Patton and War Crimes

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

German soldiers, for example, were compelled to commit atrocities through a carrot and stick approach by the top Nazi leadership. First, they were force-fed a daily diet of propaganda that dehumanized the Eastern peoples and justified German manifest destiny. Hitler himself used all his charismatic might to fill them with feelings of racial superiority and talk of "subhumans" and "vermin". They were given every excuse in the book from their leaders to justify their actions from the fight against bolshevism to the need for German living space. When encouragement wasn't enough, they used punishment. Those German soldiers who refused orders could expect a wide range of reprisals. They could only hope to be sent to a harsh front, and not wind up in a concentration camp themselves. Still, the Nazi leadership felt the need to continually sanatize their genocide. IIRC, by the time Treblinka was set up, no more than 50 or 100 Germans ever worked there at one time.

That's quite the contrary position to develop - that the Germans wouldn't have committed atrocities without being poked by their commanding officers. The Germans basically agreed with the Nazis and weren't troubled at all by the "purge the Jews" business - which was no Nazi secret. And how many German soldiers were actually punished for refusing to participate in the race war on the Eastern Front? It's a pretty small figure, and the book discussed here a few months ago found just one corporal, who was executed for hiding Jews (and having more courage than the entire Wehrmacht put together).

[Strike For The South]

American soldiers, on the other hand, had no such encouragement. IIRC, FDR never denigrated the Japanese on a racial basis, and soldiers committing atrocities could technically be charged - although the vast majority of officers looked the other way, if they didn't support it outright. As I pointed out, the military even made an effort to increase live prisoner taking, for intelligence purposes. Despite all that, American soldiers engaged in racism, dehumanization, and atrocities on a wide scale. American culture - from Time Magazine to Hollywood - relished in the same type of racism that Goebbels worked so hard to foster. Unlike the top-down nature of the war crimes committed by the Axis dictatorships, these American war crimes were cultivated from the bottom. American soldiers needed no carrots or sticks to boil the flesh off of Japanese skulls and send them home to their girlfriends, such behavior just came naturally to them.
.

Clearly the Germans are better than us....perhaps some type of supermen?

So why in your opinion are Americans so ready to commit ethnocide?

The war is a soft spot for you as the best you can do is cherry pick examples of trinkites taken by American soliders with the rape of nanking and auschwitz

You're fair and balanced veiw is bordering on relativism and trying to reconcile the NAZIs...the schtick is growing old

[PanzerJaeger]

That's quite the contrary position to develop - that the Germans wouldn't have committed atrocities without being poked by their commanding officers.

My position - as I clearly stated - was that the Germans received both encouragement from their political leaders to commit war crimes and feared reprisals for not doing so, and that the Americans were not under such constraints, but still engaged in atrocities. I was discussing context, not guessing about hypotheticals. It is obviously impossible to know the extent to which the Germans would have engaged in such behaviors without inducements from their leaders.

Clearly the Germans are better than us....perhaps some type of supermen?

Certainly not. While FDR's governing intentions were far from altruistic, they were many levels above those of Hitler and the Nazis in a moral context. America in general was far better than Nazi Germany in that regard, which should be obvious. I'm discussing specifics and you're trying to turn this into a question of who was better - Germany or the US. The answer to that is not in dispute.

So why in your opinion are Americans so ready to commit ethnocide?

Some researchers have hypothesized that cultures in which hunting is extremely prevalent are more likely to dehumanize their enemies - making them little more than animals to be hunted. As a hunter myself, I have my doubts about that, but I really have no idea. War brings out both the best and the worst in people.

The war is a soft spot for you as the best you can do is cherry pick examples of trinkites taken by American soliders with the rape of nanking and auschwitz

I don't think killing people to take their teeth is exactly equivalent to a trip to the souvenir shop. If you're going to accuse me of bias, minimizing what the Americans did only weakens your position.

You're fair and balanced veiw is bordering on relativism and trying to reconcile the NAZIs...the schtick is growing old

What is growing old is people reading what they want to into my statements instead of what I actually write.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

My position - as I clearly stated - was that the Germans received both encouragement from their political leaders to commit war crimes and feared reprisals for not doing so, and that the Americans were not under such constraints, but still engaged in atrocities. I was discussing context, not guessing about hypotheticals. It is obviously impossible to know the extent to which the Germans would have engaged in such behaviors without inducements from their leaders.

But that's basically what you're implying by bringing it up - that the US troops committed these crimes voluntarily (which is true) in contrast to the Germans who were forced to (which is false).

Additionally, you haven't really shown the scale of the atrocities the US troops committed. You've shown that the Americans killed a lot of surrendering Japanese POWs (I don't think you've given an estimate though) and you've alluded to some rapes. But we can't say for instance whether a majority of US units stationed in the Pacific committed war crimes or not because you haven't really said anything except "the research is there." Give us some links with the parts you think are important quoted for us.

