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TOP 10 ALLIED WAR CRIMES OF WORLD WAR II

Eva Fauen ( http://listverse.com/authors/?Eva%20Fauen ) December 14,
2012

Check out our new companion site: http://knowledgenuts.com (
http://knowledgenuts.com/ )
As they say, history is written by the victor. No example of this is
more true than the Second World War. Although many are quick to paint
the Allies as heroes, many forget the large number of Allied war
crimes committed against the Axis powers.
Some may justify Allied actions by arguing that Nazi and Imperial war
crimes, and crimes against humanity, were far, far worse – but this
is at best hypocritical. A crime is a crime, regardless of the
circumstances – a murder is still a murder, a rape is still a rape,
and by ‘justifying’ such actions you become equal to that of which
you scorn.
The following list documents ten cases of Allied war crimes during
WWII, ranging from the small, to the unjust, to the horrendous.

10

Civilian Air Raids
Murder of Non-Combatants

Throughout the war, almost all Allied nations carried out air raids on
non-military, civilian targets. A tactic used by both sides primarily
to destroy morale – most notably as part of Nazi Blitzkrieg – most
air raids on civilian populations were little more then revenge
attacks. During the last years of the war it started to posses a
tactical purpose, when the Germans began to fortify and hold up within
cities as they fell back. This does not forgive the indiscriminate
murder of civilians earlier in the war, however.
9

Operation Teardrop
Torture

Having received intelligence that a fleet of German U-Boats armed with
V-1 Flying Bombs were heading towards Eastern coast of America, the
U.S. and Canada sent out a large anti-submarine task force comprised
of some 42 destroyers and four aircraft carriers to neutralise the
threat. Over the course of a month, the fleet sank five German
submarines and captured two others, while suffering the loss of one
destroyer.
But this entry concerns the treatment of five crew-members from the
U-546, who were brutally interrogated in order to quickly extract
information concerning a possible missile attack on the eastern coast.
One officer who was tortured committed suicide whilst in custody. Were
the American torture methods justified? You decide – but bear in
mind that the fears later turned out to be unfounded.

8

The London Cage
Torture

Housing the London Cage, Kensington Palace Gardens in London witnessed
its fair share of war crimes during the Second World War. The Cage was
essentially a set of cells and rooms used to hold and interrogate
captured members of the Schutzstaffel and Gestapo. Everything from
starvation and sleep deprivation to brutal beatings was practiced
within its walls. to extract information and, in some cases,
confessions.
Though undeniably a war crime, no participants were ever prosecuted.
The British government, for the most part, turned a blind eye to the
abuse – despite multiple complaints from various parties – arguing
that it was justifiable given the situation.
7

Kocevski Rog Massacre
Murder of POWs and Non-Combatants

Committed during May of 1945, the Kocevski Rog Massacre describes the
systematic murder of members of the repatriated Slovene Home Guard and
their families by Allied Yugoslaw Partisans. During this period, up to
12,000 people were thrown into pits, caves and crevices which were
subsequently sealed using explosives. No one ever faced prosecution
for this atrocity.
6

Dachau Massacre
Murder of POWs
As American soldiers approached Dachau concentration camp, they bore
witness to thousands of highly decomposed bodies sitting in open top
freight carriages. Because of this, it can hardly come as a surprise
when American soldiers summarily executed captured – and unarmed –
SS guards, purely out of rage. Prisoners, too, were said to have
beaten as many as 50 guards to death in retaliation for their
treatment.
Unfortunately, the guards who operated the camp and carried out most
of the atrocities for the majority of the war had fled many days
beforehand, and were replaced with members of the Waffen-SS, whose
sole purpose was to surrender the camp to the Allied force without
resistance. Thus, the men were unjustly executed for crimes they did
not commit. No one was ever court-martialed for the massacre.

