Joined: 02-Jun-2006
Location: Romania
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1423
QuoteReplyTopic: Allied war crimes during World War II Posted: 06-Feb-2013 at 01:41
This is a completion to Monsters in Uniform thread, this info being put in another thread because Allied war crimes were not such terrible (except the Russian ones) to be posted on that thread, and to not have the aspect of a competition.
It is claimed that the Allied countries did not engage in mass terror or commit genocide, in spite of the fire bombing of civilians in Dresden, Tokyo and other German and Japanese towns and cities, plus the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The military of the Soviet Union also frequently committed war crimes, which are today known to have been at the direction of its government. These crimes included waging wars of aggression, mass murder of prisoners of war and repressing the population of conquered countries.
Antony Beevor describes the rape of German women during the occupation of Germany as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone. Russian and Polish women and girls liberated from concentration camps were also violated.
-U.S. and British Commonwealth POWs held by Germany: 4%
-Soviet POWs held by Germany: 57.5%
-Western Allied POWs held by Japan: 27%
Held by the Allies
-German POWs in East European (not including the Soviet Union) hands 32.9%
-German soldiers held by Soviet Union: 15–33%
-Japanese POWs held by Soviet Union: 10%[citation needed]
-German POWs in British hands 0.03%
-German POWs in American hands 0.15%
-German POWs in French hands 2.58%
The British, like all participant nations, carried out air raids against enemy cities during World War II, including the bombing of Dresden, which killed over 25,000 people.
While "no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property" from aerial attack was adopted before the war, the Hague Conventions did prohibit the bombardment of undefended cities. Allied forces inquiry concluded that an air attack on the German city of Dresden was militarily justified on the grounds the city was defended.
This city was filled with refugees fleeing the oncoming Red Army. It has been widely believed that the bombing was to showcase to the Red Army the "bombing capability" of the British and of the Americans.
According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs of Allied soldiers have been willfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds with the "Greatest Generation" mythology surrounding World War II. However, this has recently started to change, with books such as "The Day of Battle", by Rick Atkinson, where he describes Allied war crimes in Italy, and "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy," by Antony Beevor. Beevor's latest work is currently discussed by scholars, and should some of them be proven right, it suggests that Allied war crimes in Normandy were much more extensive "than was previously realized".
American rapes
A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.[39][40] It is estimated that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war and one historian has claimed that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.
Allied forces conducted many (conventional) air raids on Japan during World War II, causing extensive destruction to the country's cities and killing anywhere from 241,000 to 900,000 people.
In addition to the loss of life, the raids caused extensive damage to Japan's cities and contributed to a large decline in industrial production.
The USSBS (United States Strategic Bombing Survey) concluded that the effects of strategic bombing and blockade would have forced Japan to surrender by the end of 1945 even if atomic bombs had not been used and the Soviet Union had remained neutral. Historian E. Bartlett Kerr supports this assessment, and argues that the firebombing of Japan's major cities was the key factor motivating Hirohito's decision to end the war.
Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs.
Following a firebombing campaign that destroyed many Japanese cities, the Allies prepared for a costly invasion of Japan.
Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day.
Was there aspects of what the allies carried out that could be considered to be terrorist, without a doubt. The bombing of Dresden for example may well be considered as being retribution for bringing large scale destruction to towns and cities in Britain in a terrorising manner, but retribution doesn't take away an act from being terrorist in its make-up. What makes Dresden particularly sinister though is the insistence that it was an act aimed at destroying military important targets, when it has been plainly noted how a large number of such targets ended up not being targeted at all.
Did the allies commit genocide though? I'm not too sure that the definition would agree that they did.
What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
The Katyn Massacre is considered by Poles genocide, but this classification is rejected by Russians (Russians intented to exterminate all Polish military officers, 22,000 being killed).
Also NKVD massacrated tens of thousands to over 100,000 war prisoners, peasants and other people in Ukraine, arrested roughly 500,000 Poles (many will be tortured and killed) in the part of Poland under Soviet rule between 1939-1945 (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact from 1939 between nazi Germany and Sovietics shared Poland and other countries among their spheres of domination)
Similar massacraes happened in other countries annexed by Soviets durintg the war.