[Strike For The South]

Certainly not. While FDR's governing intentions were far from altruistic, they were many levels above those of Hitler and the Nazis in a moral context. America in general was far better than Nazi Germany in that regard, which should be obvious. I'm discussing specifics and you're trying to turn this into a question of who was better - Germany or the US. The answer to that is not in dispute.
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You post implies the Germans showed restriant while being encouraged while the Americans were licking there chops while being restrained

Unless you can point to some factor in American society that is vastly different from German society I have a hard time beliving you.

I'm sure Bavarians hunt as much as Texans no?

[The Wizard]

You are making my point for me.

On the contrary. What you wrote has barely anything to do with what I did. Except to underwrite it, that is.

Unlike the top-down nature of the war crimes committed by the Axis dictatorships, these American war crimes were cultivated from the bottom.

And that's why they occurred far less often and far, far less systematically than in the German or Japanese militaries. As you yourself point out.

This is why body counts are not the best context in which to judge morality.

Indeed, I agree. Rather, intent is. And the American intent was clearly to limit war crimes as much as possible. German and Japanese intent was to maximize them to the fullest. Need I say more?

Some researchers have hypothesized that cultures in which hunting is extremely prevalent are more likely to dehumanize their enemies - making them little more than animals to be hunted. As a hunter myself, I have my doubts about that, but I really have no idea. War brings out both the best and the worst in people.

Dude... you're the one claiming the Americans/Allies were just as bad as the Axis. You're the one claiming what Marines did to surrendering Japanese soldiers was just as bad as the Rape of Nanjing. In other words, you're the one trying to generalize. Now you're complaining when we argue on that premise? Come again?

[Louis VI the Fat]

* who were the racists back then? *

There is always one weak spot in the mainstream historical narrative. Namely, that is it focused on Europeans, or by extention, to 'civilised' non-Europeans.

A certain discrepancy was not felt back then, which we do nowadays. Namely, there is outrage over German genocidal acts against Jews and others, outrage at their treatment of Poland, which had to dissapear in genocide, enslavement, suffocation, outrage at Japan's cruelty, its perverse sadism, in East Asia . But this outrage was not extended to the treatment of non-Europeans / non-Europeans considered uncivilised.

Yet, what is the history of the Western liberal-democratic powers? Was the fate of the Aboriginals in Australia not what the Germans had in mind for the Poles? What did the French, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch, Americans do in their colonies, and at home? The period of Germany's imperial warmongering, 1870-1945, roughly corresponds with that of the French second colonial Empire, 1870-1960's.

Racial superiority thinking was the norm for all. The Germans, whose colonial empire 'consisted of a single sausage factory in Tanganyika', were exceptional for bringing racial superiority thought to Europe. What Germany learned fighting the Herrero, it brought back home and applied in Europe. Including the wholesale murder of Germans - those first victims of the Nazis.


More briefly, killing all Poles is wrong, killing all native Americans is okay.


There is a moral lesson there. I disagree that it was not learned, or has been brushed aside. The very realisation of it was instrumental in de-colonisation, in the creation of multicultural societies, and in the extention of civil rights in the US and eventually South Africa. (One funny irony is that a lot of people admire the Nazis because they abhor multiculturalism, because they dislike Blacks. Little do they realise that it was the very example of moral bankruptcy of Nazism that created the multicultural society in the West.)

I would agree that this perspective remains underappreciated in any moral narrative of the history of the period. But as so often, once a historical narrative has taken hold, it is nigh impossible to replace. Even serious scholarship often limits itself to dutifully filling in the footnotes.


(One caveat: Nazism, then and now, is founded on the principle of inequality. The nazi can rightfully call out western liberalism for their not living up to their own liberal standards of equality. But nazism glorifies it, whereas liberalism is disgraced by it. Some hypocricy there is, moral equivalence not)

[PanzerJaeger]

My apologies for overlooking this thread.

But that's basically what you're implying by bringing it up - that the US troops committed these crimes voluntarily (which is true) in contrast to the Germans who were forced to (which is false).

I was not implying anything; I was stating facts in order to give the discussion a different dimension. So far, the entirety of the debate has revolved around body counts. Is it not also valid to look at the context in which the atrocities were committed in judging the morality of the soldiers involved? The Japanese and Germans were under very different conditions than the Americans. So, for example, while it is justified to note that the American soldiers did not participate in the kind of government orchestrated genocide that some German soldiers did, it is also justified to note that some American soldiers took it upon themselves to engage in widespread atrocities without any prompting from their government. The point being, moral superiority between the soldiers is illusory.

Additionally, you haven't really shown the scale of the atrocities the US troops committed. You've shown that the Americans killed a lot of surrendering Japanese POWs (I don't think you've given an estimate though) and you've alluded to some rapes. But we can't say for instance whether a majority of US units stationed in the Pacific committed war crimes or not because you haven't really said anything except "the research is there." Give us some links with the parts you think are important quoted for us.

