Those were just random GIs, helpfully showing that war is hell.
In order of preference:
- Shoot him in the hand (or some such) and let him go.
- Just let him go (after taking his equipment).
- Just shoot him in the head.
- Escort him to allied lines (not just time-consuming, but also dangerous).
Sampiro, I’m pretty sure we don’t see those guys again.
They were spear carriers. Tom Hanks saw them do it though, and looked pensive.
Earlier in that sequence, Hanks & his men definitely mow down Germans who probably would have wanted to surrender if given the chance - they’re waiting by the back entrance to one of the bunkers overlooking the beach, and shoot Germans as they try to escape. Then they call for the flamethrower to clear the bunker. That’s the thing - soldiers have no duty to allow an enemy time or opportunity to surrender - you don’t have to yell “Surrender or we’ll kill you all!” - you can just kill them. Giving the enemy a chance to surrender first just gives them a chance to kill you instead. Soldiers aren’t cops.
Agreed. That, IMO, would be murder.
No, that not a crime, as I understand it. You are under no obligation to give the enemy a chance to surrender. As someone else said earlier in the thread, you’re not a cop–you’re a soldier on the battlefield. In the situation you just described, you are absolutely in the clear.
Exactly.
Yes–that was also a war crime, on the part of the U.S. soldiers.
Options (1) and (3) are war crimes.
Your only legal actions in this list are options (2) and (4).
P.S. I’ll just add that the U.S. today has combatants (e.g. pilots) who may be bombing the enemy one moment, and be shot down and find themselves on the ground in the hands of the enemy the next.
If captured, we expect the enemy to treat them as POWs in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. We would condemn any peremptory execution of our pilots, and would treat these actions as the war crimes that they are.
The situation of a machine gunner who surrenders when his bunker is breached is much the same.
According to the Geneva Conventions (and U.S. law), you don’t get to execute a combatant after they have surrendered, even if they were machine gunning you or bombing you moments before.
P.P.S. This was actually a postscript to my comments in Post #56. (I was in the process of writing this earlier, but it got lost in the shuffle.)
Is that how it happened in the film? I’d forgotten that bit. Agree that doesn’t make much sense.
Actually, I have to take that back. It’s on youtube, and the first we see of Steamboat Willie the BAR gunner has already captured him and is beating him mercilessly. The actual capture/surrender happens off screen while Wade is dying. Now why the BAR gunner wouldn’t just rake the machine gun nest with automatic fire while running towards it is beyond me - it’s the safest thing to do.
Wouldn’t any nearby Germans have already been alerted? Did the Germans have a radio? Did those Germans have any sort of communication set up with the rest of their forces? The sound of that gunfire also must have travelled pretty far. I suppose it depends on what exactly the Germans were doing there, which seems to be under debate. Were they behind German lines? I got the impression they were in some kind of disputed no man’s land, but since they run into lots of Americans and only a few Germans, and they were traveling from one American position to another, I assumed they were closer to the American lines. As far as the audience knows, Steamboat Willy doesn’t get back to any other Germans in time to set them after Hanks’s group. If Hanks and his men were so worried about being found by other nearby Germans, why did they take the time to hang around and make Steamboat dig graves and have an ethical debate.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that the severe stress, anger, and grief soldiers face in combat can’t contribute to warping morality or causing irrational behavior. I also can’t know exactly if this would happen to me under certain circumstances. I think few posters can. Did we get any replies from any combat vets? I do know a few Vietnam combat vets, as well as one from WWII and one from Iraq that are still very troubled by the violence they committed against the enemy. Knowing what I know from listening to them, I am not sure I would want this guy’s face following me around for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t want to have to spend any time wondering if Steamboat’s mother was still alive, if he had a wife, if he had a best buddy from boot camp, if I didn’t really have to.
Shooting an unarmed man is generally considered a cowardly and dishonorable act. If the soldiers had executed Steamboat Willy, I would have described their actions as cowardly and dishonorable, although I would find myself sympathetic to their motivations.
Who knows. Maybe his clip ran out, and he had to engage hand-to-hand, or maybe he just wanted some personal revenge. Or this being hollywood, maybe it just wasn’t thought through very well.
For those in favour of executing S Willie, how would you feel if the germans had won that fight, and one of the american soldiers surrendered? Are they justified in executing him?
At the end of the movie doesn’t Steamboat Willie pass the translator on the stairs after having killed the Jewish soldier? He could have easily killed him but instead chose to let him live.
He wasn’t an evil psychopath, he was a soldier just like the protagonists.
I vote letting him live. Stripping him of gear and leaving him wouldn’t work, considering he could just salvage the gear of his dead comrades. I would have sent him towards friendly forces, just like what happened in the movie.
I don’t think they could afford to send Upham away, so probably tie his arms and bring him along until finding someone to hand him off to.
It does seem counter-intuitive to let him go when he can just pick up a weapon, turn around, and start shooting you again.
In reality though he would probably never have been captured alive. He was not in a position to convincingly surrender before being killed.
The German who kills Mellish with a bayonet, then walks past a crying Upham on the stairs is not Steamboat Willie. Googling “steamboat willie mellish” leads to this page. It’s unfortunate they looked similar. However, the soldier who Upham kills at the end is Steamboat Willie.
Wait wait wait. That’s NOT him?!?!
Seriously?!
I’ve spent the last few years thinking that was the guy from the grave-digging scene!
If this is correct, I’ve just had my world rocked.
Edit: I read the page you linked to and yeah, it’s obvious that they’re not the same guy when you compare them side by side. Oh man. =(
I’ve always been like “Why did you kill him at the end?! He let you live on the stairs!!”
This is groundbreaking for me. xD
Why would it make a difference? I fire on Germans advancing and kill/wound some of them…when they finally get to me would I expect to be allowed to surrender? No…the time to surrender is before I killed/wounded them…not after.
Wait a tick.
If it wasn’t Steamboat who killed Mellish, why did Upham kill Steamboat at the end of the film? I had always thought he was avenging Mellish’s death and making up for his inability to do so on the stairs!
Just FYI, the wermacht soldiers who tried to surrender were Czechs, not Germans. It was an accurate, but obscure detail to put in the movie. I only noticed it because the subtitles on the DVD noted that they were speaking in Czech.
Because he saw steamboat Willie shoot down Capt. Miller.
Do we actually see Willie shoot Miller, as opposed to shooting AT Miller? They weren’t that close to each other physically - Willie was firing from cover towards the Americans who were retreating across the bridge. I think Upham was pissed because he saw that rather than surrender to the next set of Americans who came along, Willie found and rejoined a German unit and went back into combat. And he was doubly pissed because after Upham captured him & the other soldiers, Willie tried to treat him like an old pal - “Hey Upham, it’s me! How you been!”