In Romania, Russians killed or deported over 50,000 Romanians from Bukovina and perhaps smaller numbers in Bessarabia (former Romanian provinces). Also 75,000 Germans living in Romania were deported in Soviet Union, for the only guilt of being Germans (including children and old people). Thousands died there before being repatriated.
These can't be classified as genocides anyway, except the extermination of Polish militaries perhaps.
I don't consider Hiroshima or the bombing raids over Germany a war crime. Remember, it was the Nazis and Japanese who started the war and inflicted countless cruelties on the Slavs and Chinese
I don't consider Hiroshima or the bombing raids over Germany a war crime. Remember, it was the Nazis and Japanese who started the war and inflicted countless cruelties on the Slavs and Chinese
Bombings carried out during war time were not done so with the objective of eliminating the enemy as a race - therefore, they are not "genocide".
While you mention Allied rapes, you fail to mention two key elements:
1. The Allied soldiers were tried and punished.
2. Rape was not a weapon in the Allied inventory as it was in both the German and Japanese militaries.
Though I would say that on the whole that is correct, Mountain Man, I'm guessing it was no less traumatic for the victims of the allied soldiers, than it was for the victims of the Germans, when it came to the rapes. Could you imagine being horrifically raped by a group of men. Now I'm guessing the nationality of the men is the last thing going through your mind, or at least not exactly the first thing to. Rape is rape, and regardless if the instigators are using it as a weapon or not, the victims have still been raped.
What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture.
While you mention Allied rapes, you fail to mention two key elements:1. The Allied soldiers were tried and punished.2. Rape was not a weapon in the Allied inventory as it was in both the German and Japanese militaries.
If you refer to US, British and French rapists, I don't think all have been punished, maybe even not the majority, and the punishments I doubt were as heavy as the crimes they committed. And this is not only history, even today US soldiers committing crimes are not punished as they deserve, I can give you examples, including from Romania where are stationed US troops.
Anyway, if you refer to Russian soldiers, who carried out the greatest rape in history during WW2, even less were punihsed, and even Stalin endorsed it. Up to two million German (also Polish, Romanian, even Russian) women have been raped, many of them several times and by large number of soldiers.
In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.
Stalin is alleged to have said that people should ' understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'. On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.
According to Ostrowska & Zaremba; whether the number of purely Polish victims could have reached or even exceeded 100,000 is only a matter of guessing.
I don't consider Hiroshima or the bombing raids over Germany a war crime. Remember, it was the Nazis and Japanese who started the war and inflicted countless cruelties on the Slavs and Chinese
Morally and legally, others' cruelty doesn't justify your cruelty.
The Tokyo District Court, while denying a case for damages, stated:
... (b) that the dropping of atomic bombs as an act of hostilities was illegal under the rules of positive international law (taking both treaty law and customary law into consideration) then in force... (c) that the dropping of atomic bombs also constituted a wrongful act on the plane of municipal law, ascribable to the United States and its President, Mr. Harry S. Truman; ...The aerial bombardment with atomic bombs of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an illegal act of hostilities according to the rules of international law. It must be regarded as indiscriminate aerial bombardment of undefended cities, even if it were directed at military objectives only, inasmuch as it resulted in damage comparable to that caused by indiscriminate bombardment.
I don't consider Hiroshima or the bombing raids over Germany a war crime. Remember, it was the Nazis and Japanese who started the war and inflicted countless cruelties on the Slavs and Chinese
And the Koreans...
The Germans were also the first to bomb civilians: first Guernica, then the London Blitz and destruction of Coventry
I know you don't like to be disagreed with, but i have say that very very few American/ commonwealth troops were tried, even less were punished.
Patton ordered his troops not to take prisoners. And tried to cover up massacres.
some research points:- Colonel McCaffrey. Biscari massacre. Bob Lillys book "Taken by force"
Not just the German/Italians that US troops "abused":-
Us troops committed 26 murders, 31 manslaughters, 22 attempted murders and
more than 400 sexual offences, including 126 rapes in England, during
1942-45.
The french troops committed appalling crimes in Italy, I have not found one instances of a French soldier being convicted of a crime.
Azita
Edited by Azita - 07-Feb-2013 at 13:30
I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.
Hmm, a Tokyo District Court, one presumes the lowest level of court, since there is an appellate court above this, and one presumes, an even higher court over the appellate equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court. Anyway, a Tokyo District Court found on 7 December 1963, 21 years to the day that Japan launched the war, that dropping Atomic bombs was illegal. I am shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
That is known as obiter dicta, i.e. a mere aside of the Court. If it had become the law of the land, then surely there would be a higher court opinion on the matter.
