War Crimes

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#21

Nobody has clean hands. How would the Allies have reported and reacted to this post-war treatment of German POW’s if the Germans had done it to Allied troops during the war?

Hundreds of thousands of PoWs were kept for many weeks out in the open, with no shelter apart from what they might dig in the ground, and nothing to sit or lie on (above the mud and puddles) apart from their own helmets and greatcoats. This was during the spring and summer, when there was no danger of freezing; nevertheless, given Germany’s cooler, wetter climate, these open barbed-wire “cages” were much more of a hardship than similar temporary expedients in North Africa and Italy.

The worst US temporary enclosures were the 16 “Rheinwiesenlager” (“Rhine meadow camps”). 557,000 PoWs were held from April to July 1945 in the six worst of these: Bad Kreuznach-Bretzenheim, Remagen-Sinzig, Rheinberg, Heidesheim, Wickrathberg, and Büderich . The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4,537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll might be twice this, but were skeptical of an eywitness claim of 32,000 deaths.
As Bacque points out, it would be misleading to compare the perhaps 2% death rate in these RWL camps to the 1% annual death rate of US PoWs in German hands, because these camps were only open 3-4 months. Extrapolate 2% to a year and get 7% or so, which looks a lot worse.

Indifference, even hostility, of some US guards and camp officers:

Revelation of starved cadavers and mass murder in liberated concentration camps provoked hatred towards Germans in general. This was particularly notable among some (but by no means all) soldiers of Jewish background, and, with less excuse, among some new soldiers, lacking combat experience, who wanted to show toughness.
Conditions remind me of the Andersonville GA prison camp of the US Civil War – hunger; indifferent or incompetent camp administrators who wouldn’t let prisoners help themselves. (The victorious Union tried and hanged Andersonville commandant Capt. Henry Wirz in 1865.) There probably was a dire shortage of food and shelter in the spring and summer of 1945; nevertheless, I suspect that German civilians in surrounding districts could have brought in some debris suitable for dry flooring if they had been asked. Two contrasts with Andersonville: in 1945, the horrible conditions only lasted 3-4 months, and sufficient medical measures prevented mass death from disease.

Even senior leaders like Eisenhower and Clay thought the Germans deserved a taste (or non-taste?) of the hunger they had imposed on everyone else:
“I feel that the Germans should suffer from hunger and from cold as I believe such suffering is necessary to make them realize the consequences of a war which they caused.”
– Lucius D. Clay to John J. McCloy, June 29, 1945
Nevertheless, the western commanders set limits to such suffering; they always pressed for enough food to “prevent disease and unrest.”

Overcrowded, poorly-managed railroad transports were a sporadic, temporary problem. At Mailly le Camp on 16 March 1945, 104 German PoWs were dead on arrival. A further 27 were found dead at Attichy. Eisenhower apologized publicly, though expressing intense irritation privately about having to apologize to the Germans about anything.

http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html

#22

More moral and political confusion surrounds the forcible return of displaced persons to the USSR by the other Allies after the war in Europe had ended. Given that the US had identified the USSR long before the war ended as its greatest post-war enemy and was gearing up for the Cold War before the war in Europe ended, and bearing in mind how much the Americans carried on about freedom and democracy in their WWII and Cold War rhetoric, why did they forcibly return people to the USSR in the knowledge that many would be mistreated at best and killed at worst?

By the end of June 1945, 1.5 million Soviet nationals had
been returned to Red Army detachments in eastern Germany. Up to this
point, contemporary reports indicate, the repatriation proceeded
without incident or resistance. But as the months passed, news spread
through the camps of displaced persons about the fate befalling those
who had been returned to the Soviet Union: arrest as traitors,
sentences of hard labor, even execution on the spot immediately after
the western escorts had withdrawn from the sites of transfer.
Scarcely noted by the British and American public at the time, this
repatriation later became one of the most searing controversies of
the early Cold War. Honoring a commitment at Yalta undertaken before
they understood the nature of the problem, the western allies
eventually employed military force to dispatch hundreds of thousands
of Soviet nationals back to the mercy of the Red Army, to certain
punishment or death.

http://houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?textType=excerpt&titleNumber=688054

Much as I despise Wikipedia as the greatest collection on the planet of errors and opinion masquerading as fact, this entry outlines some of the issues.

