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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

In a remarkable piece of wartime diplomacy, German General Adolf Galland notified the RAF of Bader's missing right prosthetic leg and, with Hermann Goring's permission, the RAF was given safe passage to parachute in a replacement prosthetic in a mission called 'Operation Leg'.

Not so remarkable when you consider that tying up RAF planes and burning their fuel on missions like this reduces their combat capabilities. It's the same logic which says that seriously injuring enemy infantry is more effective than killing them, since one dead soldier is one soldier who can't fight but one injured soldier is one soldier who can't fight plus one or two who won't fight because they're evacuating him.

(Of course, Russian doctrine now seems to counter this by leaving seriously injured soldiers on the battlefield to bleed out...)

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I don't think that was the rationale. For captured senior/important figures were given all kinds of affordances and gestures made which contrast shockingly with the conditions we know people endured in concentration camps.

For example Senior officers at Colditz often received parcels from home with stuff like cigars, chocolates, and spirits, sometimes through diplomatic agreements with the Red Cross. This was at a time when Germany in general was starving. They also organised theatre productions, orchestras, and even sports events.

I think this is just a relic of a different era and a different code of war - similar to how long before this Naval captains from opposing sides often shared meals after a ship's surrender. It is hard to imagine now.

> I think this is just a relic of a different era and a different code of war

It's worth noting that this kind of civility only happened on the Western front. The eastern front was a no-mercy teeth out display of barbarism. I think the conclusion is that it's to the era, but the specific conditions that resulted in acts like this.

For captured senior/important figures were given all kinds of affordances and gestures made which contrast shockingly with the conditions we know people endured in concentration camps.

It wasn't just senior and important figures; POW camps generally were nothing like the Nazi concentration camps since their purpose was internment rather than extermination. People tend to conflate the two, partly because Eisenhower worked so hard to document the Holocaust.

Western POWs were also treated better than Eastern POWs out of fear of retaliation; the USSR wasn't a signatory to the Geneva conventions and already treated their prisoners poorly so there was no similar incentive to treat Eastern POWs well. (And also layered on top of this was Nazi ideology about Slavic races being inferior etc.)

Germans and British were on friendly terms even right before war. When the Germans completed a test flight of a new aircraft (forget which), British engineers sent a "congrats!" message to them to which the Germans were appreciative.

if somehow two Western European countries ended up at war with each other in this era, POWs would be almost certainly be afforded better respect than ever.

I feel like it's more about the relationship between the two countries than it is the era. the royal family of Britain is and was quite German, and the Nazis believed that the English were part of the Aryan race.

The older cadre of Luftwaffe officers considered themselves better than other forces, with a generational code of honor/conduct. Their highest award was the Knight's Cross, so the concept of chivalry among peers was at least a thing. Aircrew POW camps were run by grounded/older Luftwaffe officers.

Goring was a WWI ace, Galland was younger so maybe eager to please.

At least towards the end of the war, Galland was not a fan of Göring (he was a ringleader of the Fighter Pilots' Revolt)

Göring also directly gave the order to Reinhard Heydrich to organize the "Final Solution of the Jew Question" aka Holocaust. So code of honor with strict restriction to "Aryan" pilots of the western Allies, if at all, IMO.

Not so remarkable when you consider that tying up RAF planes and burning their fuel on missions like this reduces their combat capabilities.

Or, sometimes human beings act like human beings, even in a time of war. In addition to the whole notion of "rules of war," there are thousands of examples, but here is a famous one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

> The truces were not unique to the Christmas period and reflected a mood of "live and let live", where infantry close together would stop fighting and fraternise, engaging in conversation. In some sectors, there were occasional ceasefires to allow soldiers to go between the lines and recover wounded or dead comrades; in others, there was a tacit agreement not to shoot while men rested, exercised or worked in view of the enemy.

People like you and me work at computers all day and start to think like computers and try to use "logic" to explain everything away. Fortunately, there are real people in the real world who are free of our burdens.

Christmas truces were absolutely a thing, but they came about through the action of troops on the ground -- and the commanding officers absolutely hated them.

I'm not condoning it at all, but I think it's easy to understand why commanding officers didn't like their troops fraternizing with the enemy. If GI John and Soldat Hans share a coffee and a cigarette together, and perhaps even a pleasant chat, they will quickly come to realize that both of them are human beings, with human feelings, a family worrying about them, children possibly, hopes and dreams, and so on. And once you are acutely aware that your enemy is just like you, only perhaps speaks a different language, you are much-much less inclined to shoot them and stop being an efficient soldier.

I've never been in a war, and hope I never live to see myself in one, but the only way I can see one human viciously trying to kill another is by not thinking of their enemy as a human being, but rather just a thing.

Absolutely. They were described as "disastrous to morale" and units which had engaged in Christmas truces would routinely be moved to other parts of the front in order to avoid the issues you mention.

> you are much-much less inclined to shoot them and stop being an efficient soldier.

But you also take the other side's soldiers out, in the same way. Why wouldn't commanding officers like that?

The morale of your troops is known. The morale of the opposing troops is suspected but not certain.

WW1 ended because the influenza epidemic was devastating the troops on both sides but neither side knew for certain how hard it was hitting the other side.

Ah, yes. Spanish flu: so-named because (neutral) Spain was one of the few countries not lying about whether they had it.

I'm not a military thinker, so I might well be off on this, but I'd say because that would usually results in a draw, whereas the commanding officers generally want to win so that they can achieve the overall plan set out by strategic command - and want to achieve a crushing victory from which the opponent cannot recover from.

I guess an army on the retreat who would favor an instant draw would favor the fraternizing, but generally by that point the winning army - including the soldiers - are not amenable to stop their advance and play a friendly game of football.

> Fortunately, there are real people in the real world who are free of our burdens.

You might be right about the general, who knows. But Goring? No, that man was definitely a computer.

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