Breaker Morant

A streaming service has started showing some older Australian films, including "Breaker Morant". I want to get on record my opinion of the events as they happened historically:

• there were atrocities committed by both sides in this Second Boer War before these events, and the British concentration camps were both deplorable and a moral liability during and after World War Two;
  
• the torture, mutilation and death of Harry "Breaker" Morant's best friend appears to have created a state of mental illness - possibly PTSD, or grief worsened by PTSD, or some other condition; 
• in his state of mental illness, Breaker was responsible for war crimes; 
• the attempted defence of "just following orders" was demonstrated to be unacceptable after World War Two in the Nuremberg trials: it was also unacceptable at that time - and it had been unacceptable during the 1400s; 
• a defence of insanity might have been justifiable, but that depends on whether he could reasonably (in the legal sense, not the moral) have been considered to have been insane, or to have had enough time for his military training (aided by the voices of dissent) to have reasserted a more balanced and appropriate state of being (I wonder if any psychologists have ever looked at this aspect of this situation?). There is also a question about the adequacy of military training and care for soldiers then: the British survivors of the battle of Rorke's Drift are known to have had PTSD and this continued to be inadequately managed for decades, and British military techniques and training were revamped quite considerably to address shortcomings - which led to an improved performance during World War One;
  
• I agree with those who consider that not all British war criminals associated with those vents were dealt with, but I consider the same applies to the Boers; 
• the suggested influence of imminent peace talks may have been an influence, but a trial was still necessary;
• the fact that other British war criminals were let off suggests that there may have been an element of scapegoating, but a trial was still necessary; and 
• the death penalty never works as a deterrent, drags the executioners down morally, and should not have been an option.
  

Note that the director "intended the film to explore how wartime atrocities can be "committed by people who appear to be quite normal", and it isn't historically perfectly accurate. 

The complexity of war crimes - especially the point that both sides may commit them - was shown recently in the recent War Against Humanity video here.

That point still applies today.