Wartime moral quandry.

[Darksider]

So I was watching my dad's DVD of Saving Private Ryan the other day, and the whole deal with the Nazi prisoner who they let go and then came back and killed the Jewish guy in the end got me thinking. What would you do in a situation like this? What should you do?

On the one hand, killing an unarmed prisoner is morally reprehensible, but on the other, if you're just a small squad without the resources to care for prisoners or the ability to hand them of to other friendlies, and just releasing them might lead to them being re-taken by their own forces and put back into the fight.

Assume for the sake of argument that you are in a similar situation. You are in command of a small squad (8-12 men) and you have captured an enemy prisoner. You obviously don't have the resources to care for a prisoner and taking him with you could jeopardize your mission. You are traveling in contested territory, so while there is no guarantee that the enemy will get him back into circulation if you let him go, it is a definite possibility.

What do you do?

[Sea Skimmer]

I would have tied him to a tree so he can’t quickly race off and tell a Nazi unit that my little patrol is strolling by. He won’t die of dehydration in less then three days and is pretty certain to be found long before then since a radar station will be a magnet for units on both sides.

Given the overall situation I would have never ever attacked a radar station with completely unknown defenses and garrison and no scouting or support or resupply in the first place. That whole chunk of the movie was just completely retarded end to end. Of course another option would also just be not to take prisoners. You are not required to accept a surrender.

[Singular Intellect]

The main problem I saw in that situation is that the group let the situation get so far out of hand. They caught the guy, argued about his fate, made him dig his own grave (which constitutes psychological torture in my books), etc.

Had I been in charge and stuck with an enemy soldier, I simply would have had the enemy soldier distracted, and shot him in the back of the head. Kill him as quickly and humanely as possible, and don't make him suffer by worrying about his fate for an extended period of time.

If it's full out war, you either capture and imprison or kill the enemy. If you can't realistically accomplish the former, you go for the latter.

Real war is a dirty, vicious and nasty human activity to engage in and should be avoided if at all possible. But if you're driven to it, either go in it to win at all costs with the shameful admission human morality is getting tossed out the window to begin with, or engage in soul searching ponderings after pre emptively surrendering and/or yielding to whatever demands required to avoid war in the first place.

Ultimately, 'rules' for war is a bit like society declaring 'rules' for murder.

[Patrick Degan]

I think that any real-world officer would simply have put a bullet in the German's head. End of argument.

[Darth Wong]

Attackers who prevail over fierce defense generally take few prisoners, if any. The most prisoners are usually taken when men are encircled and give up without a fight. I always thought it was pretty strange that they took any prisoner at all in that scene (although as SS points out, there are plenty more problems with that scene).

[Knife]

If you take prisoners, you are responsible for them. If your mission can't survive you taking prisoners, or you're jeopardizing it with POW's, don't take them. Either assault through and kill them all, or leave the wounded and survivors without weapons for the enemy to find, or skirt around that obstacle.

[General Brock]

In the theatrical context of Private Ryan, leaving the prisoner bound might be better for unit morale. Private Ryan isn't particularly realistic, though.

In reality I wouldn't gamble my unit's safety or the mission to take prisoners in the first place unless it was conceivably part of the mission.

[Darth Wong]

In the theatrical context of Private Ryan, leaving the prisoner bound might be better for unit morale. Private Ryan isn't particularly realistic, though.

Indeed. It would have been hilarious if there were a lot more German troops on the other side of that hill. Of course, the writers wouldn't have done that because it would severely shorten the movie and make Cpt Miller look like an idiot.

[Oskuro]

What about breaking the prisoner's arm or leg? A nonlethal innjury that effectively puts him out of combat for an extended period of time, and, furthermore, puts a drain on enemy resources as they have to look after him.

Wasn't there an ammunition design philosophy that emphasized wounding over killing just for this very reason?

[Darth Wong]

What about breaking the prisoner's arm or leg? A nonlethal innjury that effectively puts him out of combat for an extended period of time, and, furthermore, puts a drain on enemy resources as they have to look after him.

Ummmm, if you do that to a prisoner, it's called "torture". You do realize that, right?

Wasn't there an ammunition design philosophy that emphasized wounding over killing just for this very reason?

Yes, but that's in combat. It's different when it's an unarmed prisoner. Deliberately maiming or crippling prisoners is a war crime.

[Stuart]

Wasn't there an ammunition design philosophy that emphasized wounding over killing just for this very reason?

Not really; the philosophy followed the discovery of inadvertant limited lethality.

As to the problems of captured personnel when there are insufficient forces to guard them and a critical mission is in hand. That's why officers are issued pistols.

[Oskuro]

Ummmm, if you do that to a prisoner, it's called "torture". You do realize that, right?

Of course, of course. Just saying that it might be a more palatable solution that outright execution of said unarmed prisoner, wich, by the way, I guess is also a war crime.

[Knife]

Breaking an arm or leg can still be life threatening. Pretty much anything you do that has an honest to god chance of disabling them can be life threatening. Either kill them or let them go, that's pretty much your only choices.

[Kanastrous]

Wasn't there an ammunition design philosophy that emphasized wounding over killing just for this very reason?

