German war crimes
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Germany committed war crimes in both World War I and World War II. The most notable of these is the Holocaust, where millions of people, of which 43% (6 million out of 14 million[citation needed]) were Jews, were murdered. However, millions also died as a result of other German actions in those two conflicts.
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[edit] Pre World War I
[edit] World War I
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According to the Schlieffen plan, the German Army needed a quick victory in the West (as in 1870, and again in 1940), before engaging the Russian Empire in the East. The price for this was an attack on neutral Belgium, which, in connection with reports about alleged German atrocities, caused anti-German sentiment in many countries.
The Great War is possibly the first occasion in which the question of misbehaviour by one of the combatants became a significant political issue, an issue deeply tied up with the emergence of propaganda as a weapon, more effective, in its own way, than guns and bombs. Indeed, the British might have been said to have been carried into the war on a wave of propaganda, centering on the rape of 'Gallant little Belgium.' As practitioners of the new art they were far more adept than the Germans, and this weapon was to be used time and again to explain Prussian barbarism, from the execution of Edith Cavell and the sinking of the Lusitania. Whereas the early campaign had been for the consumption of a domestic audience, later activities were aimed at influencing public opinion in the United States. Many of the main accusations against the "Huns" were summarized in The Bryce Report of 1915. As a political tactic the whole thing was quite masterly, later earning the respect of Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.[citation needed]
It was only after the war that doubts began to set in; and, as the attitude towards Germany began to change in the inter-war period, many of the accusations were considered to be outright fabrications, including arguably the most infamous of all, the alleged crucifixion of a Canadian soldier by the name of Harry Band. In Britain a strong pacifist mood took shape in the 1920s, which argued that 'atrocity propaganda', as it was called, had been used to manipulate people into supporting the mass slaughter on the Western Front. A classic example of this is Falsehood in Warfare by Arthur Ponsonby, published in 1928. In Germany, a commission set up by the Reichstag to examine the issue, published a report in 1927, denying that any atrocities had ever taken place. And so the matter passed into popular consciousness, making it difficult to get people in the Allied nations to accept the truth of the stories that filtered through from occupied Europe during the Second World War.[citation needed]
Regardless, the Rape of Belgium was not just fabrication, propaganda and lies, as the Germans tacitly admitted themselves in the White Book of 1915, which justified actions in Belgium against what was described as Francs-tireurs, alleged irregular forces. The simple fact is that Belgian resistance was tougher, and more prolonged, than the Germans had expected. The invading army became ever more anxious as it advanced, often attributing enemy fire to civilian irregulars. Because of this they began to take pre-emptive measures against an imaginary enemy. Civilians were shot on suspicion alone. The Kaiser himself justified the actions of his troops in a note to Woodrow Wilson of September 1914, "My generals were finally compelled to take the most drastic measures in order to punish the guilty and to frighten the blood-thirsty population from continuing their work of vile murder and horror."[citation needed]
Over 6000 Belgian civilians were shot, sometimes in large groups by machine gun, in a brief ten-day period during the second half of August 1914. Whole villages were destroyed. In Louvain alone 248 people were killed by nervous German soldiers, convinced that they faced a civilian uprising. On the basis of these very real incidents it became possible to weave stories of mass rape and mutilation; of murdered nuns and disfigured children. Allied propaganda, in other words, may have exaggerated, but it was not without substance.[citation needed]
[edit] World War II
- The Holocaust of the Jews, the Action T-4 killing of the disabled and the Porajomas of the Gypsies. Not all the crimes committed during the Holocaust and similar mass atrocities were war crimes. Telford Taylor (The U.S. prosecutor in the German High Command case at the Nuremberg Trials and Chief Counsel for the twelve trials before the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals) explained in 1982:
it should be noted that, as far as wartime actions against enemy nationals are concerned, the [1948] Genocide Convention added virtually nothing to what was already covered (and had been since the Hague Convention of 1899) by the internationally accepted laws of land warfare, which require an occupying power to respect "family honors and rights, individual lives and private property, as well as religious convictions and liberty" of the enemy nationals. But the laws of war do not cover, in time of either war or peace, a government's actions against its own nationals (such as Nazi Germany's persecution of German Jews). And at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the tribunals rebuffed several efforts by the prosecution to bring such "domestic" atrocities within the scope of international law as "crimes against humanity."
