I’ve been reading quite a few World War I/II threads here in GQ, including mention of war crimes trials for things that probably occurred on both sides. (Donitz ordering subs not to pick up survivors after having had subs fired on) Did any allied commanders ever issue orders that were felt to have qualified as war crimes (aside from possibly treason).
Not much chance. Who was it who said ‘History is the lies told by the victors”? I don’t think any commander of any victorious armed force has ever been charged with war crimes during the last century. Is it possible that they were all innocent?
There are plenty of sites suggesting they should have been charged.
http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM80/LM80_Edit.html
http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm
http://www.kimsoft.com/1997/nogun3.htm
So would you put the Serbian Army in the “not victorious” category?
I’m not fully informed on the causes/outcomes of that particular war, but I’d be inclined to say no. They didn’t get what they set out to achieve and didn’t remove their enemies did they?
How soon they forget. Don’t you remember Lt. Calley and My Lai?
Sure, there were probably many Allied war criminals during WWII. These criminals tended to get a summary execution rather than a circus trial.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Chas.E *
How was Lt. Calley a member of a victorious armed force? IIRC, his side lost the war.
Sheeesh, Gaspode, how about Breaker Morant? (I know, he just got in under your century limit.)
Hell, I don’t know.
But attempting to clear up a point or two: Crimes against humanity aren’t exactly the same as war crimes. A war crime is what happens when you break the conventions - i.e., killing POWs, faking surrender, using dumdum bullets etc.
Crimes against humanity was, IIRC, a new concept introduced by the Nuremberg Tribunals. Without this concept, no court would have jurisdiction to mete out punishment for say, the Holocaust - because it wasn’t technically illegal for the Nazis to kill German citizens - Germany was a sovereign nation. One might argue that introducing a new concept and judging people by it after the fact wasn’t fair, but I’ve visited Bergen-Belsen and I say they got more of a trial than they deserved. The Allies had it in their power to mete out at least some justice, and they did.
Any WWII Allied war crimes, OTOH, should have been tried by court-martial, because most military laws & regulations rule that orders that would break the conventions are illegal per definition. Does anyone have any info on Allied court-martials during WWII ? I’ve been looking, but haven’t struck paydirt…
S. Norman
But the Holocaust victims were mostly not German citizens. Only 500,000 Jews lived in Germany when Hitler came to power, and many of those fled before they could be murdered. The majority of the dead were from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Technically, even most of the German-born victims were not German citizens, since the Nuremberg laws deprived Jews, gypsies and other “non-Aryans” of their citizenship.
As foreign citizens, the Polish, Czech, and Soviet victims of the Holocaust may have been subject to the protections of some multilateral treaties and conventions. However, since most such international laws were aimed at protecting prisoners of war and regulating war rather than protecting noncombatants and refugees, the concept of “crimes against humanity” may still have been necessary.
There is mention in Martin Blumenson’s The Patton Papers of a U.S. battalion commander in Sicily who murdered several dozen German POWs out of hand. Patton, then 7th Army commander, tried to cover it up, but his subordinate Omar Bradley would not hear of it and insisted the offending officer be court-martialed. Unfortunately, I don’t recall any reference as to the verdict of the court-martial.
Patton was a truly brilliant general, IMO the best the Allies ever had, but he was a not a very nice man.
There’s the case of “bomber” Harris, head of the British bomber command. His policy was quite simply to break the German morale by bombing the hell out of the German cities with incendiaries.
With hindsight this seems rather inhumane, although I don’t regard myself as entitled to pass any sort of judgement. Harris was refused honours as a result of his policies but was never tried as a war criminal. If the Allies had lost he probably would have been.