As for the rest of what is on this thread, I guess the victors owe the losers, and that includes Romania, an Ally of Nazi Germany's, an apology? Listen, if international law meant anything, your nations would not have launched that war to begin with. But you did, and you lost. Yes, not all Allied soldiers were heroes, and some misbehaved. You might want to remember that next time.
Cherry pick your arguments all you want to. The great majority of Americans will continue to view Hiroshima and Nagasaki as having shortened the war, thereby saving more lives in the long run. That same majority of Americans will remember Japan for the rape of Nanking, and Germany for having started the bombing of civilian centers, and for the Death Camps.
Oh, on French crimes in Italy. I believe if you check, the majority of French troops in Italy were North African Muslims. Surely they have statistics. They were a part of Mark Clark's Vth Army.
Edited by lirelou - 07-Feb-2013 at 20:03
Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì
Romania was drawn in war on both sides, first on axis, then on Allied side because of the situation, being caught between nazi Germany and soviet union and because help asked from UK and France was ignored (before the occupation of France).
You find here an explanation of the political situation that lead to allying with Germany, it was not the will of the people or the leadership, they chose what they thought is the less bad. Romania and Romanians were never pro-German during WW1 or WW2, in fact they were and are pro-British and French all the time during the war and afterward.
Ofcourse, Romania and Romanians could and should have opposed Germany, it was an opportunistic movement to ally them, but neither the population or the leadership had any sympathy for Germany, which established the annexation of Northern Transylvania by Hungary and approved soviet annexation of Bessarabia and Bukovina (within the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact).
Also after the royal coup on 23rd August 1944, Romania proclamed loyalty to Allies, declared war to Germany and fought on western front, its contribution shortening the WW2 with some months and saving of hundreds of thousands of lives (although 167,000 Romanian soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing on this front alone). The result? Romania was not acknowledged as a co-belligerent nation by Allies.
While you mention Allied rapes, you fail to mention two key elements:1. The Allied soldiers were tried and punished.2. Rape was not a weapon in the Allied inventory as it was in both the German and Japanese militaries.
If you refer to US, British and French rapists, I don't think all have been punished, maybe even not the majority, and the punishments I doubt were as heavy as the crimes they committed. And this is not only history, even today US soldiers committing crimes are not punished as they deserve, I can give you examples, including from Romania where are stationed US troops.
Anyway, if you refer to Russian soldiers, who carried out the greatest rape in history during WW2, even less were punihsed, and even Stalin endorsed it. Up to two million German (also Polish, Romanian, even Russian) women have been raped, many of them several times and by large number of soldiers.
In many cases women were the victims of repeated rapes, some as many as 60 to 70 times. At least 100,000 women are believed to have been raped in Berlin, based on surging abortion rates in the following months and contemporary hospital reports, with an estimated 10,000 women dying in the aftermath. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Antony Beevor describes it as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has concluded that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia alone.
Stalin is alleged to have said that people should ' understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle'. On another occasion, when told that Red Army soldiers sexually maltreated German refugees, he said: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have their initiative.
According to Ostrowska & Zaremba; whether the number of purely Polish victims could have reached or even exceeded 100,000 is only a matter of guessing.
I don't consider Hiroshima or the bombing raids over Germany a war crime. Remember, it was the Nazis and Japanese who started the war and inflicted countless cruelties on the Slavs and Chinese
Morally and legally, others' cruelty doesn't justify your cruelty.
The Tokyo District Court, while denying a case for damages, stated:
... (b) that the dropping of atomic bombs as an act of hostilities was illegal under the rules of positive international law (taking both treaty law and customary law into consideration) then in force... (c) that the dropping of atomic bombs also constituted a wrongful act on the plane of municipal law, ascribable to the United States and its President, Mr. Harry S. Truman; ...The aerial bombardment with atomic bombs of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an illegal act of hostilities according to the rules of international law. It must be regarded as indiscriminate aerial bombardment of undefended cities, even if it were directed at military objectives only, inasmuch as it resulted in damage comparable to that caused by indiscriminate bombardment.