—Telford Taylor [1]
- Invasion of Poland, in the period of 1st September- 25th October 1939 German Wehrmacht during its military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombed hospitals, murdered civilians, shot refugees, executed wounded soldiers. The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered victims [1]
- Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland, during the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers
- Le Paradis massacre, May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein tried, found guilty and hanged.
- Wormhoudt massacre, May 1940, British and French soldiers captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
- Vinkt Massacre
- d'Ardenne Massacres, June 1944 Canadian soldiers captured by the SS and Murdered by 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) sentenced to be shot 1946; sentence commuted; released 1954
- Malmedy massacre, December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside of Malmedy, Belgium.
- Gardelegen (war crime)
- Marzabotto massacre
- Sant'Anna di Stazzema
- Cefalonia Massacre
- Oradour-sur-Glane
- The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice
- Massacre of Kalavryta
- The treatment of Soviet POWs throughout the war, who were not given the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention
- Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping.
- The intentional destruction of major medieval churches of Novgorod, of monasteries in the Moscow region (e.g., of New Jerusalem Monastery) and of the imperial palaces around St. Petersburg (many of them were left by the post-war authorities in ruins or simply demolished).
- The campaign of extermination of Slavic population in the occupied territories. Several thousand villages were burned with their entire population (e.g., Khatyn massacre in Belarus). Every fourth inhabitant of Belarus did not survive the German occupation.
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[edit] German acknowledgment of war crimes
[edit] World War I
The Germans had to accept the Treaty of Versailles which outlined many clauses the main being the fact that the Germans had to take the guilt for causing the war and pay out 6,6 billion in ramifications for its damages.
[edit] World War II
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Germany's response to its war crimes has been largely lauded by the former Allies. The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany until 1990) offered official apologies for Germany's role in the Holocaust. Additionally, German leaders have continuously expressed repentance, most notably when former Chancellor Willy Brandt fell on his knees in front of a Holocaust memorial in the Warsaw Ghetto, also known as the Warschauer Kniefall in 1970. Germany has also paid extensive reparations, including nearly $70 billion to the state of Israel. It has given $15 billion to Holocaust survivors and will continue to compensate them until 2015. Additionally, the government of Germany coordinated an effort to reach a settlement with German companies that had used slave labor during the war; the companies will pay $1.7 billion to victims. Germany also established a National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Berlin for looted property.[citation needed]
Germany's treatment of war criminals and war crimes has also met with approval. Germany helped track down war criminals for the Nuremberg Trials and opened its wartime archives to researchers and investigators. Additionally, Germany verified over 60,000 names of war criminals for the U.S. Department of Justice to prevent them from entering the United States and provided similar information to Canada and the United Kingdom. On the other hand numerous war criminals were never brought to justice and lived their lives as respected citizens and even state officials, despite numerous pleas for their extradition or trial, stated by countries invaded by Germany. For instance, this was the case of Heinz Reinefarth and Erich von dem Bach, each of them responsible for death of dozens of thousands of civilians in Poland and the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
The German education system focuses on teaching about the Holocaust and the Third Reich and denounces the crimes committed during World War II. Additionally, German legislation outlaws Nazi works like Mein Kampf and makes Holocaust denial a criminal offence. Furthermore, even other symbols of Nazism, like the Swastika and so-called "Hitler Salute", are illegal in Germany.
However, Germany is still criticized by some regarding its response. The German government never apologized for the invasions or took responsibility for World War II. Poland still insists that Germany must offer an apology for the suffering of its people during the war. Additionally, the emphasis for blame is often placed on individuals like Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party instead of the government itself, so no restitution has been made to any other national government by Germany. Even after German reunification in 1990, Germany rejected claims to reparations made by Britain and France, insisting that all reparations had already been resolved. Additionally, Germany has been criticized for waiting too long to seek out and return looted property, some of which is still missing and possibly hidden within Germany. Germany has also had trouble dealing with stolen property in private hands because of the need to compensate the owners.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
- Bombing of Guernica
- The Holocaust
- Soviet war crimes
- Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles
- List of Axis war criminals
- World War II atrocities in Poland
- Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany
- Consequences of German Nazism
- Allied war crimes during World War II
- Command responsibility
- Italian war crimes
- Japanese war crimes
- Babi Yar
- Generalplan Ost
- Einsatzgruppen
- List of war crimes
- Nazi Germany
- War crimes of the Wehrmacht
- Occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany
- Pacification operations in German-occupied Poland
- German concentration camps
[edit] References and notes
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2007) |
- ^ Telford Taylor "When people kill a people" in The New York Times, March 28, 1982
