There are also incidents of allied soldiers firing on German medical personnel in clear and deliberate violations of the Hague and Geneva conventions.
While there are many examples of this happening on both sides, for the most part, the non-combatant status of the medics was respected on the Western Front.
Medics would often tend to soldiers of either side. In one example, a pair of American medics used a French church as an aid station on D-Day, 1944.
Wounded soldiers from both sides were given the same treatment. The only restriction was that all patients had to leave their weapons outside.
Both American and German soldiers lives were saved due to their intervention. On the Eastern Front, the situation was entirely different.
The Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention and the Hague conventions were signed by Russia in 1899 and 1907, with the Soviet Union never confirming its status as signatory, which provided the justification for Nazi mistreatment of both prisoners and medical staff.
When in combat, medics would be treated like any other soldier and would be eliminated without hesitation.
Should a Soviet medic be captured, he would be sent to a POW camp as any other soldier.
Conditions in these camps were horrendous, with the Nazi regime deliberately underfeeding Soviet POWs.
The main aims of the German war effort in the eastern theater of the war was Lebensraum or living space for ethnic Germans.
