Originally Posted by Gatofeo

My father was in the Battle of the Bulge. He was in the 975th Engineering Batallion. His platoon was pulled out and sent up front to do night patrols to scout out the Germans.
After he and the others heard of Malmedy, he despised the Germans. And he was a second-generation German/American.
I doubt he would have executed, or allowed such a thing, to any prisoners they might have taken but he sure wouldn't have offered them a cigarette, like he saw some GIs do.
Interestingly, our last name is obviously German. Dad was told that he'd better not be taken prisoner, because the Germans were particularly hard on American GIs who had German ancestry. You were seen as a traitor to your race.
My mother was Belgian, and fought in the Belgian Resistance during the war. She was widowed at 26, when the Germans executed her husband. He had been a Belgian Resistance leader, betrayed by another, and thrown into Breendonk torture camp south of Brussels. He was executed two weeks before D-Day.
Mom was twice imprisoned by the Gestapo, at St. Gilles Prison in Brussels, for her activities.
She had more reason to hate the Germans, but Dad hated them more. He refused to enter that country when they visited Belgian relatives.
Mom was more forgiving toward the average German soldier, but really hated the SS and Gestapo.

Did Lt. Speirs kill all those Germans? Only he knows, and he's not talking on this side. But if he did, I'm sure it bothered him later. I've known a lot of combat veterans, and they later found it hard to reckon some of the things they did as young men.
Young men generally haven't acquired the conscience and compassion of those older. And besides, they were trained to kill or be killed themselves. Quite the motivation.
I can see it happening, especially in Normandy where many got their first exposure to war and they'd seen their buddies killed.

To quote Gen. William T. Sherman, the Union general: "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."