I have posted as much information as I could find from Wikipedia and referred readers to hard copy sources including the US government's own research on the subject and several postwar historians. In the realm of an internet discussion board, I'm not sure what else I can do.

I am not going to repost the entirety of the wikis (they are on page three) but I think these get to the heart of the issue:

U. S. historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in U.S. POW compounds to two key factors: a Japanese reluctance to surrender and a widespread American "conviction that the Japanese were 'animals' or 'subhuman' and unworthy of the normal treatment accorded to POWs."[11] The latter reasoning is supported by Fergusson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians [sic] — as Untermenschen."[12] According to Weingartner, many U.S. troops regarded fighting the Japanese as more like hunting inhuman animals than a war.[11]

The U.S. conviction that the Japanese were subhuman or animals, together with Japanese reluctance to attempt to surrender to allied forces, contributed to the fact that a mere 604 Japanese captives were alive in Allied POW camps by October 1944.

American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard Aldrich, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.[39] Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds."[32] According to Aldrich it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.[40] This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,[41] who also says that, in 1943, "a secret [U. S.] intelligence report noted that only the promise of ice cream and three days leave would ... induce American troops not to kill surrendering Japanese."[42]

Ferguson states such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes,[42] among their own personnel (as these were affecting intelligence gathering) and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead, resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, taking no prisoners was still standard practice among U. S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.

You post implies the Germans showed restriant while being encouraged while the Americans were licking there chops while being restrained

My post only implied that German soldiers and American soldiers were in very different situations, which should be kept in perspective during the discussion. My overarching point throughout this discussion has been that Allied soldiers were not particularly morally superior to those of the Axis. I don't think the German soldiers of the time were any better than their American counterparts, besides, of course, in combat.

And that's why they occurred far less often and far, far less systematically than in the German or Japanese militaries. As you yourself point out.

Less systematically, but less often? Not in the Pacific. And that is at the heart of my point. Axis war crimes were perpetrated within a system that both ordered them and punished those who refused the orders. Allied war crimes emanated from the feelings and beliefs of the soldiers themselves with little encouragement from their leaders. How does that make them particularly morally superior?

Indeed, I agree. Rather, intent is. And the American intent was clearly to limit war crimes as much as possible. German and Japanese intent was to maximize them to the fullest. Need I say more?

You're talking about governments, I'm talking about soldiers. And I would hardly describe the American intent as "clearly to limit war crimes as much as possible". In actuality, throughout much of the war the American military took a laissez-faire approach to war crimes committed in the Pacific, until it was realized that refusing to take prisoners and killing those that were taken damaged intelligence gathering. Morality had nothing to do with their attitude toward the Japanese.

Dude... you're the one claiming the Americans/Allies were just as bad as the Axis. You're the one claiming what Marines did to surrendering Japanese soldiers was just as bad as the Rape of Nanjing. In other words, you're the one trying to generalize. Now you're complaining when we argue on that premise? Come again?

I don't understand how my response about possible motivations for committing atrocities can be construed as a complaint.

...good post...

Interesting observations. It is important to note that Hitler was most likely influenced by, and certainly justified his expansionist policies on, European colonialism and particularly the American extermination of the natives. Lebensraum was very much a 20th century update to American Manifest Destiny.

Doesn't make him any less guilty, but it is worth noting.

[Megas Methuselah]

I disagree that it was not learned, or has been brushed aside.

In many ways, I suppose you're right. Still a long way to go; it's not an easy thing getting an entire race back up on their feet after centuries of genocide, you know? But at least it is happening, little by little, in spite of the mixed messages the provincial and federal governments have been sending.

Anyways, it would seem that Canada is finally getting aboard with that Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Can you imagine it? With this coming by, all sorts of things are possible: for one thing, imagine Canada actually agreeing to a satisfactory reformation of the Indian Act! Within my lifetime, and hopefully with my eager participation, my First Nation(-state) may one day have our right to regulate our citizenship recognized by the Canadian government.

As it stands right now, our citizenship is controlled by that same Indian Act, which is simply some stupid **** Canada pulled out of their ass to control our lives. Imagine how much they'd be laughed at if they came up with something called the "French Act" and told France which Frenchmen were eligible for French citizenship and which weren't (among other things)? I don't see anyone laughing at the Indian Act, though.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I want to echo Louis's post just because I think it really cuts to the heart of the matter. Massacring POWs was discourage by Allied brass and we (as part of the generally liberal West) view it with horror as a shameful act. In contrast, the Wehrmacht atrocities were celebrated by the Nazis and were the whole point of the Nazis and their Wehrmacht henchmen. That's the difference between the Allies and the Axis. There's the superiority.

