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Allied war crimes were violations of the laws of war committed by the Allies of World War II against civilian populations or the soldiers of the Axis Armed Forces.

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 classified as war crimes today were not such at the time.

Incidents

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.

Free France

• The "Marocchinate" of Cassino: Some reports might be exaggerated. See the relevant page for details.

Soviet Union

• Mass rape and other war crimes by Soviet troops: these happened during occupation of East Prussia, in parts of Pomerania (Danzig) and Silesia, and during the Battle of Berlin and the Battle of Budapest.
• Katyn massacre: The USSR hadn't joined the Allies yet, so this is not an "Allied" war crime.
• Respect of international conventions: 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.

United Kingdom

• The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime."

United States

• Battle of the Bismarck Sea- On orders from U.S. Army Air Force General George Kenney, U.S. aircraft strafed and bombed unarmed survivors from Japanese warships and transports swimming in the ocean.
• Sinking of the Nachi in Manila Bay- Aircraft from the USS Lexington strafed unarmed surivors from the sunken Japanese cruiser Nachi in the waters of Manila Bay on 5 November, 1944.
• Canicattì slaughter
• Biscari massacre
• Dachau massacre
• Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: In 1963 these were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi 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, the prevalent international legal opinion is that these bombings were not a war crime.

Yugoslav Communist Partisan Forces

• Bleiburg massacre
• Foibe massacres

In the Nuremberg trial, German Admiral Karl Dönitz was tried (among other crimes) for issuing orders to engage in Unrestricted submarine warfare. He was found guilty, but the sentence was not assessed (i.e. he got no penalty) because the court discovered evidence that both the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy also issued similar orders.

Post World War II incidents involving Prisoners of War

Norway

• German POWs in Norway forced to clear minefields

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

See also

• Red Army atrocities
• Bloody Sunday (1939)
• Katyn massacre
• Eisenhower and German POWs
• Expulsion of Germans after World War II
• Victor's justice
• Morgenthau Plan
• Salomon Morel
• Pawłokoma massacre
• Malmedy massacre trial
• Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
• Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre
• War crimes of the Wehrmacht
• List of massacres

External links

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

Notes

1. Mithcham, Samuel and Friedrich von Stauffenberg The Battle of Sicily
2. 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.
3. Stacey, C.P. A Date With History
4. Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945, James Mark, Past & Present 188 (2005) 133-161
5. 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
6. Antony Beevor They raped every German female from eight to 80 in The Guardian May 1, 2002
7. Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in The Guardian, October 21, 2003
8. Friedrich states that "Civilian deaths were not collateral damage but rather the object of the exercise." and he criticizes the "Allied policy of seeking to break German morale through bombing". Other historians note that there was 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. Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in The Guardian, October 21, 2003. A legal argument says that if tactics in war become common place for all sides and if there is no breach of a written convention/treaty, then common usage makes it legal under customary practice ("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)).
9. Lacroix, Japanese Cruisers, p. 356.
10. Shimoda et al. v. The State, Tokyo District Court, 7 December 1963
11. 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)
12. John Bolton "The Risks and Weaknesses of the International Criminal Court from America's Perspective", US ambassador to the United Nations, Winter 2001
13. International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363 The Law of Air Warfare (1998)
14. Judgement : Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
15. U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948

• World War II crimes