Execution of civils in the East

World War II Russian Military
#61

The Hague Convention is irrelevant as the German Army certainly ignored the following articles.
Art. 3.
The armed forces of the belligerent parties may consist of combatants and non-combatants. In the case of capture by the enemy, both have a right to be treated as prisoners of war.
Art. 4.
Prisoners of war are in the power of the hostile Government, but not of the individuals or corps who capture them.

[b]They must be humanely treated.

All their personal belongings, except arms, horses, and military papers, remain their property[/b].

Art. 6.
The State may utilize the labour of prisoners of war according to their rank and aptitude, officers excepted. The tasks shall not be excessive and shall have no connection with the operations of the war.

Prisoners may be authorized to work for the public service, for private persons, or on their own account.

Work done for the State is paid for at the rates in force for work of a similar kind done by soldiers of the national army, or, if there are none in force, at a rate according to the work executed.

When the work is for other branches of the public service or for private persons the conditions are settled in agreement with the military authorities.

The wages of the prisoners shall go towards improving their position, and the balance shall be paid them on their release, after deducting the cost of their maintenance.

Art. 7.
The Government into whose hands prisoners of war have fallen is charged with their maintenance.

In the absence of a special agreement between the belligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as regards board, lodging, and clothing on the same footing as the troops of the Government who captured them.

Art. 8.
Prisoners of war shall be subject to the laws, regulations, and orders in force in the army of the State in whose power they are. Any act of insubordination justifies the adoption towards them of such measures of severity as may be considered necessary.

Escaped prisoners who are retaken before being able to rejoin their own army or before leaving the territory occupied by the army which captured them are liable to disciplinary punishment.

Prisoners who, after succeeding in escaping, are again taken prisoners, are not liable to any punishment on account of the previous flight.

My highlighting.
There are loads of other clauses they broke so it makes no difference if partisans are or aren’t protected. The Hague convention was ignored anyway.

#62
  1. Non-combatants would be for example NAAFI staff, etc. I don’t know of any instance of the Germans breaking this.
  2. Largely true of western PoWs, with some exceptions (notably Jewish PoWs) - Russian prisoners however were treated abominably.
  3. Again, AIUI they largely followed this one.
  4. Everyone broke this one. The English for instance relied heavily on Italian PoWs for farm work - clearly war related when a country is under blockade and has totally mobilized it’s workforce.
  5. Again, everyone broke this one - far more so on the Eastern front than in the West.
  6. I’m not aware of anyone being punished for this one. This isn’t about punishing escaped prisoners (where the Germans did indeed break the rules - notably with the large number of RAF PoWs they shot on one occasion), but about not punishing those who succeed in rejoining their own forces and then are recaptured.
#63

You will pardon me, honorable ladies and gentlemen, for my protracted silence – simply, I was preoccupied with my professional obligations. However, here I am and here are my answers to your previous posts.

Librarian: okay,that’s my opinion,and that is yours.

Compared to other animals, the major crucial advantage of Homo sapiens sapiens, my dear Mr. Imi, has been the continued development of his intellectual flexibility and ability to learn from experience. The very peak of this ascent of the human animal was a product known as Science, and the real beneficial power of Science always was and still is within her capability for attestation and the resulting capacity to change otherwise erroneous human apprehensions. Our modern society and technology could not have been built on views, opinions, or faith. Nor can modern society have any hope of the solving the problems we face by reliance based upon sheer belief. The real power of scientific knowledge lies in its capability to present the power of evidence and the resulting ability to change, to update mental power of human beings.

People who are searching for different excuses to believe completely silly things frequently make a simple mistake – they are completely relying on their faith. But when a believer makes a positive assertion, and then declines to provide a basis for it, an rationally based refutation is always deemed invalid because it is impossible to prove a denial. The rules of logic and science are always indicating that there must be some kind of presented basis (either in substance or in thought) for an assertion or else it must be denied.

An assertion, without the evidence, is not acceptable as true. That is the default position in every science, the position that defines what critical, rational thought really is. Rational and critical thought means not believing things you are told unless there is evidence to back it up. And without critical thought, logic and science - the only kind of productive thought humanity has ever come up with - are to be abandoned. To reject critical, rationally based thought is to turn one’s back on thinking and embrace the Dark Ages.

Final result of your attitude is perfect example of an exercise in non-communication, which forces one either to take your “higher vision” of pure faith, or to remain completely silent. Faith has a certain validity, but validity of a very limited and relative kind, like a Rorschach test which conjures up different associations in each spectator. Will all due respect, my dear Mr. Imi, your reluctance to communicate concretely casts serious doubts on your factual insights. No one here is under any compulsion to communicate, but it is irrational to assume that he is more profound if he cannot get through with his bare feelings.

But we may take solace in the fact that we here do have personalities who are eloquent, individualistic, and above all sympathetic to the claims of science, and who without any doubt will outlast this contemporary, sadly amplified cult of unthinking. Please, don’t understand me wrongly: I always will be completely compassionately inclined toward you, because I do understand your deportment. Therefore allow me just one, indeed last demonstration of the scientific method in History which is connected with our case.

My “evidence” is died a few years before,he was tell me,the soldiers are hate the partisans they make traps,make brutal interrogations for the soldiers and Egorka was right,because the partisans isn’t like too much capturing pows,because the pows only setback the partisans.