Over one million refugees could not be repatriated to their original countries and were left homeless as a result of fear of persecution. These included:

Ethnic or religious groups that were likely to be persecuted in their countries of origin. These included a large number of Jews (see Sh’erit ha-Pletah), and others.
Poles and some Czechs - who feared persecution by the communist regimes installed in their home countries by the Soviet Army, in particular those from eastern provinces that had been totally incorporated into the Soviet Union.
Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, whose homelands had been invaded in 1939 by the Soviet Union, and remained occupied after the war.
Croatians and Slovenians, and some Serbs who feared persecution by the communist government set up by Tito.
In a portend to the Cold War, individuals who simply wanted to avoid living under a communist regime.
The agreement reached at the Yalta Conference required in principle that all citizens of the allied powers be repatriated to their home country. The Soviet Union insisted that refugees in the American, British, and French sectors who were or at some point had been Soviet citizens be sent back to the Soviet Union. A large number of refugees resisted this. Some feared reprisals for having colluded with the enemy; others feared that their exposure to non-communist conditions would condemn them.

American, British, and French military officials, as well as UNRRA officials, reluctantly complied with this directive, and a number of Soviet citizens were repatriated. Many of these met with the hardship they feared, including death and confinement in the Gulag archipelago. There were also cases of kidnapping and coercion to return these refugees. Many avoided such repatriation by misrepresenting their origins, fleeing, or simply resisting. Rejecting Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states, allied officials also refused to repatriate Lithuanian, Estonian, and Latvian refugees against their will.

Similarly, a large number of refugees who were repatriated to Yugoslavia were in fact subjected to summary executions and torture.

A large number of Poles, who later agreed to be repatriated, did in fact suffer arrest and some were executed, particularly those that had served in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, or in the Polish Resistance against the Nazis.

Jewish survivors of the death camps and various work camps similarly refused to return to their countries of origin, starting instead an extensive underground movement to migrate to the British Mandate of Palestine. - see Berihah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camp

But a lot of the people repatriated to the USSR had served in the Ost (Ost = East) Battalions (German units recruited from various parts of eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and the Balkans) or had otherwise served the Nazis. Weren’t they just traitors being returned to their homeland for whatever justice awaited them?

#23

I didn’t know that, but unfortunately it’s one of probably tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of such stories from WWII, and who knows how many since.

It still goes on, and will go on forever, because all politicians are shits to a greater or lesser degree and they run the world.

An Australian called David Hick is about to be tried in America before a military commission for what is effectively a war crime of aiding terrorists by training with al Quaida and being a member of the Taliban forces resisting the invasion of Afghanistan.http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1468936.htm At the same time a former senior Taliban official is studying at Yale University in America http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008051 while the Afghan government has passed legislation protecting even the most seniorTaliban members from war crimes prosecution. http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2003941,00.html

#24

That’s because Rising Sun no sleep, Chevan, hence the Sobriquet. Spent too much time in the ‘Uhloo’…suffers from: “ …the bastards are everywhere!”…syndrome :cool: … thinks Greenwich Mean Time is when the pubs close. :smiley: :smiley:

#25

Mate, the pub never closes as far as I’m concerned. I have a beer fridge in the workshop with a couple of slabs in it, about ten feet from where I sit.

I will, however, concede that if a pub did close that would certainly be a mean time. :slight_smile:

#26

I figure 32 Bravo knows, but in case anyone else thinks it’s the rising sun of Nippon, it’s not. My avatar is one version of the Australian Army’s rising sun badge which its troops have worn in one form or another in all conflicts since WWI.

#27

Hay Rising Sun please don’t mix the Nazi, Taliban and Afganistan to the single thread OK?
I ahve to agree with you the Wiki is very often not objective source.

But a lot of the people repatriated to the USSR had served in the Ost (Ost = East) Battalions (German units recruited from various parts of eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and the Balkans) or had otherwise served the Nazis. Weren’t they just traitors being returned to their homeland for whatever justice awaited them?

