‘They seized three-year-old children and shot them’: Darkest atrocities of the Nazis laid bare in the secretly recorded conversations of German prisoners of war

By Allan Hall
16 September 2012

Let loose in strange lands, provincial burghers became willing executioners.  In Italy, Russia, Poland, it was the same - men who, before the war would never have kicked a dog or struck a child, behaved with the barbarity of Mongol hordes.  'I used to shoot at everything', a soldier admitted - 'We liked to go for women pushing prams, often with children at their sides. It was a kind of sport really...'.  As Germany's premier news magazine Der Spiegel puts it: 'Research has often been interested in the question about how quickly ordinarys men became killing machines in war.  After reading these reports one must say: very quickly.'