German war crimes

The government of Germany ordered, organized and condoned several war crimes in both World War I and World War II. The most notable of these is the Holocaust in which millions of people were murdered or died from abuse and neglect, 60% of them (approximately 6 million out of 10 million) Jews. However, millions also died as a result of other German actions in those two conflicts.

Contents

World War I

Rape of Belgium

Bombardment of English coastal towns

Main article: Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby

The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, which took place on December 16, 1914, was an attack by the German navy on the British seaport towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, West Hartlepool, and Whitby. The attack resulted in 137 fatalities and 592 casualties. The raid was as a violation of the 1907 Hague Convention provisions that prohibited naval bombardments of undefended towns without warning, because only Hartlepool was protected by shore batteries.[1] Germany was a signatory of the Hague Convention.[2] Another attack followed on 26 April 1916 on the coastal towns of Yarmouth and Lowestoft but both were important naval bases and defended by shore batteries. .

Unrestricted submarine warfare

Main article: U-boat Campaign (World War I)

Unrestricted submarine warfare was instituted in 1915 in response to the British blockade of Germany in the North Sea. Prize rules, which were codified under the 1907 Hague Convention—such as those that required commerce raiders to warn their targets and allow time for the crew to board lifeboats—were disregarded and commercial vessels were sunk regardless of nationality, cargo, or destination. Following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 and subsequent public outcry in various neutral countries, including the United States, the practice was withdrawn.

Attempts to destroy evidence of German crimes

During World War II, after occupying France, Nazis seized Allied documentation regarding German war crimes in World War I and destroyed monuments commemorating them[3]

World War II

Main articles: War crimes of the Wehrmacht and Consequences of German Nazism
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[4]

Nazi concentration camps

After 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps increasingly became places where the enemies of the Nazis were enslaved, starved, tortured and killed.[5] During the War concentration camps for “undesirables” spread throughout Europe. New camps were created near centers of dense “undesirable” populations, often focusing on areas with large communities of Jews, Poles, Communists or Roma. Since millions of Jews lived in pre-war Poland, most camps were located in the area of General Government in occupied Poland for logistical reasons. It also allowed the Nazis to transport the German Jews outside of the German main territory.

Notorious war criminals

Notorious massacres & war crimes of WWII (sorted by location)

Austria

Belarus

1941

1942

1943

1944

Belgium

Estonia

1941

1942

France

1944

Germany

1945

Greece

1943

1944

Italy

1944

Latvia

1941

Lithuania

1941

Netherlands

1944

Norway

Poland

Main articles: World War II crimes in Poland and Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles

1942

1943

1944

Russia

Serbia

1941

Ukraine

1941

1943

1944

Sources

Notes

This article incorporates text from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and has been released under the GFDL.

See also

References

  1. ^ Chuter, David (2003). War Crimes: Confronting Atrocity in the Modern World. London: Lynne Rienner Pub. pp. 300. ISBN 158826209X. 
  2. ^ Willmore, John (1918). The great crime and its moral. New York: Doran. pp. 340. 
  3. ^ France: the dark years, 1940-1944 page 273 Julian Jackson Oxford University Press 2003
  4. ^ Telford Taylor "When people kill a people" in The New York Times, March 28, 1982
  5. ^ CNN - Army to honor soldiers enslaved by Nazis
  6. ^ Complete tabulation of executions carried out in the Einsatzkommando 3 zone up to 1 December 1941
  7. ^ Gesamtaufstellung der im Bereich des EK. 3 bis zum 1. Dez. 1941 durchgeführten Exekutionen
  8. ^ Muzeum Powstania otwarte, BBC Polish edition, 2 October 2004, Children accessed on 13 April 2007
  9. ^ O Powstaniu Warszawskim opowiada prof. Jerzy Kłoczowski, Gazeta Wyborcza – local Warsaw edition, 1998-08-01. Children accessed on 13 April 2007

Further reading

External links