This is that you need to begin from…
This “refugees” from the Red Army simply feared of retrebution for its crimes in the East.
Don’t we need to forget those peoples not only colloborated with Nazy, but also TOOK ACTIVE part in atrosities in the East above its countriments.
Those “cryed” people who worry about 1,5 millions who “were cended to the Stalin” just forget those bastard helped Nazy’s henocide in the East.
Certainly the division of those peoples were :
So called Army of Vlasov (ROA) - were the traitors.
But the thousands of police units ,members of SS batallions and ets from Eastern Europe (Including Baltic Waffen-SS and police)

  • were the simple scums WHO MUST BE EXECUTED IMMEDIATELLY without any doubts.
    And the fact that a lot of Eastern Europe war criminal has find the its saving in the West is disgusting.

Cheers.

#28

Oh this conspiracy theories again.:wink:
Well where is our dear Nickdfresh? He like to expose the conspiracy. :wink:
Just kidding guys…

#29

The Allies sadly, instead of hanging Barbie, took him into the CIA and turned him into an operative during the Cold War. It makes me sick to see how society can do this, and spare this horrible man’s life during such a time…

A picture of barbie, (nothing to do with the doll btw) some French people want to re-introduce the gullotin just for him.

http://members.aol.com/voyl/barbie/barbie.htm

#30

Bombing of civilians seems fairly horriffic but I don’t recall many people being executed for this. People have the right to be upset about people not being punished for their crimes but I don’t understand why the deeds of their own countrymen should be ignored.

#31

Were any of the US Airmen punished for bombings such as Dresden and Hamburg?

#32

Panzerknacker - in your link, it states Barbie as an SS, while in the photograph, he is Wehrmacht. Did he convert or something?

Also, do you think he met the same ranking for the title ‘The Butcher of Prague’ (Heydrich) as for ‘The Butcher of Lyon’?

#33

Because the victor gets to run the war crimes trials, hence the term “victor’s justice”.

The unfairness inherent in victor’s justice is apparent if we consider that, as noted in the article extract in the following post, the Japanese could have tried senior American military leaders for war crimes for bombing Japan, but do you think they would have done anything to prosecute their own people for their war crimes?

On the other hand, could the world ignore the monstrous evil done by senior Axis survivors? They had to be tried, although a fair number like Goering were so self-evidently pulling all the evil levers that they should have been shot out of hand. The West wanted to maintain an attempt at a just process.

The Allies were guilty of countless war crimes but, with the exception of bombing civilian targets, generally nowhere near on the scale of the Axis powers, with the exception of the Katyn Forest massacre which is the only major one I can think of offhand. http://www.geocities.com/katyn.geo/ .

Unlike the major Axis powers, the Allies were not guilty of any crimes against humanity.

It doesn’t excuse what happened, but if Germany, Italy and Japan hadn’t started their wars then none of it would have happened. The Allies at least did what they did in defence, not as acts of wholly illegal expansionist aggression like the Axis.

In the end, if you’re fighting some merciless, psychopathic thug for your life, the rule book goes out the window. You’re entitled to use any weapon you can get your hands on and kick, bite, gouge, scratch and do anything else you can to save your life. Although they certainly ignored the rules at times, the Allies generally didn’t throw the rule book out the window in their fight for survival, which is a lot more than can be said for Japan and Germany in trying to dominate the world.

#34

On the legality of bombing civilian targets.

In my Statistics of Democide, Chapter 13 “Death By American Bombing and Other Democide,”, I listed American indiscriminate urban bombing of Germany and Japan as democide-murder by government (I include elsewhere in the book such bombing by Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan). The worst of these democidal bombings was the firebombing of Japanese cities, almost entirely carried out by American bombers, and designed and commanded by General Curtis LeMay. One of his planners was Robert S. McNamara, then a lieutenant colonel, who in the 1960s would become the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

