Lets consider the following scenario:
Hell is breaking loose on a battle. Soldier Smith is lost, on the middle of god-knows-where. He is scared, wet, cold and miserable. All of a sudden he hears a thud. A bullet nearly missed him. He is lost from his group and all alone. It is not only raining - it looks like god just decided to wash the clouds over Europe with a fire hose. Another thud. This time with a sharp pain on his knee. Blood starts flowing through his leg, soaking his boot. He has been shot. Limping, he drags himself up to an abandoned house a few metres away. Shots are being fired on the background, and he is hiding from that (terrible) sniper. He veered far away from the battle. Before entering the house he notices a faint light dancing inside. There is somebody there! Carefully he opens the door, just to find another terrified 18-ish year old soldier. Not an American one. A German guy.
The German soldier was flying his Focke-Wulf. All nice and dandy on his machine, until he is shot down by the allies. He tries to keep flying, but the plane starts steering to the left. There is fire on his right wing. The plane starts spinning on a spiral right to the ground. Hans prays and braces for impact. The plane hits the ground, losing its right wing. Fire spreads fast with the leaking fuel. Hans’s plane spins in the ground, throwing bits of fabric, metal, oil and fuel all around. Somehow he survived. He kicks open the cockpit and runs from the wreckage before it explodes. He is bleeding heavily from his forehead and his arm is shaped on a crooked angle. Hans is terrified. The plane is on fire, and the smell of burnt fuel fills the air. He sees a hut in the distance and makes a run for it. Hans opens the door. There is not a sould there. A table, some burnt candles on a corner, a broken chair… and thats it. He hides there, trying to stop his bleeding. He is shaking, soaked, hurt and just wants his mother. And some Appflel Strudel. All of a sudden the door opens. A black silhouette is seen against the raging thunderstorm. Hans hides in a corner. There is no use - he lit the candles. The silhouette approaches the door. And then the face of a pale, pimple-filled 19 year old guy is lit. He is on the verge of crying, limping heavily and soaking wet.
So… what’s next? Smith shoots Hans? They help each other? Smith runs for his life and is shot by the sniper?
Depends entirely on the soldier. If he had been in a bloody battle shortly beforehand and seen all his mates blown to pieces the reaction might be different to someone just posted to the front lines and still with his civilian sensibilities. According to the Geneva Convention (and Hague Convention before it) your man should be taken prisoner, although good luck getting every soldier to follow it.
But to answer the question; yes - there are myriad examples of humane treatment from an enemy in both WW1 and WW2.
Take for example the Christmas Truce of 1914, possibly the most famous example of niceness - some would say fraternisation - in history. Soldiers on opposite sides exchanged gifts and had a game of football, apparently the Germans won. Commanders cracked down on it later on in the war.
There were still notions of chivalry around, particularly in the air. When English flying ace Captain Ball VC was shot down and killed the Germans buried him with military honours and dropped leaflets telling the British where he had been buried. When the German Captain Boelcke was shot down the British dropped a wreath with the message “To the Memory of Captain , our Brave and Chivalrous Opponent.”
While nothing as famous as the Christmas truce occurred, and notions of gentlemanly ‘knights of the air’ quickly disappeared (“They are shits after all…”) in WWII there were still countless examples. At Arnhem local ceasefires were arranged to collect the wounded, British and German medics working side by side. At Hurtgen a German sustained fatal wounds trying to extract an American out of a minefield and is duly remembered.
On the Eastern Front, between Nazism and Stalinism acts of compassion on the field were as common as a virgin in a maternity ward and even dangerous to indulge in; the NKVD and commissars would condemn a man to death or the gulag for indulging in charity to the enemy while the Motherland bled.
A Japanese guy tried to kill my Father and his associates from an airplane with bombs and machine guns in New Guinea. When he had engine trouble and bailed out, they killed him with small arms fire as he came down.
