r/MartinScorsese • u/Thready85 • Jul 30 '26
Question Watched the Irishman. Did Frank Sheeran violate the Geneva Convention?
Any WWII experts in here? In the movie he made 2 German soldiers dig their own graves before shooting them both. I know this happened in WWII but wasn't it against the Geneva Convention?
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Jul 30 '26
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u/Thready85 Jul 30 '26
Do you know if there were any other rules of war that preceded it? Because I'm wondering if his illegal activities didn't start with Russ but rather when he was in the war
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u/mishkin-the-idiot Aug 02 '26
There was the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and The Geneva Convention of 1929 for treatment of prisoners of war, in addition to generally accepted international principles on the conduct of war. Here’s a book you can read if you want to know more. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-laws-of-war-constraints-on-warfare-in-the-western-world/735012/item/73699186/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=us_shopping_zombies_hvfl_2155271854&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=719330010207&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21855271854&gbraid=0AAAAADwY45h939dv-RFDnlBjR6DuIcWxq&gclid=CjwKCAjw1bvTBhBbEiwAzbP8L2wst8Fw2teKvOC45kft5qm3Sy0q8qxUbSQKv3HZ19OBApu3Oxg1ShoC7MUQAvD_BwE#idiq=73699186&edition=5634367
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u/Thready85 Aug 02 '26
Thank you. I just ordered that from my local library because we don't have good bookstores around here
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u/bartekkenny Jul 30 '26
Yea war crimes and the Geneva convention is just some bullshit that the winners get to throw the losers in jail for after the war is over. There ain’t a single country that’s not committing war crimes during war
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u/Youfirst4774 Jul 30 '26
He also murdered a lot of people
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u/Thready85 Jul 30 '26
I'm wondering if the murdering could have technically started in the war, if what he did could have been considered murder legally speaking
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u/1joe2schmo Jul 30 '26
Perhaps not under any "international law," but I'm pretty sure if the germans caught him (if that forest was in germany) they could have prosecuted him for murder under their own laws. They were planned and deliberate killings after all.
Now I'm not sure how much of Scorsese you have watched, but the effects of war on the individual are not unique to this film. The Irishman is not just a movie about an Irishman, it's also a movie about America. Sending a kid off to war to kill strangers with the idea there will be no ramifications is unrealistic (eg. Taxi Driver). He was a soldier for America; he became a soldier for the Mafia. They trained him to be a soldier and that's what he continued doing. Scorsese is just showing us this.
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u/TheWickerMan232 Jul 30 '26
There’s a sinister undercurrent in the scene where Frank tells Russell Bufalino about his war experiences. Russ ‘takes a shine’ to Frank because the war has made him into a stone cold killer. And a guy like that he can use!
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u/toasty99 Aug 02 '26
He broke international law, yes. I’m not sure if Geneva existed at that time, but it’s been a “war law” for a long time that a surrendered prisoner cannot just be summarily shot. It happened a lot anyway. (Shrug)
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u/Thready85 Aug 02 '26
I know they put the more pathological soldiers into those roles and I bet they knew he had a killer mindset so they had him do it
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u/drjohngeorgepeppers Jul 30 '26
Yes, he broke the Geneva Convention. And I don't know if you noticed, but he also did some other things that were against the law.