In his article, HREF="http://www.larrycalloway.com/column.html?_recordnum=45">"The Firebombing Of Japan: An Apology–Errol Morris Presents Robert S. McNamara, Larry Calloway points out that McNamara said in an interview with Morris, “[T]hat when [General Curtis] LeMay served under him in the Kennedy administration, the old general commented that if Japan had won the war they both would have been charged for acting like war criminals.” To many, including especially those who served in the military during the war, this is ridiculous, morally absurd. Before getting into this, I should note that just on the fire bombing of March 9-10, 1944, near 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed, more than died in the Hiroshima atomic bombing. In the war overall, bombing of Japanese cities might have killed about 337,000, including my estimate of 165,000 by atomic bombs, the quintessential city and civilian killers. Equally indiscriminate bombing of German cities by the United States and Britain may have killed about 410,000 German civilians.

Aside from these death tolls, I don’t want to deal with the nature and sorry history of strategic bombing for the United State and Great Britain. I will mention, however, that the United States began its strategic bombing campaign by legal (according to international law) daylight “precision bombing” of military targets in or around urban areas. In Europe, its loss of bombers became such that it adopted the British strategy of nighttime, indiscriminate urban bombing. For Japan, precision bombing was the rule until the above mentioned General LeMay took over the 20th and 21st bomber Commands, and initiated the firebombing of Japanese cities. If I recall his words correctly, he thought the Japanese deserved it. The best sources? Kennett, Lee, A History Of Strategic Bombing (1982), and particularly, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (European Theater), and United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific Theater).

  1. Was the indiscriminate (meaning the target was the city, usually the city center, and not military installations) American bombing of urban areas democide (mass murder), that is, the intentional targeting of unarmed civilians with deadly weapons? I don’t see how this can be denied. Bombs were dropped intentionally on unarmed civilians in their homes or at work. These people died not because they lived near military targets or were caught in the crossfire of battle, but because of their nationality and the urban area in which they lived. It was democide. I think LeMay was correct. Not only would he, McNamara, and others on his planning staff, be charged with war crimes had the Japanese won, but in fact they had committed war crimes.

  2. Was this illegal at the time? If one considers the various conventions trying to limit war and agreed to by the international community as establishing a legal code, then the Hague Convention of 1923 (Articles 22, 23) made indiscriminate urban bombing illegal. This view is confirmed by the speech of the British Prime Minister before the House of Commons in 1938 in which he said that any such bombing was an “undoubted violation of international law.” Shortly after, the League of Nations unanimously passed a resolution affirming that such bombing was illegal.

  3. Was this illegality known before the fact by the perpetrators? Yes, by the statements of the British Prime Minister, and as shown by Anglo-American protests to Japan over its bombing in China. For example, in 1937, the American State Department protested to Japan about its bombing of Chinese cities, “[A]ny general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large population engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to principles of law and of humanity.” In 1938, the United States protested again (also protesting bombing of cities in the Spanish Civil War) and now called such bombing “barbarous.” The protest continued: “Such acts are in violation of the most elementary principles of those standards of human conduct which have been developed as an essential part of modern civilization.” Surely, something must appear morally wrong if Anglo-American leaders officially characterize Japanese bombing in China as barbaric, inhumane, and criminal (in violation of international law, as later officially adopted by the League of Nations), but which bombing is not so when the Americans and British do precisely the same thing. And even much worse (e.g., the atomic and fire bombing).

  4. Is it fair to call it democide, since this concept/idea did not exist at the time? Genocide scholars do this all the time for “genocides” that occurred before the word was invented in 1941, and sensitivity to such murders had become general. Democide should be no different.

  5. So, such bombing was democide, illegal, a war crime, and now punishable under the International Court of Justice. Still, many will justify such democide. It saved many allied lives by ending the war sooner; it helped destroy enemy morale; the urban areas contained military-transportation junction yards, or factories producing military goods; or in many homes civilians were doing military piece work on small machines; and so on. But, these are rational reasons. Having lived through the war, I know that hatred or the desire for revenge was paramount for many people; and as far as bombing the Japanese was concerned, for some it was racial.