[Ibrahim]

We are talking about the south not the north. The north was constantly drafting and conscripted soldiers, most southern men signed up right off the bat except for the rich. The men who fought the war for the south were poor Scots-Irish from the Appalachian mountains for the most part.

you are basically correct, but that part is actually misleading: correct, the North did institute the draft (in 1863), and their aggressiveness in pursuing it did cause the draft riots in NYC that year (among other factors), but the way the draft worked was such that only a minority of the soldiers were actually drafted (~6%). here is a source that describes the draft in its basic process.

the south also instituted a draft (in 1862), but also, as in the north, it didn't account for the majority of troops that served.

either way, both armies were mostly-ney, overwhelmingly-manned by volunteers, not draftees.

here is a source with the number I mentioned.

[Furunculus]

anthony beevor on allied war crimes:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...692037,00.html

[PanzerJaeger]

This will certainly be an interesting read, although nothing in the article is particularly new information to those who know the truth. I will be interested in his research on Allied commanders issuing take no prisoners orders. It further deteriorates the standard "random acts of violence" line...

According to the findings of German historian Peter Lieb, many Canadian and American units were given orders on D-Day to take no prisoners. If true, that might help explain the mystery of how only 66 of the 130 Germans the Americans took prisoner on Omaha Beach made it to collecting points for the captured on the beach.

It is also conspicuous that the Allies rarely captured members of the Waffen SS. Was it because the members of this organization -- with its Totenkopf (death's head) insignia -- had sworn allegiance to Hitler until death and often fought to the last man? Or did the Allied propaganda about the SS have its desired effect on soldiers? "Many of them probably deserved to be shot in any case and know it," a British XXX Corps report bluntly stated.

Given the high number of casualties they suffered, Allied paratroopers were particularly determined to exact bloody revenge. Near one village, Audouville-la-Hubert, they massacred 30 captured Wehrmacht soldiers in a single killing spree.

On the beaches, soldiers in an engineering brigade had to protect German prisoners from enraged paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division, who shouted: "Turn those prisoners over to us. Turn them over to us. We know what to do to them."

American troops, literally begging to kill POWs. Where is the moral superiority?

[Vladimir]

American troops, literally begging to kill POWs. Where is the moral superiority?

I'd say it's with the American engineers.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

There's certainly some interesting parallels between that war and the Vietnam War.

• Guerrilla War in Southeast Asia
• Americans + Collaborators vs Revolutionaries
• America Asked by Revolutionaries For Aid Against Colonial Oppressors (Spanish)
• Previous War of Independence Against Said Oppressors
• Similar War Crimes on Both Sides (killing of civilians by Americans, collaborators by Filipinos, the old "bury-them-neck-deep-in-dirt-and-leave-them-for-the-ants" trick)
• Exposure of Brutality of War by American Media
• Anti-war Activism by Well-Known Figures/"Celebrities"
• Ridiculously High Native Casualties (Philippines - up to 1.2 million (~15%), Vietnam - up to 5 million (~12%)

I guess America technically beat the Filipinos, but they had to give up the islands 30 years later.

Actually, Max Boot does lump them into the same category -- small wars -- but uses Vietnam as proof that the USA was able to ignore lots of lessons on how to fight such a war effectively (he notes that Vietnam was not a small war numerically by any means, only its limited war concept).

We conquered Cuba, Peurto Rico, Guam, and the Phillipines. All but Guam were either granted independence or given the option to do so. America's "imperialism" has never really been whole-hearted. Heck, we even paid Mexico for the land we took at the end of that war. I'm sure the Europeans of the time thought we were idiots for buying land that we'd conquered fair and square.


RE: Patton and "take no prisoners"

Sounds like Patton's variant on the "too late chum" rule from WW1. Soldiers throughout history have enforced (informally) variations on that one. Shouldn't have applied to a group who'd already managed to get their surrender accepted, though. Bradley was a straight shooter and wanted that sort of thing stopped. Patton probably couldn't care less save to minimize the potential distraction.


Remember, at its core, there is nothing elegant or particularly noble about war. The basic model of warfare goes back to the bronze age if not earlier: win by any means fair or foul, murder all those capable of bearing arms against you or who are too weak/frail/whatever to sell, then take all their stuff, take all their women, and sell the kids as slaves. Any result that is less brutal reflects some degree of civilization.

[Brenus]

“Where is the moral superiority?” In the fact that it was not an order issued by the President of the United States of America.
Did the engineers give the POW? No soldier of the Wehrmacht would have resisted a SS order…
Question: I thought the101 Airborne was inland (St Marie de la Mer)… How did they arrive on the beaches to ask for the prisoners? It is a long walk...

