Worst War Crimes of WW2?

I saw a similar poll somewhere on the internet and thought it would be an interesting discussion topic on here. Of course they're all terrible and its impossible to rank such things, but I just wondered what you guys thought.

The purpose is not really to rank the "worst" war crimes, just to highlight which ones you believe deserve more attention.

 

I don't personally believe the firebombings on the German cities, was a War Crime.

I personally believe the Holocaust camps. From looking through 1000's of photos and documents. I've seen some brutall stuff. I'd had to say either Plaszow Camp, cause of the camp commander, or Auschwitz, well maybe Dachau. They are all terrible places to be and lots of War Crimes took place.

My 2nd opion would have to be the Bazitan ( typo I know) Death March. That was brutal.

3rd the slaughter of Russian troops for Enjoyment. The Germans Took 10 men out and used a sniper rifle, and shot right in the heart, to see how many they could knock down. Then let the ones who did get shot, leave to die, and the others in the back they stabbed so they could also die slowly.

4th-( should be #1) When in the Concentration Camps, the children left in trucks. Well... Those Kids were either Gased.. The SS whent into forest and invented their own method of Pull!

 

The Japanese were far more brutal than the germans... and didn't they kill more civilians than the germans?

 

I recently read Max Hasting's book on the Pacific War, where he says the Japanese killed less people than the Germans all and all.

And I wouldn't agree with the Japanese being more brutal. Both axis powers committed terrible atrocities but the Japanese were conditioned to be brutal. They were treated terribly by their own military and expected to die. Some german troops who committed atrocities on the other hand, were intelligent, educated men who had not been conditioned so.
Interesting.

 

What about after 1945, when there was no military advantage to the bombing of cities? railways and oil fields maybe, but not cities.

strange how if the allies ordered their ground forces to gun down 10s of 1000s of german civilians that would be shocking but if it's done from the air, its not the same.

 

Good point on a bad story!

Yes they did senseless terror bombing in 1945! But i dont want to judge the Bomber crews, they only did their job!

In my opinion the Holocaust wasn´t a war crime. It was a crime against humanity in general. Parts of it were done by the Wehrmacht, OK but mainly it was made by extra drilled SS- and Police units. So in my opinion Katyn was a real worst War crime!

Regards

Ulrich

 

Each and every crime was pitiful, but what about the Japanese in China especially The Rape Of Nanking. On a smaller scale, what happened on the Island Of Chici Jima was horrible.

 

Fire Bombings of German Cities are certainly a War Crime - any time civilians are directly targeted you are stepping out beyond military warfare. How is it any difference then other instances of civilian massacre? The tool my change (bombs, fire vs bullets, gas) but the result is the same - innocent, non-combatants are massacred.

You also can not categorize 'war crimes' as being worse then other war crimes - in my opinion, every war crime should be held on the same level of 'worse-ness'.

 

of course i lay no blame on the crews, mainly Harris and his superiors who were obcessed with bombing cities when it was clear they had no military value anymore.

ahh! good point bringing up Katyn. should have put Soviet Crimes on the poll.

 

But of course there was. There were both military industries as well as installations within the cities. Given the accuarcy of WWII bombers attacking anything in a city was attacking the city.

 

Soldiers are just civilians in uniform.

 

I voted for the Holocaust, is especially perverse, inconceivable. It hurts just thinking about it

But that does not mean that Mr Harris should be excluded the definition of war criminal. The main aim of the RAF night bombing were the germans civilians, factory workers and their families, given the inaccuracy of the bombers of the time was considered the most effective way to damage the German industrial capacity. He learned in Coventry. So he did the same as the Nazis, but with more resources. And failed.

In this forum:

The bombing of germany.

 

I believe that Al Qaeda said the same after the attacks ... I remember the March 11, 2004 in Madrid. And you?

