That is not noble, it’s trying to justify murdering prisoners.
I probably would have murdered prisoners under those circumstances, but it is not noble.
No difference at all is my comparison.
Nobility is doing the right thing in an imperfect world. There was no way they could keep POWs and it would have been suicidal to let them go.
Of course, there was no way they could keep POWs. That would explain why they in fact actually did keep POWs.:dubious: There is nothing noble about murdering prisoners, no matter what kind of spin you want to put on it. Trying to justify it is hard enough. Calling it noble is obscene.
Do you have any concept of the nature and scale of WWII? Here’s a hint it involved millions of people and hundreds of thousands of miles of territory. The situations in which guerilla forces are able to keep POWs are rather rare and were not available to every Partisan groups. And letting enemy soldiers walk away is not an option in a war when the other side is attempting to genocide entire populations of people.
Some of them were nasty Nazis, but some were the farm boy who got drafted.
In Robert Axelrod’s “The Evolution of Cooperation” there is a chapter that tells of truces called between soldiers in the trenches during WWI.
This was known as the ‘live and let live’ system, an understanding between the frontline soldiers not to cause trouble for each other. Future important Frenchman and pompous dickhead de Gaulle wrote of it; “Trench warfare has a serious drawback: it exaggerates this feeling in everyone – if I leave the enemy alone he will not bother me … It is lamentable.”
And either would have killed me and my entire family without hesitation.
You really have absolutely no idea who you are talking to, do you?
Let’s not beat around the bush, few of them were even German. You need a scorecard to keep track of who is killing who in the Balkans, but note the composition of the prisoners under discussion for exchange with the Germans by the partisans during the Case White offensive: 26 Germans, 100 Croats and 615 Italians. The Chetniks and Tito’s communist partisans spent as much time trying to kill each other as the Axis did, with the Chetniks moving from initially being anti-Axis and cooperating with Tito’s partisans to later collaborating with the Axis against Tito’s partisans.
Oh, and by the way ZPG, you might want to read the first paragraph of the link I gave earlier:
Exactly. That’s why I was surprised. But, since that post, I now see that the term “partisans” was being used to denote another group - Tito’s (I think). I thought you had been referring to one of the Ustashi or Chetniks.
In fact, let me ask out of ignorance - weren’t the Chetnik’s loyal to Tito?
(ETA: Dissonance’s post directly above mine seems to answer the question - looks like the partisans and the Chetniks were different groups and although they were both anti-fascist, were out to get each other. Live and learn).
Chetniks were loyal to the monarchy, King Peter II who was in exile in London (and regarded by the British as the rightful sovereign). Some collaborated with the Germans against what they saw as the greater partisan threat; “Mihailović admitted to a British colonel that the Chetniks’ principal enemies were “the partisans, the Ustasha, the Muslims, the Croats and last the Germans and Italians” in that order.[84]”
The Yugoslav Partisans were under Tito; they were communists. To British embarrassment they were far more willing to engage the Germans than the fractured Chetniks, but obviously opposed the monarchy.
Actually the Chetniks and Tito’s Partisans sometimes fought each other. The first years of the German invasion and occupation of the former Yugoslavia were chaotic something Dissonance fails to comprehend with his amazement that struggling guerilla units did not always have the infrastructure necessary to maintain POW camps. The Partisans were nominally united under the banner of Tito’s version of communism though more frequently survival was what united most of the various fighting groups. Chetniks were supporters of the Serbian royal family in exile.
Mine too
Just to add that one shouldn’t take the impression that the Yugoslav Partisans (also known as the National Liberation Army) were unorganised or some disparate rabble - they became the most effective resistance force in occupied Europe (partly thanks to accepting all comers, Serb, Croat, Bosnian, etc while the Chetniks were a Serb-only affair).
Don’t kid yourself ZPG, I probably understand the situation in Yugoslavia during WW2 better than you do. I just don’t try to call murdering prisoners noble; for that matter which one of us was unaware that these struggling partisan units not only took and kept POWs but engaged in prisoner exchanges with the Germans with them throughout the length of the war? Hang on a second, lets see what you said earlier:
So which of us fails to comprehend the situation in Yugoslavia in WWII again?
Tito’s partisans were indeed very organized and by the wars end engaging in open conventional combat with their enemies; it had largely liberated the country itself and as there were no Soviet troops in the country at the wars end remained outside the iron curtain, when Tito and Stalin had differences of opinions regarding communism all Stalin could do was expel Yugoslavia from the Communist Information Bureau, the successor organization to Comintern. However, the Balkans being the Balkans there were a number of mass reprisal killings that became a taboo subject under Tito:
Just to add a couple of things, the goal of the Chetniks was largely that of Serbia under Milošević after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the objectives of the rival resistance movement which emerged some weeks earlier, the Chetniks, were the retention of the Yugoslav monarchy, ensuring the safety of ethnic Serbian populations,[13][14] and the establishment of a Greater Serbia[15] through the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from territories they considered rightfully and historically Serbian. The Germans also recruited locally for troops, in addition to Croatia being set up as a puppet state the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was formed in the Balkans in 1941 and used there exclusively in anti-partisan duty. The ‘Volunteer’ in its name is misleading; there weren’t enough volunteers from the get-go so its troops were mainly conscripted. the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) was formed locally in 1943 and also used exclusively in anti-partisan duty. Its name too is also misleading, few of its members were Croatian; it was mostly composed of Bosnian Muslims.
I was more than aware that prisoners were sometimes exchanged. I was also more than aware that this was not always possible. Something that you seem unable to comprehend. Tito’s Partisans may have been one of the most effective guerilla armies in history, but they were still a guerilla force with far less infrastructure fighting against an invading army. Those German and other assorted Axis soldiers weren’t fighting on the front lines honorably. They were occupation troops slaughtering civilians. Any action the Partisans took was self-defense. It wasn’t murder.
You do know that your previous posts remain visible and that this is demonstrably a lie, right?
Only in your imagination. Please show where I have said anything to the effect that it was always impossible for every single operating Partisan group the former Yugoslavia throughout the entire course of WWII to keep POWs. You have mentioned instances where it was, but I think the thing speaks for itself that obvious those sort of ideal conditions did not exist throughout the war in every possible theater. The only lie would be for someone to claim that because POWs could be held as prisoners and later exchanged by guerilla forces in certain rare instances, that it was always possible for POWs to be held as prisoners and later exchanged.
I will have to disagree somewhat on Japanese-American relations.
I read THIS book by the legendary pilot Pappy Boyingoton of “Baa Baa Blacksheep” fame. In the above book Boyington talks about being a POW of the Japanese and the way he talked about it, it all depended on the guards.
He said that yes, most guards were sadists. Others were just plain stupid who would yell at an American in Japanese and then beat them for not complying. But he said others who knew the REAL truth about the militarist leaders who had started the war and he said many times that he secretly would talk to them and they would apologize and try to give him privileges or avoid abuse if the “bad” officers were not around. These “good” Japanese were the ones who had traveled outside of Japan or had positive experiences working with non-Japanese.