Firstly, I am a little bit surprised that your source has not mentioned that the factual reason for enormous augmentation of the partisan forces, as well as for the enormous extension of the uprisal in Vojvodina (avagy Vajdaság, vagy Délvidék – nekem igazán mindegy, tisztelt Uram, történelmileg teljessen elfogadható kifejezésekről van szó) was exactly that coursed massacre, committed in northern Serbia in January of 1942, in which more than 6000 citizens in the towns and villages of Novi Sad, Pašićevo, Petrovac, Srbobran, Gajdobra, Tovariševo and Stari Bečej were brutally killed.

Everything started when a completely ill-qualified commander of the Hungarian forces, namely commanding officer of the 15th Infantry Brigade, lieutenant-colonel Bátori Géza – as a matter of fact an police officer! - issued a foolish order for a direct frontal attack against entrenched partisan forces (Prvi šajkaški NOP odred)- with 80 fighters - equipped only with rifles and pistols, and without MG’s or artillery. This small partisan company, positioned at location Pustajićev Salaš (Pustajic’s Homestead) near the village of Žabalj, not only was able to inflict serious losses (42 killed soldiers, including 2 officers) but even to escape, with 8 killed and 5 wounded partisans left behind.

So what was a result, of that idiotic action, my dear Mr. Imi? An unadorned massacre. Hungarian forces simply rounded up hundreds of families and literally mowed them down with bayonets, bullets, gunstocks, axes, hammers, knifes and hand grenades. The bodies were dumped into the icy waters of Danube, which had to be broken up by hand grenades. More than 1300 completely innocent residents of Novi Sad were brutally murdered by Hungarian forces in an unprecedented orgy of drunken violence, which did not spare even Germans, Hungarians or Muslims: 813 Jews, 380 Serbs, 18 Hungarians, 15 Russians, 13 Slovaks, 8 Croats, 3 Germans, 2 Ruthenians, 2 Slovenians, and 1 Muslim, to be exact. Amongst them, there were 492 males, 418 women, 168 children, and 177 elderly. In addition, seven Serbian Orthodox priests were among those killed, along with 1 Jewish Rabbi, 126 salesmen and shopkeepers, 100 tradesmen, and 81 pupils.

Do you wish to see those fantastic combat achievements of the chivalrous Hungarian troopers of the 15th Infantry regiment, 16th Borderguard battalion or the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie, my dear Mr. Imi? Please, look:

Hungarian Gendarmes are observing dead civilian bodies in the middle of the Mileticeva street – Novi Sad, (Újvidék, Neusatz) January 23rd,1942

Hungarian soldiers and Gendarmes are looting the pockets of dead civilians before the transportation - Mileticeva Street, Novi Sad, (Újvidék, Neusatz) January 23rd,1942

Hungarian soldiers are pulling away dead civilian corpses - Mileticeva Street, Novi Sad, (Újvidék, Neusatz) January 23rd,1942

Killing of innocent civilians and their hurling into the frozen Danube - The Danube Strand, Novi Sad, (Újvidék, Neusatz) January 23rd,1942

Civilian corpses which remained stationary after the hurling, - The Danube Strand, Novi Sad, (Újvidék, Neusatz) January 23rd,1942

Cadavers of the innocent professional Serbian grave-digger Jovan Gonđa, his wife Ljubica, his 9 years old daughter Mara and her 13 year old friend in front of his home – Uspensko Groblje (Ascent Cemetery) Novi Sad, (Újvidék, Neusatz) January 23rd,1942

You see, my dear Mr. Imi, this represents real, fact-based historical exploration. In this case zou don’t have to believe me, or Mr. Pdf 27, or Mr. Rising Sun, or Mr. Egorka, or Mr. Ptimms or anyone else on this planet – all you have to do is to open your eyes, to sit in front of your computer, to use your mental power and to observe the factual evidence presented in an electronic configuration. Completely logical conclusions about factual nature of the historical role and deeds of Mr. Grassy, about his moral effigy, etc, etc. will automatically arrive in a split second. That’s the internal advantage of the scientific method in history.

BTW: If you do want any additional materials – for example, close photos of the mutilated female corpses which were taken out from the water by the German authorities in Banat, just say a word. My scanner is still completely functional, therefore additional factographic evidence needed for competent historical evaluation will be completely attainable.

József Grassy executed undeserving,and morbid style

No, my dear Mr. Imi – he indeed was executed by means of proper judicial hanging, which still was the standard method of execution of personalities with officially certified capital punishment in the former Yugoslavia until 1948, when aforementioned procedure was replaced by the firing squad with 8 shooters, all of them being employed as professional executioners by the Ministry of Interior.

Perhaps you don’t agree with this statement? No problem, scientific method is recommending a simple solution: presentation of supportive facts. Therefore, please – present some supportive factographic evidence for us. I am assuring you that those artefacts will have our most devoted attention.

Alas, another forced brake of the post, honorable ladies and gentlemen. Zou know…The text that you have entered is too long (10385 characters). Please shorten it to 10000 characters long… OK - no problem – we will be here again within a minute or two … :roll:

#64

PART II

In the meantime, here is a tiny historical experiment for you: this genuine photo was taken during the court session in Novi Sad after the war. It perhaps sounds completely unbelievable, but every court has a strict task to document and to preserve evidence about his own work, including executions.