Now, about the make-no-prisoners things, it is a reality of war that the assault troops don’t do them.
I do remember when in training it was this kind of sentences we were told as you have no time to waste and men to spent for guards…
I know as well it is this kind of things that are said to galvanise the troops, as fixing bayonet…

The difference of PZ example of allies’ war crimes is that they were done during or directly after the battle, and in small scales.
Nothing compare with Oradour Sur Glane where the village was picked at random as the released SS was not able to point out in which of the Oradour he saw armed Partisans…

Now, after a long though I have to say that one PZ argument is quite valid.
The SS and soldiers of the Heer were raised in a universe of violence and des-humanisation of the enemies. So for them, killing was not a problem as such.
An Allies soldiers from Democratic Countries, they knew in theory the right from the wrong…

“Totenkopf (death's head) insignia”: Probably the letters SS did the job as the Skulls and Bones were also on the Tank Crew uniforms, heritage from the Ulhan.
And as Allies Propaganda for the SS, I think the German Propaganda was largely responsible for the well earned reputation of brutality and merciless conduct in war of the SS troops.
So, the SS have only Goebbels and Himmler to blame for the US soldier to know who they were...

[PanzerJaeger]

“Where is the moral superiority?” In the fact that it was not an order issued by the President of the United States of America.

I don't think anyone is claiming that FDR was on the same moral level as Adolf Hitler. The point that I've been making throughout the thread is that the average Allied soldier was not morally superior to his Axis counterpart; and the scale of the crimes is a function of their leadership, not superior ethics. Just as the Germans did, the Allied soldiers had no qualms about following immoral orders, whether they were to drop fire bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent woman and children or to kill POWs; and just as the Japanese engaged in independent horrible acts of savagery that necessitated no orders, so to did the Allied troops in the Pacific.

The illusion of the "Good War" is just that - an illusion. Not even the legacy of the Normandy campaign is safe anymore from the truth about Allied war crimes.

Did the engineers give the POW? No soldier of the Wehrmacht would have resisted a SS order…

Why do you say that? The Waffen SS was subordinated to Wehrmacht commanders throughout most of the war. Such a situation would have depended on the ranking officer, not the branch.

Now, about the make-no-prisoners things, it is a reality of war that the assault troops don’t do them.

Many of the SS were assault troops, as well.

The difference of PZ example of allies’ war crimes is that they were done during or directly after the battle, and in small scales.

It is hard to say that the firebombing of cities was small in scale. And if you put any stock in primary sources, the killing of German POWs was not small scale either.

"I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."

So, the SS have only Goebbels and Himmler to blame for the US soldier to know who they were...

And if they were killed after surrendering, they have no one to blame but their killers.

[Strike For The South]

Amborse Sucks as a historian.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Amborse Sucks as a historian.

Well, quite. He and his family business of plagiarised popular history.

[PanzerJaeger]

Oh I agree. What he did to the legacy of the Fallschirmjäger in his rendition of the battle of Brecourt was nothing short of a travesty.

However, he did conduct thousands of primary source interviews with veterans and I have no reason to doubt his findings. His distortions are in his unwillingness to fact check those findings and his flair for the dramatic, not in the alteration of the interviews themselves. As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.

[Brenus]

“The point that I've been making throughout the thread is that the average Allied soldier was not morally superior to his Axis counterpart”
I would disagree on this part: The average Allied soldier was morally superior to his Axis counterpart, and the scale of the slaughter shows it.
And the fact that the Allis mostly liberated territories, not participating (more or less willingly, I give you this –134,000 Germans arrested by the Gestapo in the first three month of 1944)) in a war of aggression…
I don’t know if the book, Lieutenant de Panzers, from August von Kageneck is translated in English. Read it, and you will see that the average German soldier was aware of what happened in the name of Germany as they witnessed the slaughter from their eyes. Thanks to their officers’ apathy, they didn’t react then participate to it.
“I saw, several times, corps of men with long hair in the ditches. They had been executed. So the German Army was drawn down the rank of witches hunters” (p125).
Here, it is not the result of a revenge due to battle, but the cold blood operation, the same than the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto of Tarnopol (p123) by the SS.

You can gather hundred of case of Germans POW killed by allies’ soldiers. However you hardly find complete Germans villages and populations killed or burned alive by Allied Soldiers, even when the Werewolves tried in vain to conduct a guerrilla war fair. Temptation was there, especially in the French side, but it didn’t happened.

Now, about war veterans (1 on 3) saying they saw somebody else killing at list one prisoner: Absurd.
I interviewed War Veterans of another war (Indochina) and one thing is difficult for them is to admit bad conduct on the field. It took ages that the French acknowledge the fact that in Algeria not only the Paratroopers and the Legion did torture but the Chasseurs Alpins, the usual conscript did it as well…
And having interview war veteran, I can tell you that they tell what you want to heard… This kind of research has to be back up with statistic, and graves…

“And if they were killed after surrendering, they have no one to blame but their killers” and the fact they were in political units supporting a racist ideology that told the world they will give no mercy and expect none…

“As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.” Not in you want to sell nowadays.

“Just as the Germans did, the Allied soldiers had no qualms about following immoral orders, whether they were to drop fire bombs on hundreds of thousands of innocent woman and children or to kill POWs”
Do you have the proof that the killed POW in following orders? No, because it was none.
We have the document signed by Hitler ad the OKW, we have the speeches from Himmler, Goebbels, Hitler, Goering and all the others.