The bombing of the Nazis and Japanese wasn't cruelty: it was vital to bring about a swift end to the war. How many more of our soldiers and civilians would have died in a prolonged war if we hadn't damaged Germany's infrastructure? You can blow up a German factory and it will be up and running again in a few weeks, but if you kill their workers it will take 20 years to replace them. The atom bomb changed the Japanese for the better: from militarist aggressors to peace-loving people. If you want to feel sorry for someone, think of all the Jewish and Slavic women and children murdered in the Holocaust
I know you don't like to be disagreed with, but i have say that very very few American/ commonwealth troops were tried, even less were punished.
Patton ordered his troops not to take prisoners. And tried to cover up massacres.
some research points:- Colonel McCaffrey. Biscari massacre. Bob Lillys book "Taken by force"
Not just the German/Italians that US troops "abused":-
Us troops committed 26 murders, 31 manslaughters, 22 attempted murders and
more than 400 sexual offences, including 126 rapes in England, during
1942-45.
The french troops committed appalling crimes in Italy, I have not found one instances of a French soldier being convicted of a crime.
Azita
Let me rephrase, then, saying that for the Allies, rape by a soldier was a crime that was punishable, unlike the militaries of the Soviets, the Germans and the Japanese.
Your numbers prove that the sheer magnitude of the problem for other militaries was not even remotely approached by the Allies. Were they all punished? Of course not. In war, a great deal goes unnoticed and unreported, but those cases that were reported were investigated, and often punished.
The purpose of this thread has so far been to cast the Allies in the same horrific light as the Soviets and the Axis powers, and that simply isn't possible.
"The French committed appalling crimes in Italy"? Anything even remotely like the treatment of the Ethiopians by the Italians? Once again, the track record of the Axis military powers cannot be matched by anyone else except the Soviets.
Phew!! as long as the US troops weren't as bad as the Germans or soviets, its all ok.
cognitive dissonance at its worst.
I suppose the Rhine meadow camps were not as bad as the Nazi concentration camps, so they were ok as well.
FWIW i have not said that the US/commonwealth troops were as evil as the axis, so there really was no need for you to justify the crimes they did commit.
I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.
The bombing of the Nazis and Japanese wasn't cruelty: it was vital to bring about a swift end to the war. How many more of our soldiers and civilians would have died in a prolonged war if we hadn't damaged Germany's infrastructure?
Like Germans, Romanians etc, but not on the same scale, the Allies commited war crimes, this is the idea of this thread. The sooner people from former Allied nations renounce the idea of an immaculate Allied behaviour in WW2, the better.
You can blow up a German factory and it will be up and running again in a few weeks, but if you kill their workers it will take 20 years to replace them. The atom bomb changed the Japanese for the better: from militarist aggressors to peace-loving people.
This sounds sinister, to not say else.
If you want to feel sorry for someone, think of all the Jewish and Slavic women and children murdered in the Holocaust
By both axis and Allied, remember. And if you want to be human, you should think in the same way for German, Romanian etc victims, that are no more quilty than British or other.
The bombing of the Nazis and Japanese wasn't cruelty: it was vital to bring about a swift end to the war. How many more of our soldiers and civilians would have died in a prolonged war if we hadn't damaged Germany's infrastructure?
Like Germans, Romanians etc, but not on the same scale, the Allies commited war crimes, this is the idea of this thread. The sooner people from former Allied nations renounce the idea of an immaculate Allied behaviour in WW2, the better.
You can blow up a German factory and it will be up and running again in a few weeks, but if you kill their workers it will take 20 years to replace them. The atom bomb changed the Japanese for the better: from militarist aggressors to peace-loving people.
This sounds sinister, to not say else.
If you want to feel sorry for someone, think of all the Jewish and Slavic women and children murdered in the Holocaust
By both axis and Allied, remember. And if you want to be human, you should think in the same way for German, Romanian etc victims, that are no more quilty than British or other.
Harsh, but true. Bomber Harris knew this: to cripple a stronger enemy, you must ruin morale on the home front. It wasn't a war crime, but vital for hastening an end to the conflict as Germany was the aggressor and had already bombed innocent civilians in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Hull, and Coventry. Ideally, the US should have handed over its atom bombs to the UN when the Nazis and Japs were defeated to prevent the Cold War (or another world war) from ever happening again
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot create polls in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum