Prisoners of war

>>1387140
You can still shoot, just cut off their right hand.

>>1387144
That's a good solution as well. I think even the prisoners would've been okay with that. Better than starving to death.
Or did everyone hate the enemy soldiers so much that letting them go home was the last thing they wanted to see?

Armies would rather enemy soldiers surrender willingly than fight. Soldiers facing guaranteed mutilation are less likely to surrender.

cause there are formalities that nations silently agree to follow regarding prisoners, mostly because you don't want the same fate to befall your soldiers.

in short, nations agree to treat their prisoners with at least some sense of dignity. cause if Germany started cutting of British and French prisoners hands. you can guarantee that german prisoners will come back missing their hands in return.

if it's not to follow international convention such as Geneva, it's to make sure that your prisoners don't before the same gruesome fate you inflict on your captive enemies.

>>1387189
to add a real life example, Germany gave brutal treatment to the Russians all through World War II, where most worked an starved alongside the jews in the camps.

with that abysmal treatment going on in Germany, a German prisoner in the USSR was going to have just as bad a time for it, where the grand majority never returned home.

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>>1387140
>I have a pretty retarded question
Yep

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the british cut the index fingers of the french during the French and Indian Wars.
So the french used the middle finger with their guns and showed it as an insult (pix)

btw after the scandal of the Prison Ship in UK during the napoleonian wars, the rule became Treat well my soldiers and I treat well yours.

>>1387140

You want to cut off their hands preventing them from fighting... or doing any mechanical, clerical, industrial, or agricultural work for the rest of their lives, turning them into burdens of the state...

Yes, you're being naive.

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>>1387140

just cut off their heads. such trophy taking was popular in both wars.

>>1387140
Cut wrists, 5x less cutting.

>>1387140
Because what you do to your enemy your enemy will do to you, and no one wants to open that can of worms, see why they did not use chemical weapons in world war 2.

>>1391140
>>1391140
The allies in late 1944 were actually planning to not only drop chemical ordnance but also anthrax over german cities en masse by mid-1945.

The only reason they didn't go through with it was the surrender.

>>1391140
Japs launched major biological warfare on Chinese population centres in ww2.

>>1393279
China couldn't afford to retaliate