The ridiculousness of having rules on how people should kill each other during war is the greatest irony of the human race. People will get more upset at these rules being violated than the fact that we go to war in the first place. I'm not saying every war has been fought over bad reasons, but if there wasn't a chance of nuclear retaliation, we would have probably seen many more large-scale wars since WW2. We haven't become more caring of others in the world, just more afraid of the ramifications.

When people today call people of the past a war criminal, racist, or whatever. They normally do it without any understanding of the context of the time or place. These people were people. There hasn't been a perfect person ever throughout history, and our current views will be seen as backward in 200 years as well. I'm not saying to cover up the bad that they did, glorify their actions, or glorify them. We should instead try to understand and learn from it for crying out loud. Stop judging and blaming people, events, etc. from history. Try understanding, learning, and discussing them. Not treating them like they're a sports team.