
I say shoot him. War is hell. And if one of my buddies had just bought it, I’m sure I wouldn’t be flipping through the Geneva Convention regs afterward. Not saying I wouldn’t have regretted it, but under the circumstances … carnage would have ruled, I suppose.
On another note (apologies if this completely hijacks), but why was the medic Wade even included in the storming of the machine gun nest in the first place? From what I gather he was unarmed (at least he was as they were trooping through the fields). Why would he storm anything without a weapon? He should have stayed back with Upham and we would have been spared seeing Tom Hanks cry (although, I do love that scene … very powerful).
Just as some are surprised by the number of thread responses saying some variant of “kill him” (even if qualified), I’m surprised by how many seem to think this is a time when you would be thinking rationally and proceeding along the same ethical code you would use when you haven’t seen lots of intestines recently.
This says Wade went in so he’d be prepared to render aid as quickly as possible.
Maybe some people are reading the OP as ‘should’ and some as ‘would’. Like I said earlier, I don’t know what I’d actually do, it’s too far out of my personal experience. The answer I’ve given reflects what I would do if I was in control of myself.
The one problem with this, that I found myself in arguments about at the time…
If when you have a chance to kill me you take that chance…fine. It is war. However, if you take that chance but when it is my turn to kill you…and you wish to surrender? Nope…you had your chance to surrender before you tried to kill me. Now that it is your turn to die…you die. Maybe…maybe I might feel more generous if you haven’t killed or wounded my buddies. But if you had? You are so dead.
Like in the beginning of the movie with the Germans manning the machine guns in the bunkers. They killed many Americans. Do you think they should be allowed to surrender when their defenses are breached and it is their turn to die? No frickin way…you will die. I’d shoot you myself.
I’d have shot Willie down…but right away.
This is why U.S. service personnel get briefed on the Geneva Conventions and have discussions of this type prior to reaching the battlefield.
Lack of rational thinking on the battlefield could be offered as a defense in one’s subsequent court-martial (though I wouldn’t count on it holding much water), but it does not make it legal, moral, or acceptable conduct.
BTW, I’m not so naive as to think that such conduct doesn’t happen or didn’t happen in the past, but it still doesn’t make it right.
Yes, absolutely. That’s what the Geneva Conventions and U.S. service regulations state that you are obligated to do.
If a commander ordered surrendering soldiers to be shot, it’s an illegal order. Subordinates who follow such an illegal order do so at their peril. “Just following orders” with respect to illegal orders holds no more weight than it did for Nazi concentration camp guards.
What does this even mean? 
Then you’d be arrested and prosecuted for murder, assuming the proper authorities found out. If your criminal acts were never found out, then you got away with murder–but it still doesn’t make it right.
By surrendering, he is also doing you a big favour - he is no longer shooting at you. From a fairness point of view, you were both trying to kill each other, then he stopped.
Technically yes, they should be allowed to surrender. The reality (as we saw in the film) is that a bunch of soldiers who are really pissed off after spending all morning trying to bury themselves in the sand while you and your friends sprayed machinegun and mortar fire at them might not be so inclined to drop whatever it is they are doing (which unfortunately for you includes grenading and flamethrowering pillboxes) to accept your surrender.
Keep in mind that POWs were often not treated particularly well anyway once they were captured. Not so much betwen the Germans and US/UK but I don’t think you wanted to be a German or a Russian in the other’s camps.
What doesn’t make any sense is that they captured him in the first place - they’re storming the machine gun nest after watching their friend die, and they don’t shoot the single German soldier in the pit just because he appears to be unarmed? I’m don’t think it’s a violation of the relevant conventions to shoot him then - he hadn’t clearly surrendered and IIRC he was trying to pry a rifle out from under one of his dead comrades. Why wouldn’t hardened combat vets just shoot him right then and there?
This happens all the time in war movies though - soldiers (usually Americans) refrain from killing an enemy when it’s sensible, logical, legal, and moral to do so. Like in U-571 when the captured German sub commander has knocked out one of the Americans with a wrench, and is trying to sabotage the sub - another American runs in with a machine gun and tells him not to move. You’re a sailor, not a cop! You get to shoot the enemy when they’re actively fighting against you!
I agree completely (though I haven’t seen the movie in years, so I don’t recall the exact circumstances of Steamboat Willie’s capture).
Notwithstanding my previous posts, I have no problem with killing enemy soldiers or sailors who have not surrendered.
TNT had it on last night-probably should have tossed in a post here about that.
This makes sense…so long as he does this early on. However, if he has been spraying machine gun bullets mowing down my buddies but when I enter his bunker to shoot him and he sees me and puts his hands up?
Ahhh no.
Right - you absolutely can and probably should shoot him right then. But if you don’t shoot him, and take him into custody, and put him into a work detail, you don’t get to decide an hour later that he didn’t surrender early enough and shoot him then.
If the enemy combatant drops his arms and puts his hands up, then he has surrendered. If you knowingly shoot him after he’s surrendered, then you’ve committed a war crime.
The enemy is not obligated to surrender “early on.”
You also don’t get to decide whether to execute him or not after his surrender simply based on the fact that he was shooting at you (and your buddies) at some earlier point in time.
Again, if the enemy has dropped his arms and put his hands up, then he has surrendered. You cannot legally shoot him then.
If he’s doing anything else, like scrambling for a weapon, then you are free to shoot him, of course.
Agreed.
robby, is there any slack in the laws to account for the fact that things are incredibly frantic and stressful in combat? Say you enter the bunker, the enemy soldier is turned away from you but has a rifle in his hands. He starts to turn towards you, realizes you’ve got the drop on him, so he lets go of the rifle and starts to raise his hands. You, reacting to movement of an armed enemy soldier, shoot him multiple times, then realize he had already let go of the rifle before you fired your first shot. That isn’t a crime, is it? You don’t have to give the enemy a chance to surrender before shooting - if he wanted to surrender safely, he should have had his rifle on the ground and his hands in the air before you even got in the bunker.
Another “I haven’t seen the movie recently” question: at the beginning of the movie, just after they’ve reached the top of the hill on Omaha Beach, several Germans come out to surrender and are shot down by soldiers joking “Sorry, I don’t understand German”. This was cold blooded murder. (There’s also the “let 'em burn to death” scene where they don’t shoot Germans immolated by a flamethrower.)
Were these characters who were later on the march or ‘spear carriers’ who were just in that scene?
It’s up to the surrendering party to make it perfectly clear they are surrendering. If you’re fumbling about in a way that might be regarded as threatening, it’s your own fault if you get killed.