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Allied war crimes were those crimes of war committed by the Allies of World War II against civilian populations or the soldiers of the Axis Armed Forces, including those of the allies of the Axis.

At the end of World War II, several trials of Axis war criminals took place, most famously were the Nuremberg Trials. However, these tribunals were expressly prohibited from considering any allegations of war crimes committed by the Allied powers or their military forces.

Allied personnel were involved in incidents which were war crimes that were investigated by the Allied powers at the time, and led to courts-martial. Other incidents are alleged by historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but that for a variety of reasons were not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute. It should be noted that many things today classified as war crimes were not at the time.

In examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property, as the Conventions then in force dealt only with the protection of the wounded and the sick on the battlefield and in naval warfare, hospital ships, the laws and customs of war and the protection of prisoners of war.

Incidents

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Incidents that occurred during the involvement of the relevant nation in World War II include the following. Not all of these are agreed to be war crimes:

Canada

• According to Mitcham and von Stauffenberg in the book "The Battle of Sicily", the Loyal Edmonton Regiment allegedly killed captured German prisoners during the fighting in Leonforte in July 1943. The incident is not mentioned in any other histories of the campaign however.
• The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada randomly burned houses in Friesoythe, northwestern Germany in April 1945 as a reprisal for the death of their commanding officer. The official historian of the Canadian Army, C.P. Stacey, noted in his autobiography that it was the only incident he was aware of that could be considered a "war crime" associated with Canadian soldiers in the Second World War.

United Kingdom

• Area bombing of German cities, e.g. the bombing of Dresden and of Königsberg (East Prussia). The controversial German historian Jörg Friedrich, who acknowledges that he is a revisionist, "claims that Winston Churchill's decision to bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime." He states that "Civilian deaths were not collateral damage but rather the object of the exercise." and he criticzes the "Allied policy of seeking to break German morale through bombing". Other historians note that there were little protection for civilians in the laws of war at the time, or dispute that civilians were deliberately targeted, stating that the primary aim was to reduce the industrial capacity of Germany. No Axis official or officer was charged for war crimes for similar actions. For example, there was no mention of the Blitz in the Nuremberg judgement of Luftwaffe commander Herman Goering. The RAF Bomber Command managed to divert many German resources which helped win the war. Also there is the legal argument that if tactics in war become common place for all sides and if there is no breach of a writen convention/treaty, then common usage makes it legal under customary practive ("If international law is not enforced, persistent violations can conceivably be adopted as customary practice, permitting conduct that was once prohibited" (The Air Force Law Review Volume 56 2005 (PDF) Page 57/58)). The allies have however been accused of hypocrisy since they condemned similar bombings during Spanish Civil War and by Japan in China before WWII.

United States

The first three listed were under the command of General George S. Patton

• Canicatti slaughter
• Biscari massacre
• Dachau massacre
• See area bombing above. Also similar bombing of Japanese cities such as the Bombing of Tokyo.
• In 1963 the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a judicial review in Shimoda et al. v. The State. On the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war." However most international legal opinion is that these bombings were not a war crime. The alternative allied invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, had it been necessary, would have caused far greater loss of human life for both sides. Rudolph J. Rummel notes that, in line with his own estimates, the historian Robert Newman calculates that 400,000 civilians and POWs were being killed by Japan each month.

Free France

• The "Marocchinate" of Cassino

Yugoslav Communist Partisan Forces

• Bleiburg massacre
• Foibe massacres

Soviet Union

• Mass rape and other war crimes by Soviet troops during occupation of East Prussia, which also took place in parts of Pomerania (Danzig) and Silesia, and during the Battle of Berlin and the Battle of Budapest.
• the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. This may make it doubtful that the Soviet treatment of German and allied POWs, who "were treated even remotely in accordance with the Geneva Convention", causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands , was a war crime. However, The Nuremberg Tribunal rejected this as a general argument, and held that the 1929 Geneva Convention was binding because it articulated general principles of international law that are binding on all nations in a conflict, despite one party's non-ratification of the Convention.

