Difference between Morant etc and Nazi soldiers?

I am not familiar enough with the deeds of German soldiers on the Eastern Front so cannot say.
But I whole-heartedly agree that "all wars end up dirty. The best thing you can do is try to avoid war in the first place, and if that fails then God help everyone."

pr, the way the guy below you quotes your last sentence, it makes you sound like one of those old timey leaders who gets quoted all the time.




I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

War crimes occurred no matter what kind of uniform you are wearing, what kind of political system you belong to, and the time period that the war had occurred. They occurred long before Nazi Germany came into existence and have continued to occur long after that regime was smash. Yes, the German Army did have very beautiful uniforms particulary their officers. I also love their unique ribbon bars which totally different from those ribbon bars of most armies and navies during the 19th and 20th centuaries. It is too bad that the present Germany Army doesn't use that ribbon bar style anymore nor they use the grey uniform anymore although that uniform did not blend in well with the green rural landscape; however, it did blend in with the grey urban ciy area like in the movie Enemy at the Gates.

You have to understand how the Boers and their tactics were looked at by the British. To the British, the Boers just weren't playing by the normal "Victorian" rules of war (i.e. both sides maneuver their larges forces to a point of their choosing and have large decisive battles to decide the ultimate outcome of the conflict) and as such they did not deserve fair treatment. The British basically operated under the principle that if they (the Boers) won't fight by the rules, we won't either.

Certainly the British did some horrible things during the Boer War. There is no doubt that crimes committed by the British military were not limited to isolated criminals acting against orders / policy.

However, when looking specifically at the act for which Morant was convicted (as depicted in the movie), I think that there is a significant difference between executing people actively passing tactical information to the enemy and armed partisans caught wearing articles of British uniforms (which by the letter of military law takes those individuals into the realm of espionage) and executing numbers of randomly selected civilians as retaliation for partisan acts. When the punishment is only meted out to the individuals who are caught committing the crime in question, you're in a more defensible position. (That's before we bring up the full blown genocide carried out as a matter of policy by some Nazi units.)

Obviously, it would be better to take those prisoners through a legal court system (even if the ultimate outcome is the same). Given the explicit policy on summary execution, however, Morant was no more guilty than much of the command chain above him. If you're going to convict Morant (and I'm not saying that is wrong in and of itself; though still not really the same crime as killing random civilians), then those convictions should also go up the chain to the source of the order to perform summary executions.

Morant and his unit, it could be argued, were little different from Nazi soldiers on the Eastern Front. They murdered prisoners, burned farms/ villages etc in response to the actions of partisans (or 'terrorists').