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Comment by bb123 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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