Sorry. It was a blurb in a letter sent from Dr. Lubomyr Prytulak to Canadian Justice-minister Anne McLellan, regarding issues of war crimes, in which the Kurt Meyer case was addressed. The original source was a book called "Meeting the Generals", authored by the son of the judge that presided over Meyers trial, in which he had quoted his father as saying candidly that he didn't agree with the charges being laid since the so-called war crimes weren't "one-sided".
http://www.ukar.org/mclell16.html
Do you have proof for the claim that take no POW orders existed on D-Day? Also, I believe that the Canadians did take POWs on D-Day, so even if the orders existed, they seem not to have been implemented.
No, not really. However it was claimed by Meyer in his trial, that a "take no prisoners" order was found in the coat of a dead Canadian officer, and that if the SS did kill the POW's it was in retaliation.
In a news article, Chris Madsen, a historian discounted Meyers defense, saying:
"That shouldn't enter into it, what Meyer did," he said. "It's not an excuse if Canadians committed war crimes."
I really don't understand what the historian means by that. It certainly isn't an excuse, but is at least a reason. Which should "enter into it", if they hope to have anything close to justice. Which the judge himself scoffed at.
And regarding the "take no prisoners" orders, he said: "There's no proof there was ever an order like that."
along with a History professor saying: "There is absolutely not one, single shred of evidence that such an order ever existed."
However at the trial they used evidence of a teenage German whom thought he had heard Meyer order that no prisoners be taken henceforth. So what makes that any more tangible than the defendants saying they found orders in the coat of an officer?
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005 ... 32-cp.html
Also, not taking POWs is a rather different matter from what has been alleged regarding the 12.SS treatment of its POWs (shooting them well after they have had their surrender accepted), wouldn't you agree?
No I don't. If say there is a soldier with his hands up wishing to surrender and he is executed, I see no difference between he and another prisoner executed after being matriculated into a camp. If you would argue that it could be attributed to passion or the heat of the moment, it could likewise be said regarding the 12th, for they claimed it had come in wake of finding out about Germans that the Canadians had killed.
Finally, I believe that under the laws as they existed at the time, an enemy's surrender could be rejected under certain circumstances without this being a war-crime.
I am unaware of those clauses, so I don't understand what circumstances they regard. I can imagine situations in which taking prisoners might not be possible, however, in the context of the d-day invasion, orders to "take no prisoners" seems like implicit sanctioning of what would be considered war-crimes.