Worst War Crimes of WW2?

Sad but true!

Regards

Ulrich

 

Thanks for remembering Lou, to our other poster here is a PBS program. This is an interesting, and reasonably accurate collection of the "Victory in The Pacific" set from PBS. They have no "axes to grind" Decide for yourself.

Goto:

Victory in the Pacific | American Experience | PBS Video

And this includes the "cottage industry" of Japan at the time, from Japan’s own films.

 

Yes, but there really wasn't much choice. XXI Bomber Command was being pushed for results and nothing could produce them. Winds and poor visibility over Japan negated all attempts at precision bombing.

 

Not to mention the Japanese used Korean slave labor and I don't want to get in to that.

 

The Holocaust must take 1st place, as is shown in the poll, simply because of the scale. 6,000,000 jews, 2,000,000 other 'sub humans' simply beggers the imagination. The 'Final Solution' was systematic and orginized over not just a city or country but from the Alantic ocean to the gates of Moscow, and from the Artic circle to the boot heel of Italy, and all points in between.

Further the German Command (Hitler/SS/Gestapo/Nazi Party) were aware that they were committing a crime as evidenced by the actions taken at the Wansee Conference.

I am not very comfortable with the nightime area bombing of Germany or the Fire bombing of Japan, they do come close to the definition of a war crime since so many civilians were affected by the bombings. And to say the 'boys were just doing their duty/just following orders' has a certain ring to it we have heard before.

Still there are some compelling differences between the Allied bombing campaign and the Holocaust/Katyn Forrest/Bataan Death March/Rape of Nanking and so on.

In the Allied bombing targets there were ligitimate military targets (Industry/Rail/Goverment/Combat units). They were defended by Anti-Aircraft guns and Fighter Aircraft, Some form of air raid shelters were available to protect the civilian population, They usually had warning of an appraoching air raid, and they had the option of 'voting with their feet' by leaving the area known to be a target of enemy air raids.

In comparison, those who suffered in the Holocaust/Katyn/Bataan/Nanking .et .al were completely at the mercy of those committing the atrocity. There were no ligitimate military objectives, no defences, no shelters, no warnings, and no chance to get out of the way.

 

Crimes not mentioned include the ghastly tit for tat atrocities commmitted in Jugoslavia. Civilians and soldiers alike suffered there, with certain units aquiring reputations (Like the "Prinz Eugen SS Motorized Division") for perpetration of crimes that went almost totally unpunished and unsung. Not a single Balkan serviceman was ever brought to trial...

I'm not going to 'rate' these crimes in order. It's sophomoric and pointless. They were all evil, simple as that.

 

Well I have to agree...any bombing after 1945 would be a war crime... but seeing the war ended in 1945 and no bombings took place afterwards... no war crime.

 

But heres where my question comes in-did the majority of Wehrmacht soldiers do it? I have no doubt the majority were fighting at the front rather than killing prisoners of war. I also have a quote from a German soldier I am reading about in a book called "Blood Red Snow". After he left the Eastern Front because he had been wounded, he had gone back home on leave. Afterwards he was transferred to Italy to hunt down Italian partisans. One night after his unit had caught a few partisans they drove around for a bit until they stopped and got out and the sergeant ordered them to take the partisans behind the rocks over to the gorge and shoot them. Him and his buddy were shocked and his buddy yelled that he refused to do it. The sergeants response was yelling back that it was a direct order. They went back behind the rocks and shot in the air and the sergeant believed they had shot the partisans. Heres a little tip-back then in the German army if your given an order you had damn well do it, and I have no doubt in my mind that many soldiers shot partisans and POWs out of fear of that their CO would shoot them if they didn't do what they were asked. I also read once that there was a soldier in Yugoslavia assigned to a firing squad and when they were ordered to shoot partisans he refused, when he was yelled at multiple times to follow orders, he tore off the eagle from his uniform, took off his helmet and destroyed his rifle, and walked over to the partisans and lined up with them. They were all shot and there was a memorial made for all of them sometime ago, I think in the 1990's. My whole point for all of this-I am positive there were more good Germans in the Wehrmacht who simply wanted to join the military to fight for their country rather than to join up to commit war crimes.

 

Also I noticed there is only the Holocaust and the "Asian Holocaust", IMO Russia deserves to have a Holocaust be put up as well, they may not have targeted a certain people but they definately killed more than the Germans, I believe 50 million the whole time Stalin was dictator. Also, has anyone forgotten that Germany and Russia shared Poland and Russia invaded Poland 16 days after the Germans had invaded? Lets put it this way, if we leave out the whole "Stalin was going to attack Germany if Hitler didn't attack Russia" thing out, Nazism and Communism would have prevailed and Russia would have indeed been an Axis power. Quite honestly, I don't really see Russia as being with the Allies because of all the horrible things they did, and since when is Communism good? Just thought I'd add that, sorry to go off topic.

 

What were these crimes that went unpunished ?

 

Of course I was not suggesting the 'majority' were involved (good story by the way)

i was pointing out that many German soldiers, worn by the horror of combat and showing the darker side of being human, did terrible things expecially in the east where there were specific orders encouraging them to do so.

around the front and even more in the rear areas, soldiers killed and raped civilians, killed prisoners, burned down whole villages after having too much to drink...

