War loot refers to goods, valuables and property obtained by force from their lawful owners via looting during or after warfare. These "spoils of war" differ from tributes, war reparations, or other payments extracted after the fact by a victorious nation in that their extraction is largely arbitrary and immediate, being administered by the armed forces themselves rather than by treaty or agreement between the parties involved.
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Looting by a victorious army during war has been common practice throughout recorded history. For foot soldiers, it was viewed as a way to supplement their often meagre income[1] and was part of the celebration of victory. On higher levels, the proud exhibition of loot was an integral part of the typical Roman triumph and Genghis Khan was not unusual in proclaiming that:
| “ | The greatest happiness was to vanquish, devastate and rob one's enemies.[2] | ” |
In warfare in ancient times, the spoils of war included the defeated populations, which were often enslaved, and the women and children, who were often absorbed into the victorious country's population[3][4]. In other pre-modern societies, objects made of precious metals were the preferred target of war looting, largely because of their easy portability. In many cases looting was an opportunity to obtain treasures that otherwise would not have been obtainable. Since the 18th century, works of art have increasingly become a popular target. In the 1930s and even more so during World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in large scale and organized looting of art and property.[5]
Looting, combined with poor military discipline, has occasionally been an army's downfall. In other cases, for example the Wahhabi sack of Karbala, loot has financed further victories.[6] Not all looters in wartime are conquerors; the looting of Vistula Land by its retreating defenders in 1915[7] was among the factors sapping the loyalty of Poland in World War I. Local civilians can also take advantage of a breakdown of authority to loot public and private property, such as took place at the National Museum of Iraq in the course of the Iraq War in 2003.[8]
In modern times attitudes changed and laws of war gradually came to apply to loot. Economic devastation, including that caused by the Thirty Years' War encouraged the trend. Official looters accordingly became less boastful of their plunder but rather offered euphemisms and excuses; the Siege of Jaffa was one of the last prominent occasions of a Western commander brazenly encouraging rapine and wanton destruction in a captured city.
The Hague Convention of 1899 (modified in 1954)[9] and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949;[10] the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in Event of an Armed Conflict obliges military forces not only to avoid destruction of such property, but to provide protection to it;[9] and the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War prohibits looting of civilian property.[10] Theoretically, to prevent such looting, unclaimed property is moved to the custody of the Custodian of Enemy Property, to be handled until the return to its owner.