Allied war crimes during World War II

There are many reported war crimes involving Allied military forces in World War II. The armed forces of the Soviet Union, in particular, engaged in the mass killing, deportation, forced labour and mistreatment of prisoners of war and civilians, as well as mass rapes and widespread looting in occupied territories. War crimes were also committed by British, American and other Allied forces, but not on the same scale as those of the Axis powers and the Soviet Union.^[1] There has been continued debate over whether the British and American strategic bombing campaigns, in which an estimated 800,000 civilians were killed, were war crimes.^{[1][2]: 4–5}

After the war, many trials of Axis war criminals took place, most famously, the Nuremberg trials and Tokyo Trials. The Western Allies prosecuted a number of war crimes committed by their own forces, but Allied war crimes were not prosecuted by the post-war international military tribunals.

In the 21st century, historians and other commentators have paid more attention to Allied war crimes, while warning against arguments suggesting a "moral equivalence" between the actions of the Allies and the crimes of the Axis powers.

The military of the major Western Allies – the UK, France and United States – were directed to adhere to the Hague Conventions and Geneva Conventions. The Soviet Union had not signed these conventions.^[1][3] In August 1945, the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) defined war crimes as any violation of the customs of war including the deportation, murder or mistreatment of civilians and prisoners of war (POWS) and any plunder or wanton destruction of property or human settlements not justified by military necessity. The IMT charter also defined crimes against humanity to include the extermination, enslavement, deportation, persecution or inhumane treatment of civilians.^{[4]: 200–201}

War crimes were committed by the Western Allied powers, but not on the same scale as those of the Axis powers and the Soviet Union.^{[1][4]: 4–5} The Western Allies prosecuted a number of war crimes committed by their own forces, but Allied war crimes were not prosecuted by the post-war international military tribunals.^{[1][5]: 445–446, 671–672}

Allied soldiers in all theatres sometimes killed enemy soldiers who were attempting to surrender or after they had surrendered. This was particularly common in the Eastern Front and Asia-Pacific theatre.^[6][1] Historian John W. Dower write that while it was "not official policy" for Allied personnel to take no POWs, "over wide reaches of the Asian battleground it was everyday practice".^[7]

There has been continued debate over whether the area bombing of cities in Germany and Japan and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes.^{[1][2]: 1–2} Although there was no international treaty or customary law at the time specifically prohibiting the aerial bombardment of civilians, there were general principles of international law which might have applied.^{[8][9]: 211–212} Philosopher Douglas P. Lackey argues that the Hague Conventions, which restricted artillery bombardment of undefended cities, could be applied by analogy to aerial bombardment.^[10] Grayling, however, states that "any competent lawyer could easily defend the area-bombing campaign against imputations of having violated its provisions." ^{[11]: 194–196} Eric Markusen and David Kopf argue that the Allied strategic bombing met the IMT definitions of both war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, the issue was not considered at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crime trials.^[12]

A. C. Grayling writes that the unclear legal position means that arguments over the Allied bombing of civilians often concern ethical issues. Critics of area bombing have argued that deliberate attacks on civilian populations are a moral crime, whereas defenders of Allied area bombing often argue that it was a military necessity in a total war where the distinction between the enemy military and civilians aiding the war effort was blurred.^{[13]: 4, 135}

The Soviet Union was responsible for imprisoning, deporting and often massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians and POWs from occupied or annexed territories.^[14][15] This included the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in 1940^{[16][17][18][19]: 20–23, 39–41} and the Gegenmiao massacre of over 1,000 Japanese women and children in 1945.^[20]

The Soviet Union inflicted high death rates on POWs through executions, starvation, forced labour and other mistreatment. The mistreatment of prisoners was common on the Eastern front partly because the Soviet Union had not ratified the Geneva Convention on treatment of POWs, and Germany regarded itself as exempt from the convention on that front.^[21] Nevertheless, the Nuremberg Tribunal held that the Hague Conventions and other customary laws of war were binding on all belligerents.^{[22][23][19]: 39}

About a third of Germans taken prisoner by the Soviet Union died in captivity. In comparison, The mortality rate of German and Japanese prisoners of the Western allies was 1 to 2 per cent.^[24][25] Up to 250,000 Japanese prisoners of the Soviet Union died in captivity after the Japanese surrender in August 1945.^[26]: 10

