What does your country's military doctrine say about prisoners of war?

[Vesayen]

That is what we wanted you to think! /Zombie Lenin!

Nope, guess again!

[Felch]

[onodera]

Originally posted by Lancer
I've read stories of courageous Russian prisoners pissing on V2 rocket guidance systems in German labor camps during WW2, and paying the price sometimes. Tough people! Then when the survivors got back to Russia, Stalin had alot of them shot for having seen the luxuries of the west. At least that's what was reported here. Whether it is true or not its likely none of us know.

As I've said, being taken prisoner and not escaping or dying trying is and was looked down upon. I guess in Stalin's case "looking down upon" was an understatement.

[BeBMan]

Re: What does your country's military doctrine say about prisoners of war?

Originally posted by onodera
We all know what Geneva conventions say about wars. They imagine them as lines of easily identifiable soldiers cleanly killing each other because their country leaders told them so. If you are hit, lucky you, you can no longer be shot at and can relax in hospital; if you are taken prisoner, lucky you, you can spend the rest of the war in a camp, being cared for. That's a load of bull, to be short.

POWs aren't to be sent into labour camps under the rules of the Geneva Conventions. It was one excuse of the Nazis to use Russian POWs massively for slave labour (and kill many in the process) that Sov didn't accept standards of the Hague Conventions (that were incorporated into the Geneva Conventions after the war) at the time of WWII (the only other major power back then was Japan afaik). The western allies did, and so their POWs were generally treated better (with some exceptions) by Germany. Of course, one could assume the Nazis would have treated Sov POWs that bad no matter if Sov accepted the Hague Conventions earlier, because of their ideology.

But the general prob with the "Geneva Conventions are bull" approach is that if you hold the view that they aren't worth anything, and don't respect them, you can get to a point where nobody does so, which means that you endanger POWs in general of being mistreated, incl. your own. But actually over quite a long time the sort of mistreatment/crimes against POWs we saw in WWII was rather the exemption from the rule in post 30yrs war Europe, so "rules of warfare" can and did work in practice.

Stalin probably thought in general that people are expendable (and POWs esp.), but - aside from ethical considerations - it's a stupid view for a modern army/country, since respect for the rules of warfare laid down in stuff like the Geneva Conventions means that POWs can return after the war, either serve again or play a role in the economy of their country. If one country writes them off anyway it only hurts itself.

[Dr Strangelove]

Early in WW2 the Soviet armies along the western border were overrun so rapidly that the Germans took huge numbers of prisoners. German treatment of Russian POWs was pretty bad, many enlisted in the SS. Consequently the Soviets issued an order that Russian soldiers who escaped from the Nazis should join partisan troops and not attempt to rejoin the main Red Army. Russian soldiers who were found crossing the battle lines to re-join their comrades were shot because the Soviet hierarchy feared that they might be saboteurs working for the SS. They also wanted to make them an example for troops from units which had not been destroyed by the Germans - that if the troops allowed their formations to disintegrate there would be no coming back for them.

[Lancer]

Russia is such a cheery little country.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

live fast, die young, not much in pension benefits to pay out

doesn't seem to work that well though...

[onodera]

Re: Re: What does your country's military doctrine say about prisoners of war?

Originally posted by BeBro


POWs aren't to be sent into labour camps under the rules of the Geneva Conventions. It was one excuse of the Nazis to use Russian POWs massively for slave labour (and kill many in the process) that Sov didn't accept standards of the Hague Conventions (that were incorporated into the Geneva Conventions after the war) at the time of WWII (the only other major power back then was Japan afaik). The western allies did, and so their POWs were generally treated better (with some exceptions) by Germany. Of course, one could assume the Nazis would have treated Sov POWs that bad no matter if Sov accepted the Hague Conventions earlier, because of their ideology.

But the general prob with the "Geneva Conventions are bull" approach is that if you hold the view that they aren't worth anything, and don't respect them, you can get to a point where nobody does so, which means that you endanger POWs in general of being mistreated, incl. your own. But actually over quite a long time the sort of mistreatment/crimes against POWs we saw in WWII was rather the exemption from the rule in post 30yrs war Europe, so "rules of warfare" can and did work in practice.

Stalin probably thought in general that people are expendable (and POWs esp.), but - aside from ethical considerations - it's a stupid view for a modern army/country, since respect for the rules of warfare laid down in stuff like the Geneva Conventions means that POWs can return after the war, either serve again or play a role in the economy of their country. If one country writes them off anyway it only hurts itself.

The problem I have with Geneva conventions in particular and laws of war in general is the fact that imply that the war itself is a good thing. That having people kill each other because of someone else's interests is perfectly fine as long as they all wear easily recognisable uniforms and use straightforward tactics and gear. War is madness in itself, but when you are told, "okay, go kill people you've never seen before because your president could not agree with their president, but do it by the rules," it's much worse.

Will finish the post in the evening.

[Riesstiu IV]

We dress them up like ghosts. It's just like halloween!

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
We dress them up like ghosts. It's just like halloween!

That man is clearly volunteering to that.

-----

My country says it's ok to do anything psychologically to people.

Of course then if they volunteer to be hooked up to electricity, then anything goes.

[Tattila the Hun]

Re: What does your country's military doctrine say about prisoners of war?

Originally posted by onodera
We all know what Geneva conventions say about wars. They imagine them as lines of easily identifiable soldiers cleanly killing each other because their country leaders told them so. If you are hit, lucky you, you can no longer be shot at and can relax in hospital; if you are taken prisoner, lucky you, you can spend the rest of the war in a camp, being cared for. That's a load of bull, to be short.