These personalities – all of them Hungarian officers and governmental officials - were photographed as the defendants in a war-crime trial at the very moment when previously presented snapshots were revealed to them. Can you identify the persons in the picture?

Hungarian war Criminals before the Peoples Tribunal in Novi Sad

Please observe that the four conditions in the Article 1 are ALL to be met in otrder for militia or volunteers to qualify as belligerents. But in fact there was problem with fulfilling all of the conditions, especially 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

Fortunately, certain saved photo-materials from the WW2, nowadays completely available in the Military Museum in Belgrade, will be able to provide sufficiently legally binding evidence for the aforementioned legal dilemmas – at least those connected with Yugoslav partisans.

Clearly fixed and sufficiently distinctive emblem (the five-pointed red star), completely recognizable at a distance, accompanied by open carrying of firearms

Identifiable deployment of the chain of command, performed by means of a personal responsibility for the action of subordinates

So Article 2 can not be used for the period considerably after the territory has been under occupation.

Exactly, my dear Mr. Egorka. However, we still have some highly legally intriguing, but historically completely approved legal situations, which are requesting some outstandingly hard and eloquent official answers. You see, my dear Mr. Egorka, from a strict legal point of view, certain territory is considered “occupied” when it is actually placed under the authority of foreign armed forces - whether partially or entirely - without the formally given consent of the legitimately elected domestic government. The occupation, however, extends only to the territory where such authority has been officially established (formally proclaimed) and can be practically exercised.

And at this juncture we are confronted with a truthfully amazing legal problem – what if certain parts of a given state were officially excluded from the occupation, or even never formally occupied? You see, my factual birthplace – Bačka, a sub-region of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina – never was legally occupied! Officially, it was only re-attached to Hungary, without plebiscitary approved popular consent of the domestic residents, thus representing a variety of administrative annexation - unilateral legal act when territory is seized and held by one state. What are we supposed to do now, my dear Mr. Egorka? What will be our answer to the old question about rights of the ordinary citizens to protect themselves from abuse by every tyranny, including the evident tyranny of the government nominally protective toward them?

Putting a yoke on captured soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army – vicinity of Sombor, Vojvodina, April of 1941

Vim vi repelere licet – an old Roman legal maxim perhaps is acceptable as a legal justification for the subsequent actions of a domestic population in Vojvodina, my dear Mr. Egorka. However, I am still inclined to think that aforesaid saying is only a pale substitute for the utterly simple regulation, which – alas – was and still is desperately remote in a human community, a truly simple rule with only 11 words, but completely capable to secure the rights of individuals and promises of life and individual contentment for each man on the planet: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It requires only a modest relaxation in the standards and controls of civil society to let the monsters reign.

Absolutely correct statement, my dear Mr. Rising Sun, and our highly demanding civilizational task as well.

During the WW2 millions of innocent people were systematically put to death. The initiator of that horror, Adolph Hitler, may well have been psychopathic monster, although aforesaid statement is highly uncertain. But what about all those who ran the day-to-day operations, who actually killed, decapitated, hanged, raped, pillaged, flared, counted bodies, and did the necessary paperwork. Were they all monsters, honorable ladies and gentlemen?

No, they were not, according to social philosopher Hannah Arendt (1963), who covered the trial of Adolph Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal who was found guilty and was executed for causing the murder of millions of Jews. She described him as a dull, ordinary, unaggressive bureaucrat who saw himself as a little cog in a big machine. The recent publication of a partial transcript of Eichmann’s pretrial interrogation supports Arendt’s view. Several psychiatrists found Eichmann to be quite sane, and his personal relationships were quite normal. He sincerely believed that the Jews should have been allowed to emigrate to a separate territory and had argued that position within Hitler’s security service. Moreover, he had a Jewish mistress in secret - a crime for an SS officer - and a Jewish half cousin whom he arranged to have protected during the war (Von Lang & Sibyll, 1983).

Arendt subtitled her book about Eichmann “A Report on the Banality of Evil” and concluded that most of the “evil men” of the Third Reich were just ordinary people following orders from their superiors. This suggests that all of us might be capable of such evil and that Nazis were an event less wildly alien from the normal human condition than we might like to think. As Arendt put it, “in certain circumstances the most ordinary decent person can become a criminal.”

This is not an easy conclusion to accept because it is more comforting to believe that monstrous evil is done only by monstrous persons. In fact, our emotional attachment to this explanation of evil was vividly shown by the intensity of the attacks on Arendt and her conclusions.

This knotty issue was scientifically explored in a series of important and sadly neglected, completely scientifically undertaken studies conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram at Yale University. And what exactly he did? Well, he officially confirmed the theory that vast majority of completely normal human beings, without any apparent prior psychological problems, can become brutal unless great efforts are made by the society, and that people will always torture each other if instructed to. Please, just follow these links:

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/milgram_perils_authority_1974.html

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/milgrams-progress

And that’s exactly why we have to start to inoculate people against different irrational persuasions, honorable ladies and gentlemen, to immunize the general public against absurd phantasms embedded in pure ignorance. This thread we have here is just a right place for that rational disobedience, which is completely justified by the intrinsic human values of the collectivity commonly known as mankind.

#65

Good job mr ptimms.