The idea behind 'wounding' ammunition designs isn't so much a concern for reducing lethality as a result of noting that each wounded enemy soldier can take other soldiers out of the fight, while they retrieve/stabilize/transport him.

Not much use, of course, if your enemy does not as a matter of practice expend resources on treating their wounded. But against most western armies that 'leave no one behind' ethos can work to your advantage if you bog them down with lots of difficult-to-handle wounded in need of treatment, instead of lots of dead with easily-removed-and-transported dog tags.

*edit* just remembered having read that Wehrmacht troops working in tactical groups were as a matter of policy forbidden to treat their wounded until their objective was achieved, although considering that the source was one of those Time-Life history-of-WWII books I don't know that this should be treated as gospel.

[Stuart]

The idea behind 'wounding' ammunition designs isn't so much a concern for reducing lethality as a result of noting that each wounded enemy soldier can take other soldiers out of the fight, while they retrieve/stabilize/transport him.

Although we'll read that a lot of places, it's a bit of a myth. What actually happened was that the intermediate rifle rounds (7.92x33mm, 7.62x39mm and 5.56x45mm plus M1 carbine) were a lot less lethal than they were reputed to be. This grew to be noted by the troops. For the US, the first formative experience with them was in Korea where the M1 carbine became notorious for mildly irritating people shot by it. That had all sorts of repercussions but the experience was pretty much all over; the intermediate rounds didn't flatten people the way full-power rifle rounds did. The "it's designed to wound them so people will have to carry the wounded man away" trope was a sort of ready excuse. It probably wouldn't surprise people to learn that Robert McNamara had his fingers in there.

Not much use, of course, if your enemy does not as a matter of practice expend resources on treating their wounded. But against most western armies that 'leave no one behind' ethos can work to your advantage if you bog them down with lots of difficult-to-handle wounded in need of treatment, instead of lots of dead with easily-removed-and-transported dog tags. Just remembered having read that Wehrmacht troops working in tactical groups were as a matter of policy forbidden to treat their wounded until their objective was achieved, although considering that the source was one of those Time-Life history-of-WWII books I don't know that this should be treated as gospel.

That is, of course, the whole ghastly flaw in the theory. "Wound them not kill them" is one of those ideas that sounds good ina powerpoint presentation but just doens't work in real life.

[Serafina]

That is, of course, the whole ghastly flaw in the theory. "Wound them not kill them" is one of those ideas that sounds good ina powerpoint presentation but just doens't work in real life.

Why not?
Not that i think you are wrong, but i would like to know the reasons.

[Knife]

That is, of course, the whole ghastly flaw in the theory. "Wound them not kill them" is one of those ideas that sounds good ina powerpoint presentation but just doens't work in real life.

Why not?
Not that i think you are wrong, but i would like to know the reasons.

A wounded man can still crawl over to the machinegun and hose down your entire squad.

[PeZook]

A wounded man can still crawl over to the machinegun and hose down your entire squad.

Or just not notice he's been shot. It's easy to build a weapon which will reliably kill most humans, it's way harder to build one which will wound but not kill across the spectrum.

Unless it's a mine and it rips legs off, that is, but it's hard to do that with a rifle.

[RowanE]

Obviously, you don't want to kill him, because that would be a war crime. You can't set him free, because he's a potential threat.

At first i thought you could just give him the absolute minimum injuries to make him unable to re-enter combat - break his trigger finger perhaps, but avoiding the joints. If possible.

But then, there's also the risk of him telling his frineds about your location. And, on the other hand, he could have information on troops in the region, making him useful. So i guess bring him along, interrogating him on the way. No torture obviously, but threats could be okay.

[Simon_Jester]

That is... really really impractical. I mean, if you've brought him along with you, what's to stop him from going all heroic and saying "Hey, guys, they're over here!" when you're trying to hide from enemy patrols? Or try to wrestle a gun from one of your guys at a critical moment?

[Covenant]

They should have just shot him. It would have been more humane than torture, and smarter than letting him go. Their job was to get Ryan, but as soldiers they also want to reduce enemy capability. That guy could have gone off and gotten someone else killed, or delivered some valuable intelligence, and there was no reason to keep him around when you cannot afford prisoners--whose first job is to escape and you haven't the men to watch him.

The fact that he gets away and then kills those guys isn't evidence that you're really better off killing any recently armed combatant who you can't afford to capture and interrogate/rehabilitate, but within the story it was stupid. In a larger context I wouldn't want my brother or dad or friend to have to worry about being shot in the back because someone who was just trying to shoot them in the front got told to "turn yourself in." It's cold but if the enemy had their way then you'd be dead already, so it's fairly morally neutral. It's not like he was a civilian who had just picked up a rifle.

I think thats reasonable even in real life circumstances, but it doesn't seem like 1st world nations are facing a lot of 'normal military' foes nowadays who can be expected to honor the capture of our soldiers, so maybe my reaction would be different if the movie and modern contexts didn't make it seem like prisoner capture is a luxury of large-scale regular infantry operations. I always hate that part of the movie so much too, so my absolute hatred for that coward with the ammo belt who let his buddy get stabbed might be coloring my perceptions.