Greatest Allied Atrocity of W.W.II

What do you feel was the greatest atrocity committed by Allied forces in W.W.II?

Mine is day one of the liberation of Dachau by members of the U.S. 45th Division, better known as the "Thunderbird" Division. In brief, unarmed medical personnel and others were lined up against a wall and executed by machine gun. This wall is still standing today, covered with ivy and if one looks closely, the pot marks of the machine gun bullets are still visible.

A complete account of this can be found, along with photographs taken by one of the members of the unit, in a book titled Dachau - The Hour Of The Avenger.

 

Well, I suppose this isn't entirely politically correct, but...

...good riddance, and bon voyage to them on the trip downstairs!

I just tried to get upset over this, and also tried to force my mind to consider the action an atrocity. Just doesn't work I'm afraid.

 

Firstly, this is a dangerous topic, a potential for a lot of political axe-grinding. Atrocity is to a large extent in the eye of the beholder, and is a term loaded with baggage.

Secondly, I have not read this particular book, but I have to ask, what 'unarmed German medical personel' exactly were there at Dachau? And if in fact these 'medical personel' were responsible for the wellbeing of the prisoners, well I would have executed them as well.

You cannot possibly imagine the impact upon allied soldiers of finding places like this, which they had heard stories about (though rumours were squashed as much as possible by Allied high command) but never witnessed. To see dachau, which was not even a death camp but a concentration camp, and the state of the pitiful survivors, I personally am a little surprised every german civilian within 10 miles was not summarily executed, let alone camp personell.

I am not condoning shooting of prisoners and civilians of course, I am just trying to say that you should probably not try and impose 2003 morality on 1944 troops who just came across such an unimaginably horrific scene.

 

1. Soviet Massacre of Polish POW's at Katyn.

2. Fire Bombing of Dresden.

3. Internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.

4. Use of Atomic Weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

I guess that one might say that there were many unfortunate instances throughout the span of the wartime period. You could classify this as one such incident. However the mere cover-up of this by General Patton, General Eisenhower giving the cover-up a name "Operation Keelhaul" would seem to condone what had taken place.

There is no question that feelings ran high during the wartime period, no argument there. Unfortunate as this instance may have been, it was still in direct violation of the Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. subscribed to.

 

How can this possibly be called an atrocity to keep company with the Katyn Massacre?

 

I agree with this. Interestingly, other accounts I have read describe the executed personnel as members of 4SS Division 'Viking'.

Agree on this - I'm reminded of the footage taken at Belsen by the British soldiers that liberated it, and it strikes me as being fitting that when it came to burying the dead, the SS personnel captured at Belsen were made to do the job. Even more fitting that as a result they all died of typhus.

 

I don't think that this can be considered an atrocity as the campaign in the Pacific had shown that the Japanese were going to defend to the last, and killing off a whole city was seemed worth it if you think how many Aliies would have been killed if there was an ivasion of the Japanese mainland. Also the US wanted to finish the war as quick as possible because the Russians were heading towards Machuria, this was a threat to US influenses post war.

I think because the allies were the victors many atrocities have been played down and not recorded, I read somewhere that the US in the last weeks of the war killed over a hundred SS POW's, and I am sure it was common place to kill SS POW's on both Eastern and Western fronts, as a result of atrocities they commited such as the killing of Canadian POW's in Normandy and US soldiers in the Bulge in 1945.

Phil

 

I rest my case.

 

I think no one denies how awful terror bombings were just because how many people died; Tokio, Hamburg, Dresden, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But we've extensively discussed their morality and military value. Which gives us the conlussion that at least the latter two were completely justified and that in the long term, they did more good than bad.

But if I recall well there were Guernica and Nan-Kiin first of all and that the nations that made those first terror bombings also started the war in both sides of the globe.

As to whether the shooting of 'civilian' medical personnel at Dachau, well. That's not an attrocity nor the medical personnel must be given the slightest consideration! It is not needed much research to find out what those 'medics' did. They were criminals and mass murderers as much as the SS guards in uniform.

The segregation of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, even if a very disgusting episode in American History cannot be considered as an atrocity since people was not brutally killed, starved to death nor tortured there.

And I'll just not mention Soviet atrocities since we'll never end. The eastern front was more brutal than any other warfare battlefield in History thanks to Hitler and Stalin.

 

Gheist,
The incident you refer to was covered in an early edition of After The Battle magazine.
When the captured SS were lined up against the wall, they were being guarded by two teams of .30cal mgs. One of these teams just lost it and started mowing the SS down. He managed two "runs" before an officer stopped him. An Army Signals Corps photographer was there and managed to shoot some pics of the event, which still exist.
There WAS an official inquiry into the events, but I can't remember the outcome. Suffice to say it was neither pre-meditated nor condoned by higher authority.

Regards,
Gordon

 

I'm fully aware of the humanities, as well as the inhumanities that were involved with the Second World War in all theaters of operation.

