Quote:
Originally Posted by Lundgren
One of the reasons why the Nazis started to use gas was because of the breakdown of discipline in the units carrying out the mass murders. I would imagine the same would apply to any unit that started to execute their prisoners. So some of the bands of marauders could be from units that decided to go by option of executing.
There are also the point of not making the enemy desperate. Desperate people will fight a lot harder. "Hopeless fight" vs "taken prisoner", or "Hopeless fight" vs "be executed"...
So as long there are work to be done, I would imagine work camps being to most common option.
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Those are a couple of really good points. One of the main reasons the Wermacht kept fighting for as long as it did was that they believed that they could expect no quarter from the vengeful Red Army. To some degree this was a very valid concern. Soviet propagandists actually had to tone down their anti-German rhetoric in the last few months of the war because atrocities against German civilians had become so common.