 

Yes the Soviet regime killed millions (although 50 million, a third of the USSR's population seems a bit exagerated)

but the men of the Red Army won the second world war against Germany. They made the brave sacrafices that were neccesary to defeat Hitler's armies because Britain and America were'nt prepared to.

Yes these men committed terrible crimes (the rapes etc) but they fought a terrible war, more terrible than any westerner could comprehend. many had lost whole families and traveled across miles of desolated territory where most people had either been butchered or deported as slaves to germany.

so while Stalin was monster, the people of the soviet union deserve the west's enternal respect, much more respect than they do receive.

 

a think your right, the holocaust must take 1st place, but not because of the scale.

much more people were killed by Japan in Asia than in the Holocaust - up 10 million Chinese and up to 5 million other Asians, including 2 million vietnemese than starved in the vietnam famine.

also, much more russians died as a result of germany's genocidal and anti-partisan policies than jews. (at least 7 million)

the holocaust comes first because of the systematic nature of it, because of the determination to erase an entire race from the planet and because of the fact they nearly suceeded.

 

Unfortunately, these good German's did nothing to stop the war crimes being committed by their own army even though the vast majority knew they were being committed, and in many cases even those units who didn't commit any war crimes often helped those units that were by providing logistical assistance.

The truth is, the vast majority of the ordinary German soldiers were guilty in the eyes of the law of being 'accessories' to the war crimes at the very least.

 

Not One Step Back, I respect you for not completely arguing but rather proving your point in a very nice manner, and that we can both agree that not all German soldiers were Nazis. Also, I do believe Russia killed more than the German during the Holocaust. IMO, sending soldiers to their deaths or shooting them for retreating or taking cover is someone who is killed by their own country, not the enemy. Commisar Order-I've looked it up and read that many officers didn't agree with it because they went up against more opposition if they actually did kill commisars(why I have no clue, if I was a Russian soldier and my commisar threatened to shoot me, I'd be pretty pissed at him). Regardless, Stalin did kill more people than Hitler, its just way to obvious. When Berlin was invaded, Hitler made it just like the Soviets, he didn't care who was killed he just wanted to be protected, but Stalingrad lasted much longer so I'm positive more Russians were killed.

 

The Wehrmacht had its knees deep in war crimes. What percentage of its soldiers were involved is a topic beyond my ken. What is NOT in dispute is the FULL complicity of many senior officers in the perpetration of war crimes in the East. I can name names: Wagner, quartermaster of the German Army; Reichenau; Hoeppner; von Manstein. Wagner devised a logistics system that guaranteed millions of Russian POWs would be starved or marched to death.

Reichenau, Hoeppner, Choltitz, von Manstein all told their troops to kill Jews and Bolsheviks on the front or behind it. They gave direct orders to get Einsatzgruppen in their zone of operations, and to their troops to participate in the massacre of civilians.

Everyone in the German logistical planning was in the know, that Russian POWs would be sent to the rear without food or clothes to open pens and freeze to death. German town majors knew the conscripted laborers arriving their cities' train stations were dying of hunger, typhus or exhaustion. German troops knew the civilians whose winter clothes they were stripping were going to freeze to death. They also knew the Einsatzgruppen were liquidating undesirables. That wasn't exactly a secret.

Regular divisions knew full well they were killing unarmed civilians when they went on anti-partisan operations that achieved kill ratios of over one hundred to one and captured hunting shotguns and black powder pieces to show for their efforts.

One should never say everyone in this or that group is guilty. But regular Heer units were not clean.

 

I strongly object the notion that strategic bombing is comparable to Nazi death camps or Japanese city-raping. It is permitted to neutralize enemy ability to wage war. It is not permitted to kill the people you have already disarmed or otherwise put into your custody, let alone those of whom had never been a threat to your security in the first place.

 

I don't like much comparing atrocities, and when it gets to asymmetrical warfare comparisons are nearly impossible but while I agree the death camps are in a horror league of their own, strictly speaking they are considered crimes against humanity not war crimes as they had very little to do with war objectives, outside of that it gets murky.

With city-raping, as you call it, the objective was to break/prevent resistance by shocking the population into submission, or do you think Mao and Ciang didn't encourage guerrilla tactics?
That's just as much a military objective as preventing weapon production. A civilian has probably more chance of defending himself against a soldier than against a bomber. IMO in both instances the issue is that "collateral damage" is much greater than damage to the, arguably legittimate (as private property was off limts according to a part of the treaties that everybody ignored), military objective.

 

thats alright we're all ww2 buffs here.

yes stalin did kill more people than Hitler did (well, depends on how many deaths you blame on hitler from ww2)

and yes life in the Red Army was brutal. it partly explains why Red Army soldiers acted in the brutal way they did.

 

as i pointed out at the top, the point of this poll was not to rank atrocities, just to discuss them and highlight if anyone believe certain atrocities deserved more attention.
(it was probably a mistake putting the holocaust on the list as everyone is just voting for that and missing the whole point of the poll.)