Hard not to agree.
The death-rate of the soviet POWS was about 60%.More then 2 mln soldier died or have been executed for different “reasons”
I heard the GErmans side explained it by very interesting way- if the USSR has not signed the Huge convention - we are free of obligation to treat the soviet POWs according the Rules of it.
Finaly it has played an Evil Joke with Germans- the Liberation Red Army in 1945 did not even wish to hear about right of GErman population initially:(
The ALL their property was considering as the “Grabed in the East” and can be confiscated for any reasons.
While the special order of Stavka ( march 1945) did not prevent the mass violation and started the persecution of marauders.

#66

Oh my god.
You always know how to impress the people with quite new amazing sources, dear Librarian.
I never heard about uprising in Novi Sad before.
The post-uprising massacre could be easy compared with simular sensless terror after the Warsaw getto uprising in 1943.

#67

Somewhat surprisingly they are actually correct in this!

See the full text of the convention here.

Funnily enough, the Geneva conventions provide no such wriggle room (after having seen how the Germans treated Russian PoWs) where the equivalent article is:

Source

#68

Somewhat is not good enough. :wink:
The Hauge convention of 1907 was amended by the Geneva convention of 1929.

Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Geneva, 27 July 1929.
…
PART VIII
EXECUTION OF THE CONVENTION
SECTION I
GENERAL PROVISIONS

Art. 82. The provisions of the present Convention shall be respected by the High Contracting Parties in all circumstances.
In time of war if one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall, nevertheless, remain binding as between the belligerents who are parties thereto.
…
see full text

As I understand all countries who signed Geneva convention of 1929 had to follow it regardless if the other side has not sign it.

Besides USSR declared that it will follow the Hauge convention except the clause of free mail deliveries to and from POWs.
I mean USSR did not officially signed it, but declared that it will be followed.

#69

Alas, no.

Art. 82. The provisions of the present Convention shall be respected by the High Contracting Parties in all circumstances.
In time of war if one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall, nevertheless, remain binding as between the belligerents who are parties thereto.

This limits observance to the parties to the Convention between themselves.

So, for example, if countries A, B, and C are at war but only A and B have signed the Convention, then they have to observe it in relation to their conduct between each other but neither has to observe it in relation to their conduct towards C.

#70

There is considerable irony in excluding Soviets from the protection of the Conventions as it was the Russian Tsar who was responsible for initiating the international peace conference which resulted in the first Convention in 1899, which was the basis for all subsequent laws of war by international treaty.

This commentary on it relates the past to the present.

In his foreign policy speech to the diplomatic corps in Moscow on 15 July [2008], President Dmitri Medvedev made the interesting claim that the falsification of history is often a prelude to the violation of international law - something for which he implicitly attacked the West. It is certainly true that the study of the history of the law of nations can illuminate the way it has recently been perverted. And as it happens, that history is one in which Russia has played a key role.

Medvedev’s address, and especially his call for a Europe-wide security treaty, recall the initiatives taken by Russia’s last emperor, Nicholas II, the 90th anniversary of whose murder fell the following evening. Tsar Nicholas’ violent overthrow in 1917 has obscured the historical memory of his achievements, but perhaps the greatest of these was his decision, taken 110 years ago in 1898, to invite the Great Powers to attend an international peace conference. They did so, in the capital of the Netherlands in 1899, and this, the first Hague Peace Conference, took important decisions about how to make warfare more civilised.

It also laid the groundwork for the much fuller Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. Nicholas can therefore be called the founder, or at least the patron, of the international laws of war. Many of the rules he sponsored are still in force today - although sadly some of them, especially the condemnation of aerial bombardment which was agreed in 1899 before the aeroplane had even been invented, have been quietly dropped. The original conference’s most lasting achievement was to create an international court of arbitration, the direct predecessor of the International Court of Justice which still exists in The Hague today.

However, just as Nicholas’ own reign came to an end as the forces of modern warfare unleashed the tidal wave of revolution which swept three emperors from their thrones, so the Hague laws of war have now been largely eclipsed (even if they remain in force) by the laws of Geneva, passed in 1949 in the aftermath of the terrible suffering inflicted on civilians during the Second World War. They govern the treatment of non-combatants, the sick and the wounded: in other words, the focus is now more on victims than on combatants.

Geneva did not, though, change the underlying structure of the international system. States continued to be regarded as legally equal and sovereign. Since the end of the Cold War, by contrast, the Western powers - the United States in first place - have sought to destroy this structure at its conceptual core. The doctrine of “rogue states” was invented, and the doctrine of universal human rights was abused, to justify attacks against Iraq and Yugoslavia whose regimes were presented as illegitimate because criminal. Moreover, the Western powers arrogated to themselves the right to adjudicate international law, usurping the authority of the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice.

When President Medvedev invokes international law, therefore, what he is defending is this key principle of sovereign statehood as the basis for the international system, and the right of the existing and legally constituted authoritative bodies to adjudicate its law. Of course some governments abuse their sovereignty, and tyranny is certainly a bad thing. But the proposition that one state or body of states has the legal right to judge the internal affairs of another, and to impose its judgement by force, is a recipe for chaos and constant war - vigilantism, in fact, on an international scale.

Even worse, the dismantling of the concept of sovereignty would destroy the laws of war themselves. The doctrine of state sovereignty underpins these laws because the rights accorded to soldiers and prisoners of war derive from the fact that they are recognised as fighting legitimately for their countries. By contrast, the abuses committed at Guantánamo Bay, and the widespread attack on the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia, are the logical and inevitable consequences of wars waged against enemies who were proclaimed to be criminal in their very essence, and to have therefore no right to sovereignty.

Many of the claims made by the West in support of its interventionism - including those made to justify the recognition of Kosovo, which President Medvedev continues explicitly to oppose - have in fact been struck down in recent rulings by the International Court of Justice. The ICJ has repeatedly affirmed the continuing validity of state sovereignty, and the illegality of judicial and military intervention in the internal affairs of other states. Russia would do well, therefore, to lend strong support to this court as the true upholder of international law. It is also the only truly international court because, unlike the new misleadingly named International Criminal Court whose charter the largest countries in the world have refused to sign, the ICJ’s jurisdiction and powers are universally recognised by all states.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080718/114348813.html

#71

But it should be remembered that, as indicated by the opening paragraph and paragraphs 4 to 8 of the imperial rescript, it was not so much humanitarian concerns as the growing cost of arming nations which prompted the Tsar’s proposal and encouraged other nations to consider it favourably.

Peace Conference at the Hague 1899:
Rescript of the Russian Emperor(1) August 24 (12, Old Style), 1898

The maintenance of general peace, and a possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations, present themselves in the existing condition of the whole world, as the ideal towards which the endeavors of all Governments should be directed.

The humanitarian and magnanimous ideas of His Majesty the Emperor, my August Master, have been won over to this view. In the conviction that this lofty aim is in conformity with the most essential interests and the legitimate views of all Powers, the Imperial Government thinks that the present moment would be very favorable for seeking, by means of international discussion, the most effectual means of insuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and durable peace, and, above all, of putting an end to the progressive development of the present armaments.

In the course of the last twenty years the longings for a general appeasement have become especially pronounced in the consciences of civilized nations. The preservation of peace has been put forward as the object of international policy; in its name great States have concluded between themselves powerful alliances; it is the better to guarantee peace that they have developed, in proportions hitherto unprecedented, their military forces, and still continue to increase them without shrinking from any sacrifice.

All these efforts nevertheless have not yet been able to bring about the beneficent results of the desired pacification. The financial charges following an upward march strike at the public prosperity at its very source.

The intellectual and physical strength of the nations, labor and capital, are for the major part diverted from their natural application, and unproductively consumed. Hundreds of millions are devoted to acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which, though today regarded as the last word of science, are destined tomorrow to lose all value in consequence of some fresh discovery in the same field.

National culture, economic progress, and the production of wealth are either paralyzed or checked in their development. Moreover, in proportion as the armaments of each Power increase, so do they less and less fulfill the object which the Governments have set before themselves.

The economic crises, due in great part to the system of armaments a L’outrance, and the continual danger which lies in this massing of war material, are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden, which the peoples have more and more difficulty in bearing. It appears evident, then, that if this state of things were prolonged, it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is desired to avert, and the horrors of which make every thinking man shudder in advance.

To put an end to these incessant armaments and to seek the means of warding off the calamities which are threatening the whole world-such is the supreme duty which is today imposed on all States.

Filled with this idea, His Majesty has been pleased to order me to propose to all the Governments whose representatives are accredited to the Imperial Court, the meeting of a conference which would have to occupy itself with this grave problem.

This conference should be, by the help of God, a happy presage for the century which is about to open. It would converge in one powerful focus the efforts of all States which are sincerely seeking to make the great idea of universal peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord.

It would, at the same time, confirm their agreement by the solemn establishment of the principles of justice and right, upon which repose the security of States and the welfare of peoples.

Notes:
(1) Handed to diplomatic representatives by Count Mouravieff, Russian Foreign Minister, at weekly reception in the Foreign Office, St. Petersburg, August 24/12, 1898.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague99/hag99-01.htm

#72

I do not get it…
So what is the message of the Article 82 then?

I am not an expert or anything, but I read it as the article 82 from 1929 axplains, ammends and modifies article 2 from 1907.

Art. 82.
[ol]
[li]The provisions of the present Convention shall be respected by the High Contracting Parties in all circumstances. [/li]> [li]In time of war if one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall, nevertheless, remain binding as between the belligerents who are parties thereto.[/li]> [/ol]

The first sentnse of article 82, 1929 sais that everyone who signed the convention of 1929 HAS to respect it ALWAYS, i.e. “in all circumstances”.
Then the second sentense elaborates on this topic.
So the convention “remain binding as between the belligerents who are parties thereto.”
In this case “as between” is not a restrictive condition, but rather directive to the party which signed convention that it HAS to treat the opponent AS it was a party to the convention of 1929.

So with all due respect…

#73

Librarian:
There was a unnecessary massacre this is a fact,and I known the premises,I saw a document film,of this massacre,many victim go to the front of the line,to shoot down quickly,because many of them naked.
I accept your comment.
When we speak about the barbarous habit,every side is quilty.
But I see a official trial,and a barbarous unnecessary execution.
Grassy deserved for death,but if anybody do this style of execution,is the same man.
A man with a small intelligence,do things fast,not try to make long suffering.
I haven’t got any evidence(I think everybody here a C.S.I. fan) of this also,but you beleive to me in our present day families must to die,and murdered for nothing,for stupid feigned ideas?
But I haven’t got evidence also to attest this.
However,that is the truth,without evidence.
Things what we do,without evidence are undone?
I see some guys paste the Hague Convention.
The partisans aren’t a military corps,and I donk think so they interest by military,or any law.
Mainly not collect Pow’s.
My old friend say to me,they are hate the order to search partisans because they are brutal.
I see you speak hungarian:
(Ne hívjál az uradnak,mert nem vagyok úr,te meg még nem vagy a feleségem szerintem.)

#74

The critical elements are ‘as between’ and ‘the belligerents who are parties thereto’.

‘As between’ refers and limits it to ‘the belligerents who are parties thereto’, being belligerents who signed (and, strictly, also later ratified) the Convention.

It might make more sense if one considers the doctrine of privity of contract in civil law in English speaking (common law) countries, which holds that only the parties to a contract are bound by it. So, for example, if you and I contract that I will buy Chevan a new Lada then you can sue me if I don’t perform the contract, but Chevan can’t. (Why he would want to force me to inflict a Lada on him is a different question. :wink: :D) Whatever happens, Chevan isn’t a party to our contract and can’t claim any legally enforceable benefit under it.

The same general idea applies to international treaties. For example, if countries A and B sign a treaty not to fish a certain area of ocean, that doesn’t impose any obligation on country C, which hasn’t signed it, not to fish there nor does it confer any right on C to stop A and B fishing there if either of them breaches the treaty between A and B.

Conversely, if the treaty requires A and B to bring any dispute between them about fishing there to arbitration, it doesn’t stop either of them sending a gunboat to eject C from the area, even if the treaty prevents them doing it to each other.

#75

Despite the rather squeamish attitude of modern university ethics committees, Jerry Burger has demonstrated that Milgram’s findings still hold true.

I attribute the differences in conduct in the experimental subjects primarily to the orientation of the individual. Some people want to please others or conform with them. Others determine their conduct by principle. All of us have a bit of both in us.

How we act depends upon the circumstance. I doubt that many, probably any, of Milgram’s or Burger’s subjects would have decapitated someone, because that involves a direct action with patently harmful consequences unlike administering unseen electric shocks after being told that the victim will not be harmed as in Milgram’s experiment, which is rather too confused to be the basis for extrapolating how, say, concentration camp guards will behave.

Too much has been made of Milgram’s experiments as sound predictors of human behaviour, like much of the stuff that comes out of psychological theory and experimentation.

But then again, I’m not an experimental psychologist, so what would I know?

Apart from the fact that psywar run by genius psychologists has to be the least effective employment of manpower on the battlefield or in war. :rolleyes:

Decades later, still asking: Would I pull that switch?
By Benedict Carey

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Some of psychology’s most famous experiments are those that expose the skull beneath the skin, the apparent cowardice or depravity pooling in almost every heart.

The findings force a question. Would I really do that? Could I betray my own eyes, my judgment, even my humanity, just to complete some experiment?

The answer, if it’s an honest one, often gives rise to observations about the cruelties of the day, whether suicide bombing, torture or gang atrocities. And so a psych experiment — a mock exercise, testing individual behavior — can become something else, a changing prism through which people view the larger culture, for better and for worse.

Consider the psychologist Stanley Milgram’s obedience studies of the early 1960s that together form one of the darkest mirrors the field has held up to the human face. In a series of about 20 experiments, hundreds of decent, well-intentioned people agreed to deliver what appeared to be increasingly painful electric shocks to another person, as part of what they thought was a learning experiment. The “learner” was in fact an actor, usually seated out of sight in an adjacent room, pretending to be zapped.

Researchers, social commentators and armchair psychologists have pored through Milgram’s data ever since, claiming psychological and cultural insights. Now, decades after the original work (Milgram died in 1984, at 51), two new papers illustrate the continuing power of the shock experiments — and the diverse interpretations they still inspire.

In one, a statistical analysis to appear in the July issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a postdoctoral student at Ohio State University verifies a crucial turning point in Milgram’s experiments, the voltage level at which participants were most likely to disobey the experimenter and quit delivering shocks.

The participants usually began with what they thought were 15-volt shocks, and worked upward in 15-volt increments, as the experimenter instructed. At 75 volts, the “learner” in the next room began grunting in apparent pain. At 150 volts he cried out: “Stop, let me out! I don’t want to do this anymore.”

At that point about a third of the participants refused to continue, found Dr. Dominic Packer, author of the new paper. “The previous expressions of pain were insufficient,” Packer said. But at 150 volts, he continued, those who disobeyed decided that the learner’s right to stop trumped the experimenter’s right to continue. Before the end of the experiments, at 450 volts, an additional 10 to 15 percent had dropped out.

This appreciation of another’s right is crucial in interrogation, Packer suggests. When prisoners’ rights are ambiguous, inhumane treatment can follow. Milgram’s work, in short, makes a statement about the importance of human rights, as well as obedience.

In the other paper, due out in the journal American Psychologist, a professor at Santa Clara University replicates part of the Milgram studies — stopping at 150 volts, the critical juncture at which the subject cries out to stop — to see whether people today would still obey. Ethics committees bar researchers from pushing subjects through to an imaginary 450 volts, as Milgram did.

The answer was yes. Once again, more than half the participants agreed to proceed with the experiment past the 150-volt mark. Dr. Jerry Burger, the author, interviewed the participants afterward and found that those who stopped generally believed themselves to be responsible for the shocks, whereas those who kept going tended to hold the experimenter accountable. That is, the Milgram work also demonstrated individual differences in perceptions of accountability — of who’s on the hook for what.

Dr. Thomas Blass, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of a biography of Milgram, “The Man Who Shocked the World” (Basic Books, 2004), said establishing the demand by the subject to stop as the turning point was itself a significant achievement. “It’s a simple but important discovery,” Blass said. “I had been mining this data for years and somehow missed it.”

He added that extrapolating Milgram’s findings to larger events like the Holocaust, as Milgram himself did, or Abu Ghraib was a big leap. “The power of the Milgram work was it showed how people can act destructively without coercion,” he said. “In things like interrogations, we don’t know the complexities involved. People are under enormous pressure to produce results.”

The Milgram data have unappreciated complexities of their own. In his new report, Burger argues that at least two other factors were at work when participants walked into the psychologist’s lab at Yale decades ago. Uncertainty, as it was an unfamiliar situation. And time pressure, as they had to make decisions quickly. Rushed and disoriented, they were likely more compliant than they would otherwise have been, Burger said.

In short, the Milgram experiments may have shown physical, biological differences in moral decision making and obedience, as well as psychological ones. Some people can be as quick on the draw as Doc Holliday when they feel something’s not right. Others need a little time to do the right thing, thank you, and would rather not be considered sadistic prison guards just yet.

“The most remarkable thing,” Burger said, “is that we’re still talking about the work, almost 50 years after it was done. You can’t say that about many experiments.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/01/healthscience/01mind.php

#76

Ohh, come on!!!
It does not limit. On the contrary! It says that you have to treat your enemy AS IT ALSO SIGNED the convention. So it does not limit, but widens it to ALL the countries in the world.
What you say is true for the 1907 convention, but not for the convention of 1929.

You examples with Lada is not to the point. The better example is Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, where all the countries who signed it take voluntarily obligation not to use antipersonnel mine REGARDLESS if the enemy does use it.
It is all about assuming obligation voluntarily. A gesture of goodwill if you wish.
That is the whole point that if you dare to sign Geneva 1929 then you have to follow it in all circumstances because you by signing assume obligation to do so.

So with all due respect… :slight_smile:

DHOO UOY SPEKA INGLISHA, UGHHH?

#77

Quote from Librarian:
“Compared to other animals, the major crucial advantage of Homo sapiens sapiens, my dear Mr. Imi, has been the continued development of his intellectual flexibility and ability to learn from experience. The very peak of this ascent of the human animal was a product known as Science, and the real beneficial power of Science always was and still is within her capability for attestation and the resulting capacity to change otherwise erroneous human apprehensions. Our modern society and technology could not have been built on views, opinions, or faith. Nor can modern society have any hope of the solving the problems we face by reliance based upon sheer belief. The real power of scientific knowledge lies in its capability to present the power of evidence and the resulting ability to change, to update mental power of human beings.”

Dear Librarian,
You’re very eloquent. While it is true that man has the ability to learn from experience, history will tell you in a very matter of fact way that we really don’t! The same mistakes have been made over and over again throughout history. The names are different, sometimes the countries are different…that’s all. Having the ability to learn from experience doesn’t necessarily mean that we use it!
Man is also the only animal that kills for the heck of it and tortures others. Animals, in general, kill when they’re hungry or when their young are threatened. While science drives technological feats, most of what humans fight about relies solely on faith anf beliefs, which is why so many wars have been fought over religion throughout history. How many soldiers ask for evidence of wrongdoing in the part of the enemy before they fight? Not many…they act on faith that they’re fighting a justified war.
IMO, Arendt was indeed correct. We like to think, arrogant as we are, that only insane or truly evil people are capable of such things. But, the turth is that we all are! While science has made life better for many of us, it has certainly NOT changed man’s mental powers. It has only made it possible to deliver death and torture in more efficient ways!
I’m also sorry to say that when it comes to WW2, many facts remain hidden from us because, at the time, nobody cared to hear them! So, when you ask for evidence, please remember that almost nobody cared about keeping evidence of wrongs done to the losing side. Any evidence of those wrongdoings was probably destroyed or is collecting dust in the many files that are still classified. The evidence also may lie in those that survived, but feel compelled to reamin in silence. The prevalent assertion was that they deserved anything they got, an attitude that I consider to be as immoral as anything done by the Nazis.
When I was trying to make up my mind about what I wanted to study in college, I almost decided on history. I wrote a paper that contained some information that was personally given to me by the mother of a friend of mine. She had been a refugee who had survived the return to Germany from Poland. Her husband had been killed in the Eastern Front, but not before communicating certain events to her via mail before even mail became almost impossible to deliver. I got a high grade, but the professor called me aside after class and, in no uncertain terms, told me that if I chose history as my path, I could not concentrate on doing work like the one I had done on that paper. I would never find a professor who would take me as a graduate student and publishing anything on that subject matter would be difficult if it went away from conventional wisdom. He told me that anything like that would be considered disrespectful to the many that died at the hands of the Germans. To me, that is not history, is a biased account full of half truths. I chose not to major in history, choosing science instead.
Abuses and violations to the Geneva Convention were committed by all sides. Abuses to civilians, especially in the Eastern Front, were committed by all sides. It became a vicious cycle of retaliation and vengeance. But, evidence in behalf of the losers is rather elusive after sixty plus years of depicting WW2 as a battle between good (Allies) and evil (Germans). History, if well studied without bias, will tell us that no war is ever that simple!
To this day, the Geneva Convention continues to be violated, sometimes by those that mention it most frequently. What happened in Yugoslavia, what is happening in Darfur, Myanmar, Africa, the Middle East…it all proves that the assertion that humanity learns from its mistakes in light of evidence is nothing but a misguided leap of faith. So, in fact, it would seem that you’re as guilty as anyone else in using faith to argue a point. :slight_smile:
Respectfully, Krad42

#78

“DHOO UOY SPEKA INGLISHA, UGHHH?”
That’s funny!
I also have some english problem,but I use dictionary to get around.
Try it,it’s helpful sometimes.
Really.

#79

Right. Very well noted indeed!
It is obviously puts an extra dimention to the problem when one considers that sertain areas were in fact not occupied.

Said all this my point remains: not everyone who went to the forest with rifle was a partisan in true sense.
There are more to it than just traditional and slightly propagandistic version of the events.

#80

Not only do I speak English, I happen to know a bit about law and can even recall a bit of international law.

The opinion I expressed is basic international law. Treaties do not bind states which have not signed them. But don’t take just my opinion on it.

“Treaties do not, of themselves, create general international law. As the PCIJ observed, ‘a treaty only creates law as between the states which are parties to it.’ 197”
(My bold) Gillian Triggs, International Law – Contemporary Principles and Practices, (Chatswood, Australia) 2007, p.78 , para 2.54, citing the case at footnote 197 Certain German Interests in Upper Silesia (Merits) (1926) PCIJ, Series A, No. 7, 29. (PCIJ means it’s a decision of the Permanent Court of International Justice established under the League of Nations.)
I think Ms Triggs, who happened to teach me international law sufficiently well that I won the university prize in it, is qualified to express an opinion in her 2,000 or so page compendium of international law http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/staff/GillianTriggs/index.shtml , which is but one of her many publications http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/staff/GillianTriggs/index.shtml#pubs

‘No treaty can create legally binding obligations or rights for a third party without the latter’s consent.’

Glahn & Taulbee, Law Among Nations – An Introduction to Public International Law, 8th ed, New York, 2007, p.287

So far as the 1929 Geneva and earlier Hague Conventions could bind or confer rights on non-parties, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg carefully avoided deciding that question, claiming instead that the conventions had become customary international law which gave jurisdiction over the crimes created by Article 6 (b) of the Tribunal’s Charter.

The Tribunal is of course bound by the Charter, in the definition which it gives both of war crimes and crimes against humanity. With respect to war crimes, however, as has already been pointed out, the crimes defined by Article 6, section (b), of the Charter were already recognised as war crimes under international law. They were covered by Articles 46, 50, 52, and 56 of the Hague Convention of 1907, and Articles 2, 3, 4, 46 and 51 of the Geneva Convention of 1929. That violations of these provisions constituted crimes for which the guilty individuals were punishable is too well settled to admit of argument.

But it is argued that the Hague Convention does not apply in this case, because of the " general participation " clause in Article 2 of the Hague Convention of 1907. That clause provided:
“The provisions contained in the regulations (Rules of Land Warfare referred to in Article 1 as well as in the present Convention do not apply except between contracting powers, and then only if all the belligerents are parties to the Convention.”

Several of the belligerents in the recent war were not parties to this Convention.

In the opinion of the Tribunal it is not necessary to decide this question. The rules of land warfare expressed in the Convention undoubtedly represented an advance over existing international law at the time of their adoption. But the Convention expressly stated that it was an attempt " to revise the general laws and customs of war," which it thus recognised to be then existing, but by 1939 these rules laid down in the Convention were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war which are referred to in Article 6 (b) of the Charter.

If it was clear law that non-signatories were bound by or acquired rights under the conventions, the Tribunal would not have skirted that point.

Even the wider terms of the 1949 Geneva Convention recognise that it does not bind or confer rights on non-signatories unless they accept and apply its provisions.

Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva07.htm

And that’s not just my interpretation, but that of the United States Court of Appeals.

There is, I believe, a fundamental logic to the Convention’s provisions on its application. Article 2 (¶ 1) covers armed conflicts between two or more contracting parties. Article 2 (¶ 3) makes clear that in a multi-party conflict, where any two or more signatories are on opposite sides, those parties “are bound by [the Convention] in their mutual relations”–but not (by implication) vis-à-vis any non- signatory. And as the court points out, Maj. Op. at 14, under Article 2 (¶ 3) even a non-signatory “Power” is entitled to the benefits of the Convention, as against a signatory adversary, if it “accepts and applies” its provisions.
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200507/04-5393a.pdf

And of the United States Supreme Court, upholding the Court of Appeals’ opinion.

That the quoted phrase bears its literal meaning and is used here in contradistinction to a conflict between nations is demonstrated by Common Article 2, which limits its own application to any armed conflict between signatories and provides that signatories must abide by all terms of the Conventions even if another party to the conflict is a nonsignatory, so long as the nonsignatory “accepts and applies” those terms.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-184.ZS.html