5

Chinese War Crimes
Murder of POWs and Non-combatants, Torture, Looting, Rape, Mutilation

It’s widely accepted that the Second Sino-Japanese war was perhaps
one of the most brutal conflicts ever to have occurred in human
history. With a history of intense rivalry and conflict, little mercy
was shown from either belligerent during this eight year long war.
Although the Japanese were guilty of crimes that bordered on genocide,
the Chinese, too, are reputed to have committed their fair share of
war crimes.
Unfortunately, due to the volatile and vicious nature of the war,
there was practically zero press on the ground to provide concrete
evidence of atrocities (the photograph above, taken by Tom Simmen, is
one of the few to have surfaced). Survivors, however, reported mass
looting and pillaging, summary execution, and torture of POWs and
Chinese civilians believed to have been collaborating with Imperial
Japan – as well as mass rape within occupied settlements – to name
but a few.
4

Rheinwiesenlager
Death-by-Neglect of POWs

The Prisoners of War Temporary Enclosures, or Rheinwiesenlager, were a
collection of 19 U.S.-built prisoner of war camps constructed to hold
German POWs during the Allied occupation of Germany. At the
program’s height, the camps held up to two million prisoners,
although the precise number of individuals imprisoned is unknown due
to poor record keeping.
Due to the sheer size of these camps, the Allies struggled to provide
enough supplies for all the prisoners, which resulted in thousands of
deaths. Typical estimates put the number of deaths from starvation,
exposure and dehydration at up to 10,000. This figure has been heavily
debated, however, with some researchers placing the death toll in the
hundreds of thousands.
Regardless, these deaths would have been classed as a war crime under
the 1929 Geneva Convention if it wasn’t for the fact that Eisenhower
ordered the prisoners to be classed as Disarmed Enemy Forces, in order
to circumvent the treaty.
3

Operation Overlord Massacres
Murder of POWs

Once the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy and began to capture
large swathes of occupied land, they had a problem: what to do with
the thousands of captured POWs? Instead of shipping them off to camps,
many were simply executed where they stood to save time and resources
which were much needed on the western front. For many of the dead,
their only crime was being German.
There is much worse, however. Although the veracity of the testaments
is highly debated amongst historians, there were reports of the Allies
using captured German soldiers as human shields – forcing them to
walk through minefields to clear the way for advancing allied forces,
and marching them headfirst into German encampments to avoid defensive
gunfire.
The exact number of soldiers executed or killed after surrender is
unknown, as the fatalities for the most part resemble normal war-time
deaths.
2

Nuclear Weapons
Murder of Non-Combatants

Though born out of desperation and perhaps necessity, the U.S. bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is, arguably, a war crime. It is claimed
that such drastic measures prevented the need for a land invasion of
Japan, and the potential deaths of millions of individuals.
But this ignores the fact that the majority of deaths arising from an
invasion would have been military combatants, rather then civilians.
The Geneva Convention (and in particular the 1977 amendment: Protocol
I) explicitly declares that the indiscriminate targeting of
non-combatants, such as civilians, is a war crime. Given that the use
of nuclear weapons on civilians populations today would be considered
a war crime, as well as a crime against humanity, I can see no reason
why one would not consider the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
a war crime.
1

Prussian Rape
Mass Rape

After the fall of Berlin, Germany was in ruins. Occupied by millions
of foreign troops, none of whom had complete control over any given
entity, Germany quickly descended into anarchic lawlessness. It is
believed that the Soviet Army alone was responsible for the rape of up
to two million women and children, as well as the subsequent death of
240,000.
Claimed to be the largest mass rape in history, many unfortunate
victims were assaulted up to a hundred times, and often could not
resist in the face of overwhelming Soviet numbers.
For the most part, these atrocities were driven by the lust for
revenge, although in many cases it was simply because the Soviets saw
themselves as conquers, not liberators. Stalin himself was reputed to
have said that people should be understanding, “if a soldier who has
crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has
fun with a woman or takes some trifle.”
It wasn’t just the Soviets who were accused of this crime, however:
it is believed that the US was responsible for over 11,000 rapes,
while the French have been accused of over 1,500. This is clearly not
on the same scale as the Soviets – but it doesn’t make it any less
terrible.

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Written by Paul Fromm

Monday, 21 October 2013 05:02

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