And about the killing of innocent by bombing, it was a war that the German started (and the Italians as my grand mother would have testified being under their bombs).
And it was a war that the German innocent population loved, until they realised too late the surge was turning…

“We fought hard, meter per meter, for nothing, no even not honour.
For which honour would we be able to fight for? For the honour of the SS who took refuge, like us, in this hiding place, and executed the last prisoners? For the honour of a German Army that blindly serve the will of the criminal fool who yet prepared in his bunker in Berlin his suicide-escape? For the honour of a Regime we all desired but we ignored the sinister goals? For the honour of the Flag, but which one? We had none from long time ago.” P 180

[Louis VI the Fat]

“As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.” Not in you want to sell nowadays.



And it was a war that the German innocent population loved, until they realised too late the surge was turning…



“We fought hard, meter per meter, for nothing, no even not honour.
For which honour would we be able to fight for? For the honour of the SS who took refuge, like us, in this hiding place, and executed the last prisoners? For the honour of a German Army that blindly serve the will of the criminal fool who yet prepared in his bunker in Berlin his suicide-escape? For the honour of a Regime we all desired but we ignored the sinister goals? For the honour of the Flag, but which one? We had none from long time ago.” P 180

Sad truths, all three statements above.


I couldn't say which of the three I find most frustrating...

[Pannonian]

The difference of PZ example of allies’ war crimes is that they were done during or directly after the battle, and in small scales.
Nothing compare with Oradour Sur Glane where the village was picked at random as the released SS was not able to point out in which of the Oradour he saw armed Partisans…

It says much that Oradour Sur Glane was but a minor incident in the overall picture of German atrocities. For the western armies, an incident like that would be a major cause for shame, and a permanent black mark on their military. For the Germans, an entire village, men, women, elderly, children, all massacred, mown down in a building or locked in a church and burned to death, is but another small detail in the devastation of Europe and the systematic extermination of certain of its peoples. Not even the most murderous of ancient civilisations ever got close to the levsls of barbarity which the Germans and Japanese set in WW2.

[PanzerJaeger]

I would disagree on this part: The average Allied soldier was morally superior to his Axis counterpart, and the scale of the slaughter shows it.

This is where it gets tricky. For example, the biggest indictment against Germany is certainly the concentration camp system, yet only an extraordinarily tiny percentage of German soldiers actually had anything to do with them. IIRC, Treblinka, the site of the killing of nearly 1,000,000 people, was operated by no more than 25 SS officers and 100 guards of mixed nationality. What people often fail to realize is just how few people it took to kill so many, and how much of an effort the Nazis made to hide what they were doing.

I don’t know if the book, Lieutenant de Panzers, from August von Kageneck is translated in English. Read it, and you will see that the average German soldier was aware of what happened in the name of Germany as they witnessed the slaughter from their eyes. Thanks to their officers’ apathy, they didn’t react then participate to it.
“I saw, several times, corps of men with long hair in the ditches. They had been executed. So the German Army was drawn down the rank of witches hunters” (p125).
Here, it is not the result of a revenge due to battle, but the cold blood operation, the same than the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto of Tarnopol (p123) by the SS.

I appreciate the depth such anecdotal commentary brings to the discussion, but I'm not sure it makes much of a point. I can produce accounts of Allied soldiers witnessing Allied crimes.

You can gather hundred of case of Germans POW killed by allies’ soldiers. However you hardly find complete Germans villages and populations killed or burned alive by Allied Soldiers, even when the Werewolves tried in vain to conduct a guerrilla war fair. Temptation was there, especially in the French side, but it didn’t happened.

You can certainly find plenty of German villages and populations killed by Allied soldiers. Think about that.

Now, about war veterans (1 on 3) saying they saw somebody else killing at list one prisoner: Absurd.
“As an Allied cheerleader, he would be more prone to downplay Allied war crimes.” Not in you want to sell nowadays.

That would apply to someone like James Bacque, but Ambrose is on the other end of the spectrum. He made his living glorifying Allied soldiers, so I'm not sure what he would gain from falsifying such a claim - which leads me to believe there may be some merit to it.

Do you have the proof that the killed POW in following orders? No, because it was none.

Well, such a case was the genesis of this thread. Another example would be Major-General Raymond Hufft, who admitted to ordering his troops to take no prisoners during the crossing of the Rhine. That wasn't very hard.

And about the killing of innocent by bombing, it was a war that the German started (and the Italians as my grand mother would have testified being under their bombs).

And that gave the Allies carte blanche to dump millions of tonnes of bombs on civilian centers with the intent of killing and terrorizing as many as possible? Again, where is the moral superiority in that?

It says much that Oradour Sur Glane was but a minor incident in the overall picture of German atrocities. For the western armies, an incident like that would be a major cause for shame, and a permanent black mark on their military. For the Germans, an entire village, men, women, elderly, children, all massacred, mown down in a building or locked in a church and burned to death, is but another small detail in the devastation of Europe and the systematic extermination of certain of its peoples.