A summary of his command can be found at:
Actually there’s a very good argument to be made that the Serbians did win the war, or at least fought it to a stalemate. The first peace treaty (the one that Milosevic refused to sign, leading to the bombing) would have allowed NATO unlimited access to all of Yugoslavia, and would have placed Kosovo permanently under a UN trusteeship or somesuch arrangement. It would have been an unconditional surrender, in other words. With nothing to lose, Serbia chose to fight. After all of the bombing, it was clear that Serbia wasn’t going to give up, so NATO struck the two porblem provisions. Now, NATO would only be allowed access to Kosovo (not Serbia or Monentegro), and Kosovo is still officially part of Yugoslavia (so when NATO leaves, it goes back to Serbian control). This treaty was aggreeable to Serbia, so they signed it.
Serbia got everything they could reasonably hope to get by fighting.
However, the bombing of enemy cities, horrible as it is, is not a war crime or crime against humanity as defined at Nuremberg. No German or Japanese was convicted on a charge of bombing enemy cities. (Bombing “open cities” was considered a war crime, but AFAIK Harris never did this). Thus Harris did not commit any of the crimes defined at Nuremberg. Neither did Truman, for that matter.
Of course, if the Allies had lost, Harris’ innocence of war crimes probably would not have helped him. The Nazis never did worry overmuch about messy technical things like fair trials.
The revised 1949 4th Geneva convention did mention the obligation to protect civilians, but in relatively broad
terms.
Bombing cities was standard procedure during WWII, and if I’m correctly informed, wasn’t actually outlawed by convention until 1977. (1st addendum to the 4th Geneva convention). In other words, Harris didn’t commit any crimes punishable by the rules of that time. His ideas were apparently wrong - German war effort didn’t suffer all that much, and the bombing tied up valuable ressources.
I’ve found descriptions of a couple of obvious war crimes on Allied side - the (probably) gravest is a written order from the 26th Infantry Divisions 328th Infantry Regiment, ordering that no SS and paratroops are to be taken prisoner, instead they are to be shot immediately. The order was issued on the 21st of december, shortly after the Malmedy massacre on about 70 American POWs during the Ardennes battle. (I don’t have the order, I’m quoting from a Danish tutorial on “Laws of War”).
I don’t know if anyone was court-martialled for issuing or obeying this clearly illegal order.
S. Norman
That’s all very interesting. I’m sure I’m not contributing much, but before I got to working 14 hour days, this realm was a hobby of mine. I’m sure I read (In Citizen Soldier?) about low-level “suggestions” made in the Allied army, I think especially during the snowy Battle of the Bulge, that it might be better to not encumber oneself with taking prisoners.
I’m sure that anything like that from even an NCO would probably be considered to be a crime (although probably not a CAH), but as has been noted, A. The Allies won, and B. most people thought the other guy got what he deserved for fighting for Hitler in the first place.
I know the daughter of a Latvian man who was tortured by Allied soldiers under suspicion of being a “spy” (there was no evidence to substantiate this).
It is very likely that the men who kidnapped and burned him with cigarettes were footsoldiers with no authority to arrest anyone, and just wanted an excuse to get some kicks while they were in war-torn Europe.
Luckily, he emigrated to Canada, rode out his PTSD alone in the basement, and left his family with only happy memories of him. Sometimes I wonder if he was the only civilian the occupying forces used for their amusement.
On the subject of taking prisoners there is no legal obligation under the Geneva Convention for the surrender of some one wishing to surrender to be accepted. Once that surrender has been accepted there is then a legal obigation to care for that person as a POW.
I have recently spoken to a person who served in the British Army in the 80’s. He said that they were instructed not to accept any surrenders in a fire fight situation and to only accept some-ones surrender when there was the opertunity for that person to be immediatly taken out of the combat area.
Kipper, you’re right. The third Geneva convention is focused on the rights & duties of POWs and doesn’t really get into the details of surrender. (Yes, we’ve drifted off topic). Surrender, however, is covered by the 1907 Hague convention(Annex to convention IV, article 23):
IOW, even if you don’t wish to accept a surrender for whatever reason (your unit probably has an objective to reach), fighting on against people who wish to surrender is most certainly a war crime.
S. Norman