Orders Quotes
Few high ranking officers, or officials of civilian organizations, take the responsibility for subordinates not understanding instructions.
This was an incredible order not allowing any Russian Army unit to retreat or surrender. However, it worked. The Russians, with American help of arms, held off the mighty German invading Army. However the German invasion cost the Russians a staggering 22 million lives, mostly civillian.
The principle seems to have been generalized from the military field to include executive orders, diplomatic instructions, policy statements and the like.
Calley was the officer who gave orders to kill men, women and children of My Lai, a Vietnam village which Army intelligence felt had been sympathetic and given help and assistance to the Viet Cong. Calley was convicted by Court Marshall, but was released after serving a very light sentence. No one above Cally was held in any way responsible.
He was one or the few Turkish Senior officials who would testify about the Armenian genocide. The Christian Armenians, a minority in Turkey and its lands, were discriminated against like other non Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire. But during the Turkish War with Russia and WWI, some Armenians defected and served on the Russian side. Many Turkish citizens took revenge on Armenians by means of murder and torture. Soon, the extermination of the Armenians became the official “Young Turk” government policy. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed outright, and about an equal number were “deported” to special areas. Many died of malnutrition along the forced march of Ethnic Cleansing. Others were murdered as they were deported. No one knows exactly how many Armenians were killed with estimates ranging from ½ million to 4 million. This was the first genocide of the 20th century. Modern Turkish leaders however, are in denial about the Armenian deaths. They claim that there was a war and food was scarce; the only Armenians killed, the claimed were proven Russian agents. They further claim that the Armenian behavior was in large part responsible for the forced deportations because of their lack of patriotism and unwillingness to help the Turkish authorities identify the Russian agents. Most Turks today are unaware of the Armenian Genocide as nothing is taught about the massacres in schools or other institutions. It is against the law in Turkey to even have an intellectual study of the Turkish behavior towards the Armenians, much less publish anything about it.
The Army consisted of uneducated rural peasants. As much a Petliura tried to educate his troops, there were still extensive pogroms against Ukrainian Jews. Petliura did not enforce his order rigorously. See {617891}.
The line is spoken by the captain of a nuclear submarine.
He was convicted as a War Criminal, sentenced to death, and then his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. His quote is important because this was the defense that was totally rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal—a solder is not required to obey an order to commit a war crime and if he does, he is as guilty as the person who gave the order.