If the "terror" bombings were intended to strike, as the name indicates, terror in the hearts of man then it was a success. That would then make the Allies responsible for them "terrorists". I guess that it all depends on who's wearing the white hat at the time?

I would venture to guess that you would term the retaliation against "unarmed" civilian medical personnel a moral victory? It certainly could not be considered an honorable one.

True victory is not accomplished through fits of anger.

Richard

[ 19. December 2003, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: Geistforscher ]

 

Considering American anger at Pearl Harbour was the thing that kept them focussed till VJ Day, that's a strange statement!

Regards,
Gordon

 

Gordon,

I lived during that period in history and I believe that it was anger in the very beginning, but as time marched on it turned more to remembrance then anger that kept Americans focused.

Richard

 

i think i speak for a lot of people when i say the internment were NOT concentration camps for the reasons that you stated. im sorry, but it sickens me to hear anyone comparing the two very different types of camps.

 

Again this succumbs to the politics of the moment, when the word terrorist has taken on a meaning it did not even have three years ago. As I mentioned earlier, please stop trying to judge events 60 years ago with the morality and perspective of today.

The Allies pursued a tactic which was accepted by every nation in the world as a tactic of modern war. Every nation in the world believed that the will of the enemy to resist could be broken by mass bombing, and that an economy could be completely halted. These conjectures were both wrong, but that was not proven until long after the fact. This was a tactic which had first been used by the Japanese and Germans before it was formally attempted by the Allies.

While I understand that there CAN be contravercy surrounding some specific events, such as Dresden coming as it did late in the war, that is quite separate from the issue of area bombing itself.

Calling the practitioners of these acts "terrorists" is exactly the same as calling both Central and Allied powers during WWI "terrorists" because they developed and deployed WMD (ie, chemical weapons)

Not a moral victory, nor a pleasant episode, but a perfectly understandable one. Even if we assume (which would be silly) that these personell really were simply innocent doctors and nurses, no situation can be divorced from its context. I would say discovering these "medical personel" amidst the tragic detretus of the Third reich littered around Dachau would go a long way towards "extenuating circumstances".

 

You can call it a jail, you can call it an interment camp or a Gulag, it's all the SAME. The actual principles of it are the same. The absence of tortures, bad treatments and barbaric medical experiments do NOT make USA camps for Japanese-Americans any different from German concentration camps.

Gas chambers and furnances are an element of extermination camps, which, let me tell you is a VERY different thing.

 

Indeed, there were only 6 actual death camps, while there were over 200 Concentration camps. Dachau for example was a concentration camp.

In Dachau there were 30,000 registered deaths and a general approximation of another 30,000 unregistered deaths. These were of starvation, typhus, overwork, shootings, hangings, torture and beatings. The number of unregistered deaths is not known exactly, some estimates place it as high as 80,000.

Exactly how many Japanese Americans and Canadians were executed offhand or beaten to death? How many were bulldozed into mass graves exactly?

To compare the internment and the Concentration camps is borderline insane. They are similar in that people were not allowed freedom of movement, but thts all. If you are going to cast your net that wide, then by the same argumentation there is no difference between German concentration camps and the local county jail where you live.

Clearly the actions taken against Japanese americains and canadians was wrong and racially motivated, and nobody is trying to justify it, but to say that it is the same as Dachau or Ravensbrook or Buchenwald is baffling to the point of absurdity.

 

I don't agree with many of the suggestions already raised. The Katyn massacre was by Russia but predates it being an ally against the axis powers which only happened at the breaking of the non-agression treaty with Germany in 1941. Bombing also was part of war, like it or not. Japanese American internment (also in Canada) may be a black eye to the US, especially for being as long as it was and for not compensating those interned appropriately after the war, but the people were not exterminated or deliberately worked to death. No doubt there were many atrocities in war, particularly in battle when an attacking army cannot take prisoners.
However, from what I have read, most of the worst atrocities by the allies occurred in the immediate post war period rather than during the war itself. My list is as follows:

Eastern front/Russia:
- Russians sending unarmed or poorly armed men, political undesirables, etc. against the Germans, effectively using them as machine gun fodder.
- Also, killing of captured Russian POWs once recaptured from the Germans or returned to Russia by the western allies.
- Russians not assisting Poles in Warsaw uprising, extreme cynacism
- mass rape and killing of civilians by Russian army and support following invasion of German territory. From books read, I gather this was not generally by the front line Soviet troops but by those who followed behind.
- allowing captured German POWs to die in their hundreds of thousands in forced marches and gulags.

Westen front:
- post war repatriating of Russian POWs to Russia by UK despite govt knowing that the POWs were being executed on arrival.
- post war internment camps for German POWs in France, particularly those run by the French I have read to have been very bad with many tens of thousands dying of malnutrition and exposure.

 

Well if I can just voice my opinion here, Russia was just another expasionist, do everything for the state country who would later just become another Nazi Germany pushing to expand and take over, perfecting the Russian nation as they conquered.

Stalin had just as much hate for different people as Hitler did but the Allies, in my opinion, failed to recognize his obssesion and hatred until it was too late.