Why were all the Germans assholes?*spoilers*

The Nazis were very evil - they tortured, raped and killed many people including civilians, they were the first to use poison gas, they bombed undefended towns without warning, they sunk civilian ships with their submarines, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_war_crimes#World_War_I

For all the pilot knew he was being saved for interrogation and then shot. In his mind it may have been his duty to escape.

They were at war. I guess the German thought he'd do his part for his country killing a couple of Brits, even if they had saved his life.

That was my only real gripe with the movie. The difference between WW1 and WW2 is that there were no clear villains in WW1 and you can make some pretty interesting stories out of that. For example, what if the plane crashing killed the kid instead (wouldn't have to be an instant death either, he could've slowly died in a similar way but just with different injuries) and then the protagonist had to choose what to do with the german. Maybe the other allies show up and there could be some real tension, some of them wanting to kill him and others not.

I wouldn't call this a flaw though, but it's something that would've made me appreciate the movie even more if the germans had more dimensions to them.

That makes no effing sense.

I came here to write your same op.

You forgot to add that they also planned this whole fake retreat strategy (after months of fighting spent to gain 1 meter) and abandoned fully equipped trenches (and booby trapped them) just so they could make even bigger dick moves.
Making them dicks is also the naivity and fairplay repeteadly shown by brits, falling every time in their lies, always acting human against such tricky enemy, and always paying for it.

Talk about a fair and realistic depiction of war...

I’m glad you said it, saves me & many others who just have seen this coming here & posting about it. The thing is I feel as you do but I look at it this way. The guy was an enemy soldier of an enemy country who had just got shot down & almost killed by their forces. They pulled him out of a burning airplane which was extremely decent on their part but once the initial shock wore off he probably just reacted on instinct not knowing what to do.

In his defense, trying to understand where he was coming from, he had to deal with horror of being chased, shot down & left to die in a fiery wreck by the British in the air & the surprise & relief of being pulled out of said flaming wreck by 2 soldiers of the very same army on the ground that happened to come along who naturally of course knew who he was.

In the short span in which he had to sort all of this out in his extreme confusion & the contradiction was probably too much for his racing mind & even though it was extremely stupid on his part, he reacted & killed the poor guy. Extremely dumb because from where he was lying on his ass on the ground, all the other guy had to do was just shoot him from where he was standing & that was it. Not very logical to do but I just guess he was pumped up on adrenaline & fear on what was going on & the unknown.

Still a dick move as you say, but what the hell were they supposed to do with him? Drag him along for the ride? My least favorite part of the movie, you have two individuals who shouldn’t feel for the guy but yet did because he was a fellow human being & it cost one of them their lives when we all of course feel it shouldn’t have but that’s war. Makes no sense.

I figured it came down to language barrier and not knowing intent of the other party