One of my patrons in the Library told me how at the Battle of the Bulge, where if one sat on the ground one would freeze to death, they sat on the bodies of the dead; he was invited to “Pull up a Kraut and sit down.”
The hypothetical in the OP also reminds me of a disputed account from 1918; a wounded German soldier enters the line of sight of a British soldier.
It’s been alleged that the German was a now-obscure corporal who was subsequent forgotten by history, saying later“That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again; Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us.”
Ambrose has a chapter in Citizen Soldiers about POWs. Basically it was a crap shoot even in the European Theater where each side treated each other relatively civilized. In the heat of battle or in the aftermath there was no guarantee that you were going to survive trying to surrender. There were incidents like the Malmady Massacre which were well documented but there were many other little or unknown incidents on either side.
In Band of Brothers it was implied that LT Spears killed unarmed prisoners after D-Day. It is not specifically stated in the miniseries or the book if it happened. But looking into some of the other books about the unit it does appear to be true. I have also seen references to the commander of the 101st telling his troops to take no prisoners because it would slow them down.
A scene in The Longest Day portrays a story in the non-fiction book:
In the Band of Brothers mini-series, “Shifty” Powers among others talks about how under different circumstances, he might have been good friends with some of his enemies, stating that he thought about that a lot.
There was another, much smaller, “Christmas truce” in World War II, similar to the OP’s incident. Basically, three Americans and four Germans, separated from their sides, took refuge in a German farmhouse, at the invitation of the lady of the house, who also insisted they leave all their weapons outside.
It’s my understanding that the hatred and racism towards the Japanese was so severe that killing surrendered or helpless Japanese soldiers was the norm, to such an extent that American soldiers would disobey orders not to. It was a bottom up problem more than a policy problem as I recall; the authorities wanted prisoners, for interrogation if nothing else. The fear that they might be faking surrender didn’t help either.
The Americans also had a habit of collecting the body parts of Japanese for trophies.
Regarding the incident of my Father, I completely understand it. The guy was trying to kill them, Father may have lightened the story if the guy had killed any of them.
They had been hopelessly shooting at the plane with a Thompson, a .45 1911 and some M-1 Garands.
I lost his Bible in a house fire. Grandmother gave it to him. On the blank leaves he had written romantic things like, “Left San Francisco for parts unknown.” He was going to the Philippines, but they fell in route and he ended up in New Guinea or Australia. The last entry is “Heavy air raid last night. Fifty bombers.”
I completely understand American servicemen hating the Japanese.
His brother was killed in an aircraft training accident. Uncle Bill joined the Army Air Force because his big brother did.
Dad was sent home, according to my Grandmother, “Because I answered sympathy letters from Generals and Congressmen.”
He beat his letters home, and showed up unexpectedly on her front porch.
For those interested in this amazing story may I suggest reading * A Higher Calling* by Adam Macos and Larry Alexander. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
This is true, but lets not leave the impression that acts like this were only an American brutality. The Japanese routinely mutilated captured/wounded American soldiers. A common insult was to take the severed penis of an American soldier and suture it to his forehead. Plus the Japanese who were at times left starving on their remote island were not above executing and eating prisoners. These acts went a long way towards creating the hatred US soldiers had towards the Japanese.
The Christmas truce of 1914, if it had been allowed to hold and expand, maybe even ending the war right then, could have avoided the rest of WW1, WW2, and much of the rest of the problems of the 20th century. Probably one of the most wasted moments in human history.
For what it is worth:
My father served in the Wehrmacht during WWII, and before he died told me this story:
He was fighting in France on Christmas Day when he and his squad came across a church in which the locals were holding a Christmas Mass.
So he and his squad went inside, stacked their weapons against the back wall and joined the service. About ten minutes later a squad of Brits came in and did the same thing.
Both sides ignored each other, and participated in the service along with the locals.
At the end of the service, both squads picked up their weapons and left together, departing in opposite directions without a shot being fired.
