My Dads unit was occupying a German village during WWII when they encountered a problem with some locale teens.  They apparently stole a case of grenades from the supply depot.  They knew the teens took them and wanted them back before anyone pulled a pin, so they rounded them up.  They of course claimed not to know anything about the missing grenades. So thru my Dads translating they got the teens parents together and explained that this was what they were going to do.  They wanted to psych the teens out, so they gave each teen a shovel and matched them out to a field and ordered them to start digging their graves.  While digging a squad of soldiers then was matched out into the field like a firing squad.  What they asked the parents to do was pretend it was all real and cry and scream for their children’s lives.  The show worked and the teens gave up the grenades real fast when asked one more time.  The unit commander just wanted the grenades back and felt this would work, correct he was.