 

If anything, the Soviets need to be brought into this. I have no doubt that they had to have committed some crimes worse than the Germans, maybe not genocide, but killing overall. I've heard that when they liberated a POW camp or labor camp, they would sometimes kill or make the Russians they liberated work and rape the women. This is a bit of a hard topic though, many will say the Holocaust was the worst and in schools today the SS and WH are usually not seprated and people think the German military overall was responsible for the Holocaust. Sure, in rare cases the Wehrmacht was ordered to round up Jews, but these were rare, not like the SS and Gestapo whos jobs were to round them up and shoot them/transport them to camps. I am not saying the Holocaust wasn't bad, it certainly was, but many people need to learn there was much more to WWII than the Holocaust and that crimes happened on the battlefield whether it was done by the Allies or Axis. For example, I'm sure we all know that American soldiers didn't really accept surrender from German troops within the first few weeks/months of the invasion of Normandy. In the way of bombings on German cities, I see it as a war crime. Bombing your enemy relentlessly to break their will is a war crime, especially when its targeting civlians. I don't know if I will get any positive reviews on everything I just said, but I am all about defending the Wehrmacht when someone wants to point fingers and call them criminals. I have no doubt that they had some criminals, but to say every one of them is guilty is the bs way we call stereotyping.

 

Well we shouldn't be in Madrid anyways. If you don't like the enemies' tactics then leave. You can't expect a third world country band of terrorists to spend all their cash on uniforms and organize frontal assaults to get mowed down by U.S. troops. Guerilla warfare is just another tactic to gain victory.

And from what I've read, I don't see how the Germans were worse than the Japanese. I hear "oh those bad nazis, their doctors froze people and never used anethesia," but I never hear "oh those bad Japanese, disecting little children on islands with no anethesia to show their troops what's inside of us, or injecting horse urine into kidneys to see how much pain it causes one, or dropping plauge bombs on China." The nazis starved, shot, beat, and gassed millions of people. But the Japanese were far more brutal and bizarre. I've read how they buried Filipons alive with their head out, defected in their mouth, beat them, and then decapted them. Why did they do this? For fun, and they enjoyed it. They forced families to have incest for their entertainment, cut fetuses out of women, castrated people, and did other things that were terrible. The germans? Some SS guy would walk around shooting every 3rd Jew in a line of hundred, and then walk away to eat his lobster.

http://www.examiner.com/crime-in-no...of-nazi-germany-but-remain-largely-unpunished
http://www.suite101.com/content/japans-atrocities-against-filipino-civilians-a81739
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_pacific.html

 

They certainly weren't war crimes.

The laws of war said almost nothing about aerial bombing. They allowed bombardment by land and naval forces against defended cities.

Civilians weren't directly targeted, cities were. That's the critical difference.

An army commander who ordered his soldiers to kill civilians was committing a crime. An army commander who ordered the shelling of a building, even if he knew civilians were in it, was not committing a crime, provided he hoped to gain some military advantage from it.

Bombarding cities and killing civilians wasn't new to WW2, it's something that had been happening for hundreds of years. Aircraft just provided a new, longer ranged way of doing so.

 

Bombing civillians is a war frime how did you feel about 9/11? That's how the Germans and Japanese felt thiers no point in killing inocent people already suffering in a war Time Germany and japan.
The germans and the Japanese were both brutal you can't catorigize it and say that's like saying o hitler you can go because Tojo wad worse than you and let him kill more Jews.
The main reason for boning was to make civillians demand a surrender look how that turned out a failure. War never changes.

 

There's a huge difference when you're killing a country's civilians when you're at war with them and when you're not (in my opinion). During war, those people are running the factories and farming to supply and feed the troops. When you're at peace and you kill them, then you're killing "innocent" civilians.

Or there's this: Rules of War - Soldiers And Civilians - Armed, Enemy, Besieged, Military, Committed, and Including http://law.jrank.org/pages/9958/Rules-War-Soldiers-Civilians.html#ixzz0yQEnHMON​

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Please excuse my poor spelling.
Half of the boming was amied at non-industrial targets like Tokyo fire bombs and the attack on dredensburg.

 

Civillians working in factories making war supplies are not innocent, they are a mechanism in the conduct of warfare and are therefore viable targets and there is no criminality.