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Allied war crimes were violations of the laws of war committed by the Allies of World War II against civilian populations or the soldiers of the Axis Armed Forces.

At the end of World War II, several trials of Axis war criminals took place, most famously were the Nuremberg Trials. However, these tribunals were expressly prohibited from considering any allegations of war crimes committed by the Allied powers or their military forces. Allied personnel were involved in incidents which were war crimes that were investigated by the Allied powers at the time, and led to courts-martial. Other incidents are alleged by certain historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but that for a variety of reasons were not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute. It should be noted that many things classified as war crimes today were not such at the time. Some things classified as a war crimes today, were not war crimes during World War II.

Incidents

Incidents that occurred during the involvement of the relevant nation in World War II include the following. Not all of these are agreed to be war crimes:

Canada

• Leonforte, July 1943. According to Mitcham and von Stauffenberg in the book "The Battle of Sicily" The Loyal Edmonton Regiment allegedly killed captured German prisoners.

• The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada randomly burned houses in Friesoythe, northwestern Germany in April 1945 as a reprisal for the death of their commanding officer.

Free French

• The "Marocchinate" of Cassino: (some reports are disputed. see the relevant page for details)

Soviet Union

• Katyn massacre: The USSR hadn't joined the Allies yet, so this is not an "Allied" war crime.
• Mass rape and other war crimes by Soviet troops: these happened during occupation of East Prussia, in parts of Pomerania (Danzig) and Silesia, and during the Battle of Berlin and the Battle of Budapest.
• Respect of international conventions: The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. This may make it doubtful that the Soviet treatment of German and allied POWs, who "were treated even remotely in accordance with the Geneva Convention", causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, was a war crime. However, The Nuremberg Tribunal in rejected this as a general argument, and held that the 1929 Geneva Convention was binding because it articulated general principles of international law that are binding on all nations in a conflict, despite one party's non-ratification of the Convention.

United Kingdom

• The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime."

United States

• Battle of the Bismarck Sea- On orders from U.S. Army Air Force General George Kenney, U.S. aircraft strafed and bombed unarmed survivors from sunken Japanese warships and transports swimming or floating in the ocean.
• Strafing unarmed survivors from the sunken Japanese cruiser Nachi
• Strafing unarmed survivors from the sunken Japanese cruiser Kumano
• Canicattì slaughter
• Biscari massacre
• Dachau massacre
• Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: In 1963 these were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State. The District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war." However, the prevalent international legal opinion is that these bombings were not a war crime.

Yugoslav Communist Partisan Forces

• Bleiburg massacre
• Foibe massacres

Urestricted submarine warfare

In the Nuremberg trial, German Admiral Karl Dönitz was tried (among other crimes) for issuing orders to engage in Unrestricted submarine warfare. He was found guilty, but the sentence was not assessed (i.e. he got no penalty) because the court discovered evidence that both the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy also issued similar orders.

Post World War II incidents involving Prisoners of War

Norway

• German POWs in Norway forced to clear minefields

United States

• Rheinwiesenlager (disputed)
• Salina, Utah POW massacre

See also

• Red Army atrocities
• Bloody Sunday (1939)
• Katyn massacre
• Eisenhower and German POWs
• Expulsion of Germans after World War II
• Victor's justice
• Morgenthau Plan
• Salomon Morel
• Pawłokoma massacre
• Malmedy massacre trial
• Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
• Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre
• War crimes of the Wehrmacht
• List of massacres

External links

• "An ethical blank cheque" British and US mythology about the second world war ignores our own crimes and legitimises Anglo-American war making, Richard Drayton, Tuesday May 10, 2005 The Guardian

Notes

1. Mithcham, Samuel and Friedrich von Stauffenberg The Battle of Sicily
2. The official historian of the Canadian Army, C.P. Stacey, noted in his autobiography that it was the only incident he was aware of that could be considered a "war crime" associated with Canadian soldiers in the Second World War. see: Stacey, C.P. A Date With History
3. Remembering Rape: Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary 1944–1945, James Mark, Past & Present 188 (2005) 133-161
4. Excerpt, Chapter one The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945-2002 - William I. Hitchcock - 2003 - ISBN 0-385-49798-9
   • A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 - Alfred-Maurice de Zayas - 1994 - ISBN 0-312-12159-8
   • Barefoot in the Rubble - Elizabeth B. Walter - 1997 - ISBN 0-9657793-0-0
5. Antony Beevor They raped every German female from eight to 80 in The Guardian May 1, 2002
6. Study: Soviet Prisoners-of-War (POWs), 1941-42 website of Gendercide Watch
7. Matthew White Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm: Stalin
8. POWs and the laws of war: World War II legacy © 2003 Educational Broadcasting Corporation
9. Jennifer K. Elsea (Legislative Attorney American Law Division) Federation of American Scientists CRS Report for Congress Lawfulness of Interrogation Techniques under the Geneva Conventions (PDF) September 8, 2004. Page 24 first paragraph see also footnotes 93 and 87
10. Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in The Guardian, October 21, 2003
11. Brand Manera, Battle of the Bismarck Sea, 2-4 March 1943, Australian War Memorial, 2003.
12. in Manila Bay,5 November, 1944, aircraft from the U.S. carrier Lexington participated in the strafing, as survivors bobbed in the waters of Manila Bay. source: Lacroix, Japanese Cruisers, p. 356.
13. In Dasol Bay, Phillipines, on November 25, 1944, aircraft from the U.S. carrier Ticonderoga strafed and bombed the survivors of the sunken cruiser as they floated in the water. Source: Anthony P. Tully, CombinedFleet.com,
14. Shimoda et al. v. The State, Tokyo District Court, 7 December 1963
15. Falk, Richard A. (1965-02-15). "The Claimants of Hiroshima". The Nation. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help) reprinted in Richard A. Falk, Saul H. Mendlovitz eds., ed. (1966). "The Shimoda Case: Challenge and Response". The Strategy of World Order. Volume: 1. New York: World Law Fund. pp. pp. 307-13. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); |pages= has extra text (help)
16. John Bolton "The Risks and Weaknesses of the International Criminal Court from America's Perspective", US ambassador to the United Nations, Winter 2001
17. International Review of the Red Cross no 323, p.347-363 The Law of Air Warfare (1998)
18. Judgement : Doenitz the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
19. U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948

• World War II crimes