It must require some great measure of cognitive dissonance to highlight with such righteous indignation an incidence of a church with people inside being burned down to show how horrible the German soldiers were, considering the Allies burned down entire cities full of people with the expressed purpose of inflicting terror and death on the civilians inside.

The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated as the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories.

Not even the most murderous of ancient civilisations ever got close to the levsls of barbarity which the Germans and Japanese set in WW2.

That is, of course, patently false. Ethnic cleansing has been around as long as humanity has. Ironically, the earliest genocide that comes to my mind was committed by the Jews.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

For example, the biggest indictment against Germany is certainly the concentration camp system

Not the race war on the Russian front?

[Cyclops]

Excellent thread, well argued with reference to sources, its very stimulating to see.

I'd observe war is all hell as W. Tecumseh Sherman said. You start groups of people killing and tell them to stop at certain arbitrary points. Its all horrible.

As an Australian I was raised with the view "we were good and they were bad" whoever they were. Japanese "revisionism" is still derided, Italian cowardice is a byword and WW2 is seen in clear terms of good vs evil. In fact WW1 is still largely seen as good vs evil (yay the justice of Aussies attacking Turks so the Romanovs can rule Greece...wtf?).

A mate of mine met an old German Wehrmacht veteran OS and they chatted (he had broken english) about his serrvice in WW2 and the german was not impressed that my mate was Aussie. We, like our American allies, have a reputation for shooting prisoners. I suspect it stems from our distance from the formal military traditions of the continent. A French or German soldier might expect "one fights hard but when the opponent raises the white flag then the rules of war apply", whereas I can easily imagine an Aussie thinking "ten seconds ago that Jap/Kraut/Turk was machine gunning my mates so cop this". Thats a war crime and I'm sure we are as guilty of it as any other country-in fact more guilty of it than countries with a more formal military tradition.

On the matter of "reputation" the Australians copped some blame for disorder in Singapore and later a lot of rape in Japan. I read (but where is the source? can't recall) an English journalist's diary recording he heard the screams of Japanese women in an occupied town in Japan in 1945 as the Australian occupation troops headed out for an evenings "recreation": the editor noted the date was a month before any Australians arrived in Japan, so it appears some Englishmen were in the habit of blaming British crimes on wild colonials.

Its very shameful to contemplate the alleged cowardice and disorder of Australians at Singapore (specifically deserters throwing women off escaping ships at gunpoint) but most likely it happened and AFAIK we downplay or deflect it in our histories, refuse to aknowledge it or punish the offenders. I actually find it hard to type that last sentence.

As losers the Germans and Japanese and Italians will never receive justice for crimes committed against them in WW2, crimes my country either participated in or applauded eg bombing civilian targets.

I understand Japanese reluctance to accept the western version of WW2 where our crimes are left out: they most likely think why shouldn't they whitewash if we do (and I think we do at least to some extent). I think our American allies do the same, for the same reasons we do.

Germans (writers, historians, tourists I have met, my friends GF) seem to take a great deal more responsibility for their nation's actions in war than any other example I can think of. They are a leading european culture, a major force of western civilisation so their crimes seem more shocking somehow.

The episode of Nazi rule is a lesson to any country that the fall from civilisation to mass murder is a very quick one. All you need are unscrupulous leaders, an economic crisis and an atmosphere of terror.

[drone]

This is where it gets tricky. For example, the biggest indictment against Germany is certainly the concentration camp system, yet only an extraordinarily tiny percentage of German soldiers actually had anything to do with them. IIRC, Treblinka, the site of the killing of nearly 1,000,000 people, was operated by no more than 25 SS officers and 100 guards of mixed nationality. What people often fail to realize is just how few people it took to kill so many, and how much of an effort the Nazis made to hide what they were doing.

So few at the tail end of the disassembly line, but so many more dealing with the infrastructure. The Economic and Administrative Department, General Government, RSHA, various corporations, etc. It takes a lot of logistical planning, organization, and manpower to round up, rob, transfer, rob more invasively, temporarily house, kill (outright, or through starvation/overwork), and dispose of a few million people.

And that gave the Allies carte blanche to dump bombs on civilian centers with the intent of killing and terrorizing many as possible? Again, where is the moral superiority in that?

No, I think the Blitz did that.

Not the race war on the Russian front?

Shhhhh. The godless commies don't count, even the planned extermination via starvation of about 25 million of them. And since they only accomplished about half that, it counts as a failure and doesn't advance the notion of German efficiency. No one must know.

On-topic, for the most part PJ has been arguing that US troops treated Axis troops about the same as the other way around. Probably a fair assessment at the individual level, but I think his moral equivalency argument falls apart due to the treatment of civilians by the armed forces, as well as the organizational acceptance of the war crimes. I'm more interested in this aspect.

[PanzerJaeger]

Not the race war on the Russian front?

You mean the race war inspired in part by America's actions against the indians and British and French colonial policies?

