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Notes -
I’m wondering to what extent the German Wehrmacht is, or at least was present in British and American cultural memory as a worthy enemy in battle, unlike the Japanese and the Italians, in a similar way how, I suppose, Confederates were seen as worthy enemies in the Northern US after the Civil War, unlike the various Indian tribes. It’d largely explain why the so-called myths of the clean Wehrmacht and the Lost Cause of the South came to be.
Obviously as a Brit I'm consuming the fictionalised version of the American frontier from a long distance, but in the Cowboys and Indians mythos I grew up with Indians were always Worthy Opponents in the TVTropes sense. I assume this idea dates back to the golden age of the Western as a movie genre because that is where the tropes come from.
Didn't the warriors of various Indian tribes routinely take hostages/captives and kill/torture them?
On the east coast colonial period, yes. Horrible drawn out tortures. Being seared to death with hot coals. Skinned alive one small strip at time. Fingers broken and twisted the wrong way. Completely senseless. And not even always during warfare. They'd take hostages and get to work on one as an example to the others.
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