  6. Some arguments take a different tack. The objection is not that I call the bombing democide, but that we were fighting a good war against evil governments; that democide was one of the necessities of the war; that calling this criminal conduct is a radical extremist view; and that we would have to call the popular leaders of the war “war criminals” would equate their conduct of the war with what the Nazis and Japanese did. But, democide is both a moral and empirical term, as is murder. There are characteristics of behavior that define the concept. Without such empirical characteristics, we could not do empirical research on democide as on this website and hope thereby to understand its causes and conditions. What this means is that we must be consistent in what we call democide, even though doing so may be hard to stomach.

  7. I will not agree or disagree with the view that democide was one of the necessities of the war. The argument is irrelevant. To me, democide is wrong, whether it promoted the war or not. But for those who do justify this democide, I would like to see the moral argument made explicit. When is murdering en mass an unarmed population justified? This is an ethical question, not empirical/factual. Even if one adopts a situational ethic and says that in some circumstances a utilitarian calculus applies, that is an ethical choice (I accept Hume’s guillotine–facts cannot logically justify ethical axioms). To help clarify the ethics involved, consider this question: can one ever ethically justify committing genocide? Is genocide ever right? I answer no. Absolutely. Then, if this is ethically true of genocide, isn’t it also ethnically true of democide, a component of which is genocide? (Keep in mind that for some genocide scholars genocide = democide.)

  8. This is not to deny that democide is situational, and its immorality is inherently multidimensional. Consider three cases. Person X rapes and tortures to death a child. While holding up a store, person Y shots to death a clerk suddenly reaching into a drawer. Person Z gives his wife, who is terminally ill, paralyzed and in acute pain, an overdose of sleeping pills. All three cases are murder, and thereby labeled immoral. But, they are situationally different, and are thus, different degrees of immorality. Indiscriminate city bombing by the Anglo-Americans was immoral and on par with such bombing by their enemies. But, to call it democide does not mean that this democide was immorally the same as much of the democide the Japanese and Germans did by hand.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.10.5.03.HTM

#35

Are you serious? :slight_smile:

Plenty of Allied airmen who landed alive were summarily killed by German civilians who were a bit pissed off with being bombed for years, as well as airmen being summarily killed by German military, but there is no way the Allies would be prosecuting their own people for carrying out Allied strategy

The only trial of Allied airmen for bombing as an offence that I can think of is one by the Japanese near war’s end. I am completely at a loss to understand why the Japanese suddenly decided to try the airmen when they had been indiscriminately executing them, and anyone else who got in their way, throughout the Pacific for the preceding four years.

This address highlights how different perspectives view ‘justice’ in ‘war crimes’. For what it’s worth, I think the Japanese had good grounds in the law of war to try the Americans for attacking civilian targets (assuming that that is what they did).

Address given at the Memorial Service for the 14 American airmen who were executed at the Taipei Prison on June 19, 1945

by Michael Hurst MBE, Director, Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society - June 19, 2005

We are gathered here today to commemorate a great travesty of war and the needless sacrifice of 14 brave young American airmen.

War is cruel and terrible, and many times unreasonable things are done which defy normal rationale and human reasoning. There are always great sacrifices in war and many die. In some cases however deaths can be prevented, and it is when people die needlessly - when their deaths could have been avoided, that makes the event of even greater significance and sadness.

Such is the case with the men who we are remembering this morning. They were young American airmen - mostly between the ages of 19 and 24. They were doing their duty for their country, for the cause of right and to ensure that the forces of evil would not succeed in taking away the rights of men and women everywhere to live in peace and freedom.

In the fall of 1944 and throughout the months of 1945 the Allies, principally the US Army Air Corps and US Navy, carried out many bombing and strafing missions over Taiwan in the drive to defeat the Japanese forces in the Pacific. On January 28, 1945 a PB4Y-1 Liberator aircraft nick-named the ‘Queen Bee’ of US Navy Squadron VPB-117 was shot down over the waters south of Taiwan after attacking Japanese shipping on a routine patrol. Of the crew, four went down with aircraft, one died the following day of burns sustained in the crash, and the other 6 were taken prisoner. They were moved to Taihoku (Taipei) where they were held as POWs after being “interrogated” by the Kempetai and incarcerated in the old Taihoku Prison.