The Soviet Union made extensive use of forced labour of foreign civilians and POWs. Those civilians and POWs from Soviet-occupied territories who were deported to the Soviet Union were usually imprisoned in the Soviet forced labour camps, known as the gulag.^[14] Between 200,000 and one million Soviet POWs and civilians repatriated from German camps were also sent to the gulag as alleged Axis collaborators^[27][21] where many died from malnutrition, the harsh climate and overwork.^[28][14]

Soviet soldiers also committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially Germany.^[29][30] Antony Beevor describes the Soviet rape of German women during the occupation of Germany as the "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history", and has estimated that at least 1.4 million women were raped in East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia alone. He writes that Soviet women and girls liberated from slave labour in Germany were also violated.^[31] Soviet premier Joseph Stalin refused to punish the offenders.^[32]

The expulsion of 12 million to 14 million ethnic Germans from Soviet occupied territories is estimated to have caused between 500,000 and 2 million deaths from 1944 to 1946.^{[33]: 484–485}

In June 1938, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, stated that the bombing of civilians was contrary to international law. In the early years of the war, Britain's policy was to restrict aerial bombing to military targets.^[34]: 210 In February 1942, Britain adopted a policy of area bombing aimed at undermining the morale of enemy civilians, which the head of RAF Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, later stated was not contrary to international law.^{[34]: 210–211} Although Britain's area bombing of German cities, including the bombing of Dresden (which killed at least 25,000 people), is sometimes considered a war crime,^[35] the legality of aerial bombing of civilian areas was unclear at the time.^{[36][34]: 194–197}

On 4 May 1940, in response to Germany's intensive unrestricted submarine warfare, the British Admiralty announced that all vessels in the Skagerrak were to be sunk on sight. This commenced Britain's unrestricted naval warfare campaign. Sociologist Nachman Ben-Yehuda argues this was contrary to the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty and other relevant international law at the time.^[37]

Historian Alfred de Zayas writes that while it was British policy to rescue shipwreck survivors, German military documents provide credible evidence that the Royal Navy and Royal Airforce sometimes fired on survivors after the sinking of German vessels.^{[38]: 245–259} In July 1941, the submarine commander Anthony Miers of HMS Torbay twice ordered his crew to kill enemy shipwreck survivors in the Mediterranean. Historian Jürgen Rohwer calls this "the only instance of a war crime committed by a British submarine commander."^[39]: 84 Miers was reprimanded but later was awarded the Victoria Cross and promoted to admiral.^{[40][41]: 671–672}

Britain refused to recognise small hospital ships and often attacked them. They also refused to recognise hospital ships which they believed were used for military purposes in contravention of the Hague Convention. By May 1943, Britain had attacked nine German and 10 Italian hospital ships.^[42]: 262 On 12 September 1942, the Italian hospital ship Arno was sunk by RAF torpedo bombers off Tobruk. On 1 December, the British sank another Italian hospital ship, the Città di Tapani. The sinkings followed British intercepts of German coded messages showing that the ships were carrying military supplies in contravention of the Hague Conventions.^{[39]: 192, 194, 214 [43]: 556}

On 18 November 1944, the German hospital ship Tübingen was sunk by two Beaufighter bombers off Pola, in the Adriatic Sea. Four crewmembers were killed and 16 wounded. A German military investigation concluded that the sinking was a war crime. A British investigation found that the ship was attacked in error. There was no official order to attack the ship and British policy was not to attack red cross vehicles and vessels.^{[44]: 263–268}

On the Western Front from June 1944 to May 1945, there were numerous cases of British troops killing enemy POWs, violating and looting the bodies of dead enemy troops, and forcing POWs to undertake military work in contravention of the Geneva Convention. Longden states that the killing of prisoners and enemy soldiers attempting to surrender was not on a large scale. However, it was more common when the British believed the enemy had previously killed British POWs or had fired on British troops after pretending to surrender, and when the British encountered SS troops and guards at liberated concentration camps.^{[45]: 382–385, 390–393, 400, 405–407}

Longden states that the desecration of corpses was uncommon on the Western Front, but did occur.^[45]: 53 In the Asia-pacific theatre, during the Burma campaign, there are cases of British soldiers removing gold teeth from dead Japanese troops and displaying Japanese skulls as trophies.^[46]

German POWs were sometimes forced to undertake tasks on the frontline such as digging trenches, carrying wounded soldiers, and digging graves for dead soldiers. There were also reports of German POWs being forced to clear minefields and fire on German positions.^{[45]: 377–378} The British classified German military personal captured after the German surrender as "Surrendered Enemy Personnel" rather than prisoners of war, thus avoiding the protections provided to them under the Geneva Convention.^{[47]: 502–503}

