A lot of ignorance here, especially that British slave labour crap.
Specifically laid out in the occupation plans. Please expand on your "analysis".
NO EXCUSES for any soldier on any side in any war. Just because you hate someone is not a justification to commit atrocities even if your hatred is well based. Hitler & the Nazis hated the Jewish people and felt that they were the cause for all the problems in Germany, is that any excuse for the holocaust?
The point IS NOT who did it first. That's a BS cop-out for people who feel they have to justify themselves as better than those they wish to demonize. No one here is saying that German soldiers were innocent of these crimes but your claim that "they did it first" as an excuse is just daft.
The REAL point in defeating Nazi Germany was to be able to stand tall on our ethics and say "We're better than you". Instead you would have us say "We are the same, but you were first, so that makes us better".
Hypocrite.
Name-calling now, eh? Sure sign of strong case. "We are the same..." Where exactly did I say that again?
I'll spell it out, again. Some people seem to think that 3 or 10, or 30 (whatever, pick your number) soldiers whose surrender was refused, or who were murdered after surrendering, is the moral equivalent of deliberately planned wars of aggression, the enslavement of nations, genocide of whole races, the destruction of thousands of towns and villages and millions of innocent civilians, causing the death by starvation of millions of POWs, etc. etc. ad nauseam.
There is no moral equivalency, at all, and anyone who pretends there is is a either a fool, an ignoramus, or a "Nazi" apologist, or as is usually the case, all three.
It's not about "excuses" it's about human nature. If you're fighting an enemy (for the second time in two generations) who starts killing your comrades in arms after they are taken prisoner, (among a whole raft of other atrocities committed against other people) it's a bit like someone hitting you in the face, you either punch back in anger, or you say, "No, hitting people is wrong, I'm going to call the police." If that's your style, great. Easy to say in an armchair of course.
Soldiers in combat tend to take care of these things in their own way however. Rough justice? Sure, wars can be rough I understand.
I like to think I wouldn't shoot someone who was trying to surrender, even if that enemy had inflicted more misery on the world than anyone since Genghis Khan, and even if I'd heard they killed my comrades in cold blood, but something tells me I can't be 100% sure.
Personally I'm sorry for those vets who found themselves in that position and occasionally did things in the heat of anger that most of them regretted later. A damn sight more sorry than I am for their former enemies, who did far, far worse, far more times and don't seem to lose much sleep over it.
Oh, and if you want to get legalistic about it, when a country repeatedly and deliberately violates treaties and conventions to which it is a voluntary signatory, those treaties and conventions become null and void and that country loses any claim to be treated under the terms and conditions of those treaties and conventions.
We demonstrated our moral superiority by adhering to those treaties and conventions even after they had been thrown in our faces, repeatedly.
