Allied war crimes during World War II
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
Allied war crimes were violations of the laws of war committed by the Allies of World War II against civilian populations or the soldiers of the Axis Armed Forces. Other incidents are alleged by certain historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but for a variety of reasons, were not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute.
At the end of World War II, several trials of Axis war criminals took place, most famously were the Nuremberg Trials, leading to the deaths of 21 prominent Nazis. However, these tribunals were expressly prohibited from considering any allegations of war crimes committed by the Allied powers or their military forces. Instead, seperate investigations were conducted regarding Allied personnel and alleged war crimes. If charged, this led to court-martialing.
It should be noted that many things classified as a war crime in today's standards were not during World War II.
Incidents
Incidents that occurred during the involvement of the relevant nation in World War II include the following. Again, not all of these are agreed to be war crimes:
- Canada
- The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada randomly burned houses in Friesoythe, northwestern Germany in April 1945 as a reprisal for the death of their commanding officer.[2]
- Free France
-
- The "Marocchinate" of Cassino: (some reports are disputed. see the relevant page for details)
- Soviet Union
-
- Mass rape and other war crimes by Soviet troops: these happened during occupation of East Prussia[3][4], in parts of Pomerania (Danzig) and Silesia, and during the Battle of Berlin [5] and the Battle of Budapest.
- Katyn massacre
- Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.
- The mistreatment and death of several hundred thousand German and German allied POW's: the Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Conventions of 1929, but the Nuremberg Tribunal found the general principles of international law, in respect to Nazi war crimes, had bound all belligerent nations to the accord despite the lack of universal ratification.[6][7][8]
- United Kingdom
-
- Area bombing and firebombing of German cities and towns, based on situational analysis and debatable intentions.[9][10](disputed, as opinions vary) [11][12][13][14]
- United States
-
- Battle of the Bismarck Sea- On orders from U.S. Army Air Force General George Kenney, U.S. aircraft strafed and bombed unarmed survivors from Japanese warships and transports swimming in the ocean.
- Sinking of the Nachi in Manila Bay- Aircraft from the USS Lexington strafed unarmed surivors from the sunken Japanese cruiser Nachi in the waters of Manila Bay on 5 November, 1944.[15]
- Canicattì slaughter
- Biscari massacre
- Dachau massacre
- Area bombing: (see the UK entry for information, disputed as well)
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, based on the judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State[16].
- Yugoslav Communist Partisan Forces
Other Controversy
In the Nuremberg trial, German Admiral Karl Dönitz was tried (among other crimes) for issuing orders to engage in Unrestricted submarine warfare. He was found guilty, but the sentence was not assessed (i.e. he got no penalty) because the court discovered evidence that both the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy also issued similar orders. [17]
Post World War II incidents involving Prisoners of War
- United States
-
- Rheinwiesenlager (disputed) [18]
- Salina, Utah POW massacre
See also
- Red Army atrocities
- Bydgoszcz Bloody Sunday
- Katyn massacre
- Eisenhower and German POWs
- Expulsion of Germans after World War II
- Victor's justice
- Morgenthau Plan
- Salomon Morel
- Pawłokoma massacre
- Malmedy massacre trial
- Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
- Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre
- War crimes of the Wehrmacht
- List of massacres
External links
- "An ethical blank cheque" British and US mythology about the second world war ignores our own crimes and legitimises Anglo-American war making, Richard Drayton, Tuesday May 10, 2005 The Guardian
Notes
- ^ Mithcham, Samuel and Friedrich von Stauffenberg The Battle of Sicily
- ^ The official historian of the Canadian Army, C.P. Stacey, noted in his autobiography that it was the only incident he was aware of that could be considered a "war crime" associated with Canadian soldiers in the Second World War. see: Stacey, C.P. A Date With History
- ^ Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945, James Mark, Past & Present 188 (2005) 133-161
- ^ Excerpt, Chapter one The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945-2002 - William I. Hitchcock - 2003 - ISBN 0-385-49798-9
- A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 - Alfred-Maurice de Zayas - 1994 - ISBN 0-312-12159-8
- Barefoot in the Rubble - Elizabeth B. Walter - 1997 - ISBN 0-9657793-0-0
- ^ Antony Beevor They raped every German female from eight to 80 in The Guardian May 1, 2002
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to...bomb Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime." see: Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in The Guardian, October 21, 2003
- ^ Friedrich states that "Civilian deaths were not collateral damage but rather the object of the exercise." Some also dispute that civilians were deliberately targeted, stating that the primary aim was to reduce the industrial capacity of Germany.
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/19/nchurc19.xml]
- ^ http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=277121069229925]
- ^ http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/review-859-p429/$File/irrc_859_Maier.pdf#search=%22%22J%C3%B6rg%20Friedrich%22%20%22war%20crimes%22%20review%22]
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1067232,00.html German historian provokes row over war photos]
- ^ Lacroix, Japanese Cruisers, p. 356.
- ^ Shimoda et al. v. The State, Tokyo District Court, 7 December 1963
- ^ Judgement : Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
- ^ U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948