So few at the tail end of the disassembly line, but so many more dealing with the infrastructure. The Economic and Administrative Department, General Government, RSHA, various corporations, etc. It takes a lot of logistical planning, organization, and manpower to round up, rob, transfer, rob more invasively, temporarily house, kill (outright, or through starvation/overwork), and dispose of a few million people.

I think you have to use a bit more specificity when dealing with crimes of such magnitude. Lots of perceived enemies were rounded up and sent to camps during WW2 in both Germany and the US by soldiers who had no real idea what would happen to them and probably didn't care. It was war and they were the enemy. But can you then say that the German private at the beginning of the disassembly line was complicit in the murder of those people? Unknowingly, yes. But there is a reason so few Germans actually spent time at the death camps and why the Nazis made such efforts to keep the final part of the final solution a secret. While standing idly by as the government rounds up your fellow citizens and ships them off to camps during wartime in the name of final victory is certainly immoral (although by that point the Nazis had unquestioned control of the country), it is on a completely different moral level than willfully supporting the gassing of said fellow citizens.

No, I think the Blitz did that.

I think we may have different definitions of moral superiority. To me, moral superiority is not responding to immoral behavior in kind (or in a far greater magnitude). That would be... moral equivalency.

Shhhhh. The godless commies don't count, even the planned extermination via starvation of about 25 million of them. And since they only accomplished about half that, it counts as a failure and doesn't advance the notion of German efficiency. No one must know.

The Allies certainly weren’t above forced starvation of POWs. But really, all mocking aside, your statement highlights the point I was making above. German food policy was planned at the highest levels of the Nazi regime. How many German soldiers knew Germany was intentionally thinning out Soviet POWs through starvation and how many simply thought the dangerously thin food rations simply weren’t enough to go around? (they weren’t) And how many on the front lines had any real knowledge of what was going on in the POW camps at all?

Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of German soldiers were involved in war crimes against Russian POWs. It was a barbaric war on both sides. My point is that when generalized statements attributing things to a collective group are more deeply analyzed, often the reality turns out to be different than what was presented. The knowledge and complicity in Nazi war crimes deviated greatly among German soldiers and the German people, but it is a fundamental misconception to assume that the vast majority of Germans had full knowledge of and supported the worst of those policies. There was no free press, no internet, no real way of knowing the full extent of what the government was doing other than what the government told them.

On-topic, for the most part PJ has been arguing that US troops treated Axis troops about the same as the other way around. Probably a fair assessment at the individual level, but I think his moral equivalency argument falls apart due to the treatment of civilians by the armed forces, as well as the organizational acceptance of the war crimes. I'm more interested in this aspect.

Again, I do not understand how one can favorably compare the Allies to the Axis based on their treatment of civilians. There is no question that the massive bombing of German cities was a war crime of epic magnitude. The commander of the Royal Air Force himself stated that the bombing of cities was an intentional targeting of German civilians meant to kill and terrorize as many as possible, not collateral damage from targeting military facilities. Unlike the Holocaust, for example, this widespread, targeted killing of civilians was widely known, accepted, and even celebrated throughout the Allied armed forces and greater populations. They even made movies celebrating the heroics of dropping bombs on defenseless civilians.

The only valid argument supporting your point I have seen in this thread is based on scale. There is certainly no doubt that the scale of Axis crimes was greater than those of the Allies – although not by as much as some here seem to believe.

However, as I’ve said before, I’m just not convinced that scale has as much weight as some here would like. Once the collective group accepts and even celebrates the intentional killing of civilians, does it matter how big the final body count turns out to be from a moral perspective? Does murdering 5 people make one morally superior to someone who murdered 10?

I just don’t view the morality of mass killing as a sliding scale. I see it more as two pieces of land separated by a river and connected by a bridge. Once you cross that bridge, once you knowingly accept that your government is killing innocent people in your name, the body count is just a sad function of the means and length of the killing.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I think we may have different definitions of moral superiority. To me, moral superiority is not responding to immoral behavior in kind (or in a far greater magnitude). That would be... moral equivalency.


Again, I do not understand how one can favorably compare the Allies to the Axis based on their treatment of civilians. There is no question that the massive bombing of German cities was a war crime of epic magnitude. The commander of the Royal Air Force himself stated that the bombing of cities was an intentional targeting of German civilians meant to kill and terrorize as many as possible, not collateral damage from targeting military facilities.

No, moral equivalence would have been for the allies to stand by and do nothing, instead of stopping these murderers with the means the allies had at their dosposal.



The total civilian victims of the allied bombings stands at some 300/600k Germans. About the number of what the Germans managed in murdered citizens in their best months. The overwhelming amount of bombs were dropped in 1944, when the scale of the German atrocities had become clear.

Total number for Japan is some 300/500k. Again, overwhelmingly in 1944/5.

[Louis VI the Fat]

http://en.allexperts.com/e/h/hi/hist...tionism%29.htm