I ask because I have been reading about the USAAF bombing raids upon the Romanian oil refineries at Ploesti (1943).
The American fliers who were shot down and captured by the Romanian troops were very well treated-they were accorded correct treatment under the Geneva Conventio (officers were paid salaries and not required to work); the prisoners were actually put up in a former luxury hotel. Unlike POWs in Germany, they were never mistreated or subjected to torture.
So, was the USA and Romanai formally at war? Romania was allied to Germany, did that automatically make them at war with the US? I don’t recall President Roosevelt making a formal declarartion of war against Romania.
June 5, 1942.
The President can’t declare war. That power belong to Congress under Article 1, Section 8
I am not aware of Germany torturing American POWs in World War II. Can you please point me towards a source for this claim?
A small percentage were indeed sent to concentration and labour camps (most notably, Berga) and, if not tortured in a strict sense, certainly mistreated there contrary to the Geneva Conventions. For cites see Wikipedia.
Weird, looks like USA didn’t declare war on Finland for some reason. Not that it would have mattered much in practice, but if they declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, adding Finland to the list would’ve been logical, no?
nvm, got my history confused
Finland was a very odd case. It was a democratic republic which had been at war with the Soviet Union during the winter of 1939-40, and was a British ally, to the point that “aid to Finland” was on the British Cabinet agenda during Chamberlain’s war PM-ship. When Germany invaded Russia, the Finns renewed their conflict, hoping to take back what they’d lost to the USSR in the earlier war. But (Finnish president) Mannerheim and Churchill knew, respected, and liked each other, and Mannerheim despised Hitler; counting the Finns as ‘Axis’ is only true in the sense that they were at war with the Soviet Union, who was an ally of the US and UK in the fight against Germany and Italy. Stalin insisted that the UK declare war on Finland, which they did after trying to broker an armistice, but both Churchill and Mannerheim knew it was a paper exercise, with no actual combat ever intended by either side. I gather the US never did declare war? We too were asked to do so.
There weren’t very many Jews in Finland but the Finnish Government flat out refused to take part in the Final Solution and did not deport their Jewish citizens when asked to do so by Hilter.
Who voted against going to war with Japan?
It looks like every single declaration of war in WWII was approved unanimously, with the exception of one dissenting vote in the House on the issue of Japan. Who was it, and why?
Jeannette Rankin. She was a pacifist.
She was the first woman ever elected to the House of Representatives (1916), at a time when women could vote in Montana but not yet nationwide. She took office in 1917 and cast her first non-organizational vote against declaring war on Germany in WWI. (On that occasion, of course, she had company.)
She ran for the Senate in 1918 and lost, then retired from politics for 22 years until antiwar views came back into fashion in 1940 (especially in the Upper Midwest). She took office again in 1941 and voted against war with Japan, and this time she had no company and her political career was finished.
I would also refer you to the “Malmedy Massacre” in 1944 (the" Battle of the Bulge"). American POWs were murdered by SS troops, under “Sepp” Dietrich.
I think Dietrich was later convicted of ordering the murders.
Mannerheim was not the president of Finland during the war, but after it. In 1941, the president was Risto Ryti. Marshall Mannerheim was the commander in chief of the armed forces, a job that goes with the presidency in peace-time.
In 1939-1940 the French and British had plans of helping Finland, as a democracy and because the Soviet Union was considered Germany’s ally. (After all, it was Russian oil that fueled German tanks thru France.) However, Churchill being quite a shrewd real politician, saw this as a way to take over the Swedish iron mines in order to beat Germany. His preference was that the allied troops never exchange fire with the Russians. The Norwegians and Swedes saw thru this and dumped the idea. Stalin, on the other hand, saw a real possibility of allied troops on norhern Scandinavia, so the plans themselves may have affected the situation in spring.
The British paid lip-service to their ally Stalin by bombing Petsamo. It seems they were quite careful not to make too much damagege.
Also, while the small Finnish Army did participate in the German invasion of Russia (June 1941), Finnish troops went no further than the prewar borders of Finland.
No doubt this annoyed Hitler, but Mannerheim made it clear that Finland would only go to war to recover the lands that the Russians had taken in the “Winter War”.
Psychonaut, interestingly I was just reading this weeks Macleans magazine (a Canadian news weekly) and for Remembrance Day they had this story among others. Air crew over occupied France, forced labour, concentration camps, observed torture. Saved by an intervention of the Luftwaffe.
The Luftwaffe operated their own POW camps for airmen and supposedly acted with a certain level of honor and chivalry. Given the Nazi (and Soviet’s) propensity for using forced labour, Todt for example and concentration camps for various undesirables, I wouldn’t think torture for some was unlikely.
OT:
I believe that is a bit different, tough, as Malmedy was a case of POWs being shot shortly after being taken prisoners, and while still in a area where combat was raging. (And, there is still some controversy about how the situation came about, AFAIK there was never proven that it was done on explicit orders from high command, whereas German troops present claimed the POWs were attempting to escape or indeed that some of them were armed.)
Plenty of such occurences on all sides during the conflict (The US Army for instance executed (or refused to accept, as it was known) SS-personell surrendering in the days following Malmedy). Once you were removed from the battlefield and the urgent sense of combat had abated, most Western Allied POWs were treated according to the Geneva Convention, AFAIK.
/OT
Really? I thought there had been a debate about this among the Finnish Army leadership, and in unofficial communications with the British government they’d been told that Britain considered it fair to retake the lost terrain but that they should go no further. But in the end they still decided to invade some previously Russian parts of Karelia.
Wikipedia on Continuation War appears to say I am right, especially this map, representing the furthest advance of Finnish troops.
They did go further than the pre-war borders, aiming for some sort of “Greater Finland” after the war. Finnish forces eventually stopped though and for example did not take a very active part in the Siege of Leningrad.
There was no shortage of people having grandiose plans for post-war Europe, in Finland or elsewhere, but I think the main motivation of the leadership for moving the front to the point where it stayed until summer 1944 was that the lakes Onega and Ladoga shortened the lines considerably.