A violation of the laws of war that came to trial in Nuremberg and ended in a guilty verdict for the German Admiral Karl Dönitz but without a sentence for this crime, because the court heard evidence that both the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy also issued similar orders to engage in Unrestricted submarine warfare

Incidents that occurred before the relevant nation became part of the allies: Soviet Union:

• Katyn massacre

Post World War II incidents involving Prisoners of War include:

United States:

• Rheinwiesenlager (disputed)
• Salina, Utah POW massacre

Comparative deaths rates of POWs

The "democratic states generally provide good treatment of POWs".

Death rates of POWs held by Germany and Japan

• Soviet soldiers held by Germany: around 60%
• U.S. and Commonwealth soldiers held by Japan: 27%
• U.S. and Commonwealth soldiers held by Germany: 4%

Death rates of POWs held by the U.S, the Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union

• German soldiers held by Soviet Union: 15-33%
• Japanese soldiers held by Soviet Union: 10%
• German soldiers held by U.S. and Commonwealth: less than 1%
• Japanese soldiers held by U.S.: relatively low, mainly suicides

Comparative democide

Rudolph J. Rummel counts most of the above as democide, including the area and atomic bombings, and also includes other killings such as those that died in the Holocaust, the Gulags, and due to forced population transfer in the Soviet Union during this time period.

Axis powers

• Nazi Germany 20 million
• Japan 5.890 million
• Croatia 0.655 million

Allied powers

• Soviet Union 13.053 million (disputed as too high)
• Chinese Nationalists 5.907 million
• Tito Partisans 0.6 million
• United Kingdom 0.424 million
• United States 0.378 million
• Chinese Communists 0.25 million

See also

• Red Army atrocities
• Eisenhower and German POWs
• Expulsion of Germans after World War II
• Victor's justice
• Morgenthau Plan
• Salomon Morel
• Pawłokoma massacre
• Malmedy massacre trial
• Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
• Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre
• War crimes of the Wehrmacht
• List of massacres

External links

• "An ethical blank cheque" British and US mythology about the second world war ignores our own crimes and legitimises Anglo-American war making, Richard Drayton, Tuesday May 10, 2005 The Guardian

Notes

1. ^ International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363 The Law of Air Warfare (1998)
2. Mithcham, Samuel and Friedrich von Stauffenberg The Battle of Sicily
3. Including the official Canadian Army history by Gerald Nicholson, D-Day Dodgers by Daniel G. Dancocks, or The Canadian Army: 1939-1945, the official historical summary published by the Canadian Army Historical Section in 1948.
4. Stacey, C.P. A Date With History
5. Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in The Guardian, October 21, 2003
6. Shimoda et al. v. The State, Tokyo District Court, 7 December 1963
7. Falk, Richard A. (1965-02-15). "The Claimants of Hiroshima". The Nation. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) reprinted in Richard A. Falk, Saul H. Mendlovitz eds., ed. (1966). "The Shimoda Case: Challenge and Response". The Strategy of World Order. Volume: 1. New York: World Law Fund. pp. pp. 307-13. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); |pages= has extra text (help)
8. John Bolton "The Risks and Weaknesses of the International Criminal Court from America's Perspective", US ambassador to the United Nations, Winter 2001
9. Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945, James Mark, Past & Present 188 (2005) 133-161
10. Excerpt, Chapter one The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945-2002 - William I. Hitchcock - 2003 - ISBN 0-385-49798-9
    • A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 - Alfred-Maurice de Zayas - 1994 - ISBN 0-312-12159-8
    • Barefoot in the Rubble - Elizabeth B. Walter - 1997 - ISBN 0-9657793-0-0
11. Antony Beevor They raped every German female from eight to 80 in The Guardian May 1, 2002
12. Judgement : Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
13. U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948
14. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/QA.V2.HTML http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE3.HTM http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP9.HTM http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MEGA.HTM

• World War II crimes