One of the group, Ensign John Bertrang was severely injured in the crash of the aircraft and was taken to a local hospital. Later he was sent to Japan where he finished his days as a POW in hospital there. After the war he was returned to the US Navy Hospital in Chicago where he subsequently recovered. He passed away in 1993.

“According to the U.S. military’s World War II records, Japanese officials devised special procedures to deal with what they considered an extraordinary threat. American flyers “who do not violate international law will be treated as prisoners of war,” but those “suspected of being felonious war criminals” would face Japanese military tribunals.

Offenses “subject to military punishment” included “bombing, strafing and other acts of attack aimed at threatening and inflicting casualties on civilians,” “damaging and destroying private property which has no military significance” and “any atrocious brutal acts that disregard humanity.” The maximum penalty was death by firing squad.

Such was the case with the 14 American airmen. On May 29, 1945 the five crewmen of the ‘Queen Bee’ and nine other captured American fliers were given a mock trial – officially called by the Japanese a “Military War Tribunal”, but the men had no defense and the case against them was built on evidence coerced or fabricated by the Japanese. They were found guilty and sentenced to death, but the execution didn’t take place until June 19th. Everyday the Japs tortured their prisoners even more by not knowing when their execution order would be carried out – just another form of the Japanese cruelty that they inflicted on their captives.
In the early hours of June 19, 1945 - less than two months before the Japanese surrender, they were executed inside the courtyard of the Taihoku Prison by a Japanese army firing squad. In addition to the five Navy crewmen of the Liberator, four other US Navy and six US Army Air Corps personnel were murdered that day. Following the execution, the bodies were cremated and the ashes taken to a local Japanese temple. When the Japanese surrendered on August 14th the ashes were turned over to the American Graves Recovery Team for re-burial back in the United States. Some are now at rest in cemeteries in their home towns, and others were re-interred in the US National War Cemetery in Hawaii.

The names of the Japanese who committed this mockery of justice are known. The tribunal was comprised of Lt. Col. Naritaka Sugiura, Chief of the Tribunal; Col. Seiichi Furkawa former Chief of the Judicial Dep’t. of Japan’s 10th Army; Lt. Gen. Harukel Isayama, Chief of Staff, 10th Army; and Capt. Yoshio Nakano, Judge. After the war they were prosecuted by the Allied War Crimes Investigation Team. Col. Furkawa and Lt. Col. Sugiura were both found to be guilty of needlessly executing POWs and they themselves were executed by an American firing squad, while Lt. Gen. Isayama and Capt. Nakano were sentenced to life in prison. Some justice was done!

http://www.powtaiwan.org/executed_airmen/story_of_executed_airment.htm

#36

I would on’y think they’d be punished for purposely fire-bombing subways filled with escaping civilians which includes woman and children

#37

Panzerknacker - in your link, it states Barbie as an SS, while in the photograph, he is Wehrmacht. Did he convert or something?

Also, do you think he met the same ranking for the title ‘The Butcher of Prague’ (Heydrich) as for ‘The Butcher of Lyon’

You are right that is a Heer uniform, but Barbie belong to SS safety division SD since 1935.

Both were criminals but Heydrich was one of the minds before the Final solution…so you decide.

Were any of the US Airmen punished for bombings such as Dresden and Hamburg?

That line of discution has been present in this forum for 2 years and none good thing came out of that. I think that there is a lot of war crimes wich did not involves the Allied or Axis Air forces.

Stay on that. Any more statement or question about the bombing of civilians will be deleted.

#38

Ok, thankyou. Sorry for bringing up the topic.

What do you guys think about Josef ‘Sepp’ Deitrich? I think he should have been shot on the spot! But he got away…and I really don’t know how…

Peiper fortunately was burned allive in his home by French Partisans in his later years…

#39

The axis did commit many war crimes but if we are going to hold people accountable for these things it is hypocrisy to ignore the crimes of the allies and just punish the losers.

#40

The point about the axis starting the war is interesting but weren’t there a number of occassions in the past in which the victorious nations had initiated wars? Didn’t the British invade India and Afghanistan for example?