Code of conduct regarding

[luftschiff]

Code of conduct regarding enemy soldiers who desert disabled/damaged vehicles in a battle. Does anyone know what the rules were? Was it frowned upon to shoot them? I'm also interested in the Allied take on this. Looking for anecdotes, quotes, anything.

[Hauptmann Holston]

I would imagine the Germans Vs. Russians would both shoot 100% , for that matter so would most the free French, Belgian, Dutch, Greek, Czechoslovakian, or other European peoples oppressed by the Nazis (including Italians after capitulation), especially against the SS .

I would say the English and US were the least likely to shoot unarmed combatants but I'm positive it happened. The Germans for whatever reason were less likely to shoot unarmed English and US troops, but it too happened. US soliders started shooting SS troops on the spot after the Malmedy Massacre and shot in a firing squad without military tribunal, Otto Skorzeny's Brandenburg infiltrating 5th column (Caught in US uniforms, shot immediately for being spies) during Battle of the Buldge/ Operation Wacht am Rhein .

Again for what ever reason the US and Japanese were both 100% likely to soot and kill one another unarmed, not unlike the Germans and Russians.

So I'm sure it happened, alot of combatants probably felt the old sayings were true: the only good enemy soldier, is a dead one! or once their dead they can't come back in another tank and kill you!
Not to mention all the propaganda fed to the youthful troops from all nations governments and ideologies telling their soldier to go kill the others.... "Baddies"

And why or who in a government decides that one enemy is worth fighting (?chivalrous) and another is worthless.... annihilating.

War is not chivalrous, and people only sometimes are.

[Hauptmann Holston]

Sorry don't mean to rant, I just like open discussion.
Thanks for the inquisitive post.

[EvanHarper]

There was never any convention treating crews of disabled land vehicles as with sailors in lifeboats or (after 1949) pilots descending by parachute. A tanker with no tank may be less combat-effective, but he is still a combatant and a legitimate target unless wounded, offering surrender, or otherwise hors de combat. This was true both by the letter of the law and in practice. Neitzel and Welzer in Soldaten, as well as any number of other sources, note that machine-gunning crews as they abandoned their vehicle was standard. It also has to be considered that tankers tended to bail out rapidly after taking any kind of penetrating hit, even if the tank was not actually disabled. Killing the crew guarantees that they will not re-man the tank and go back into action against you.

Certainly there are individual cases where people showed mercy, whether out of a calculation that the crew would be forced to surrender anyway, or else from simple sentimentality. I also seem to recall stories of e.g. mutually disabled tankers from opposite sides sheltering from fire in the same ditch, without making any effort to employ their personal weapons against each other. Such incidents, while perfectly understandable in human terms, are really best seen as a kind of shirking, as when soldiers left too long in static defense object to firing mortars etc. "because it will just lead them to retaliate." Ultimately war is war.

[luftschiff]

I asked because there's footage on youtube of a tank duel between a German and US tank and the Germans let the Americans bail out after disabling. However another American tank hits the German one and then machine guns the survivors. That's why I was wondering if the Germans were more old-fashioned about this sort of thing.