Russian soldiers are taught that being taken prisoner is bad. So bad that they are forbidden to surrender. If you are surrounded, you should try and trick the enemy soldiers into approaching you and kill as many as you can by blowing everyone up with a grenade.
If you are incapacitated and the enemy soldiers take you prisoner when you are unconscious, then it's probably okay. But still you can't enjoy your life as a prisoner. You have to escape or die trying, and happily labouring away in a prisoner camp is collaborating with the enemy.
Enemy soldiers that are taken prisoner are not your guests that you have to feed, clothe, nurture back to health and so on. They are the spoils of war, free labour force that has to work to pay for what they have done to your country. They are also a commodity to pay for your own captive soldiers.

What are the soldiers of your country taught?

Now, why would they be wanted back? Switching valuable workforce to persona non grata, who will just be shot for desertion or somesuch. Or, defeatists! (Godwin #2)

[Unimatrix11]

Rules for war - to me that is an oxymoron. The ´art of war´ is a very simple one: Anything goes (Napoleon). When war takes place, it developes its dynamic on its own and as this dynamic continues, the escalation grows, one hand forces the other, until everything pales in front of the overriding nesseccity (sp?) of winning the war (Clausewitz). In the end, gas is used and nuclear bombs are dropped on cities.

From this experience stems the idea, that the victor of war will be the one, who most rapidly and recklessnessly drives this escalition to its climax (-> cold war). In front of this background, it can be assumed, that those who condemn, say, the use of landmines, are either the ones, who wont need them anyways, or the ones, who will use them the most (and first), when it gets to it. Same goes for WMDs. In fact, the effort to limit or deny certain weapons-systems to some or all countries can be seen as a tactic for the war itself. Example: If i have the biggest conventional army, it makes perfect sense to condemn all nuclear weapons. If i live on an island, and have naval and air superiotrity, it makes perfect sense to condemn landmines. I do not believe that those limitation are realized because of some humanistic viewpoint (though the ideas for them might be intitially inspired by those ideas), but from strategic advantages - or the attempt to establish such.

Of couse, when war breaks out, and victory can only be achieved by using a condemned weapon, it will be build and used. To condemn it before-hand, just increases the escalation time by the time needed to build those weapons (probably in the hope, that oneself has by then won the war with other means).

EDIT: On the POWs in WWII: What the OP said is true - russian soldier were indeed not allowed to go prisoner (not that this was desirable for them in the first place, really). I just read a book, in which a veteran describes his experiences. As his troop moves over a fresh battlefield, an officer of the author shots every wounded Russian, because they could not be trusted to accept their status as POWs and shot at the Germans whenever they got the opportunity (as was the experience of that officer - and, later in the book, becomes an experience of the author himself as well). As said above: One hand forces the other. In this case, the inhumanity of german prison camps (and inabailty to provide for such masses of prisoners - here again the logic of war: of course the own troops are being fed first) combined with Stalin´s harsh order, practically forced the german soldiers to not make prisoners - even if they personally believed it to be morally wrong (and also was explicitly forbidden by the german army rules)... To relativate: This could not have been the rule though, if you look at the numbers - after all, millions were taken prisoner...

[Patroklos]

Of couse, when war breaks out, and victory can only be achieved by using a condemned weapon, it will be build and used. To condemn it before-hand, just increases the escalation time by the time needed to build those weapons (probably in the hope, that oneself has by then won the war with other means).

Is that why the nastier factions of WWII all used poison gas on the battlefields of the world?

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Rules for war - to me that is an oxymoron. The ´art of war´ is a very simple one: Anything goes (Napoleon). When war takes place, it developes its dynamic on its own and as this dynamic continues, the escalation grows, one hand forces the other, until everything pales in front of the overriding nesseccity (sp?) of winning the war (Clausewitz). In the end, gas is used and nuclear bombs are dropped on cities.

Thing is that when it comes to treatment of POWs or non-combattants etc. "anything goes" wasn't what happened in Napoleonic wars and during Clausewitz times, at least not when we talk about wars between states and regular armies (where the rules for POWs apply).

It was different in colonial wars, and generally when 'irregular' combattants were involved (like during Nappys time with the guerilla war in Spain, or in several civil wars, uprisings etc.), there you had much more often extreme forms of violence than in the highly regulated "cabinet wars" in Europe, where over a long time civilian casualties were rather low, and prisoners had a good chance of simply being sent back home after the war. That only changed on a large scale in the 20th century again.

There are several reasons for this, for example:

- experience of the 30 yrs war with large scale violence
- from there the "Westphalian" system after 1648 with its view that Euro states are legally the same, with a right to war, which however wasn't thought as a tool of exterminating someone else, but simply as a means to solve conflicts in some kind of "duel between states"
- the process in which the state takes over the monopoly for the use of force and forms regular, standing armies (as opposed to more or less "private" forces of every land lord in the middle ages, or the large scale use of mercenaries during the renaissance and in the 30 yrs war) that don't fight primarily to plunder and need to maintain a certain level of discipline to be useful at all.

[BeBMan]

Re: Re: Re: What does your country's military doctrine say about prisoners of war?

Originally posted by onodera


The problem I have with Geneva conventions in particular and laws of war in general is the fact that imply that the war itself is a good thing. That having people kill each other because of someone else's interests is perfectly fine as long as they all wear easily recognisable uniforms and use straightforward tactics and gear. War is madness in itself, but when you are told, "okay, go kill people you've never seen before because your president could not agree with their president, but do it by the rules," it's much worse.

Of course, war is ****, but I wouldn't see attempts to limit at least the worst excesses as a bad thing.