The "London Cage", a MI19 prisoner of war facility in the UK during and immediately after the war, was subject to allegations of torture.^[48] The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre in occupied Germany, managed by the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, was the subject of an official inquiry in 1947, which found that there was "mental and physical torture during the interrogations" and that "personal property of the prisoners were stolen".^[49]

On the Western Front in 1944-1945, British troops sometimes killed civilians or destroyed their homes if they had undisclosed weapons in them or showed support for the Nazis.^{[50]: 123, 373}

Italian statistics record eight rapes and nineteen attempted rapes by British soldiers in Italy between September 1943 and December 1945. However, it is likely that this understates the incidence of rape as many victims probably did not report the crime for fear of retribution or dishonouring their family.^[51] Although there were numerous reports of British troops sexually assaulting German civilians, they were lower than the British authorities expected. Longden states that few British troops raped German women because many Germans were willing to trade sex for food, cigarettes, and coffee.^[50]: 127 Nevertheless, reports of sexual assaults in Germany and other occupied areas increased in the final months of the war and in the early months of peace.^{[50]: 275–276}

Looting farms and other civilian properties of food, alcohol, livestock and valuables was common, particularly when British troops reached Germany.^{[50]: 312, 321–325, 337–339} The British paid French civilians over £60,000 compensation for looting and theft by October 1944. In May 1945, British and US authorities paid £220,000 compensation for looting in the Nijmegen region of the Netherlands.^{[50]: 328, 337} Over 280,000 claims for compensation were settled by March 1945. The authorities generally tolerated British looting in Germany until fighting ceased in May.^{[50]: 344, 346}

During the Allied occupation of Japan, members of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF), which included British, Australian, Indian and New Zealand personnel, were convicted of 80 rapes between May 1946 and September 1951. Official statistics are not available for BCOF's first three months in Japan (February to April 1946).^[52] Historian Robin Gerster believes the official statistics undercount the incidence of rape. The penalties given to members of the BCOF convicted of serious crimes included 10 years imprisonment in one murder case and five years imprisonment in one rape case.^[53]

• Canicattì massacre: killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel McCaffrey. A confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with an offense relating to the incident. He died in 1954. This incident remained virtually unknown until Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, publicized it.^[55][56]
• Biscari massacre: in two instances of mass murder of POWs, US troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 73 prisoners of war, mostly Italians.^[57][58]
• Chenogne massacre: On 1 January 1945, members of the 11th Armored Division executed 80 Wehrmacht soldiers, which were assembled in a field and shot with machine guns.^[59] The events were covered up at the time, and none of the perpetrators were ever punished. Postwar historians believe the killings were carried out on verbal orders by senior commanders that "no prisoners were to be taken".^[60] General George S. Patton confirmed in his diary that the Americans "...also murdered 50 odd German med [sic]. I hope we can conceal this".^[61]
• Jungholzhausen massacre: On 15 April 1945, the 254th Infantry Regiment of the 63rd Infantry Division executed between 13 and 48 Waffen SS and Wehrmacht prisoners of war, mostly consisting of combat engineers and SS volunteers/conscripts (some as young as 17).^[62] According to Harald Zigan, executions of German prisoners were considered "commonplace" in the Hohenloe district.^[63]
• Lippach massacre: On 22 April 1945 American soldiers from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division killed 24 Waffen SS soldiers who had been taken prisoners of war in the German town of Lippach. Members of the same unit are also alleged to have raped 20 women in the town.^[64]
• Audouville-la-Hubert massacre: On 1944, ~30 German Wehrmacht prisoners were killed by US paratroopers near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert, allegedly as retaliation for the high casualties during Operation Overlord.^[65]
• Dachau liberation reprisals: Upon the liberation of Dachau concentration camp on 29 April 1945, about a dozen guards in the camp were shot by a machine gunner who was guarding them. Other soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, of the US 45th (Thunderbird) Division killed other guards who resisted. In all, about 30 were killed, according to the commanding officer Felix L. Sparks.^[66][67] Later, Colonel Howard Buechner wrote that more than 500 were killed.^[68][69]
• Laconia incident: US aircraft attacking Germans rescuing the sinking British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean. For example, the pilots of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24 Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British seamen, killed dozens of Laconia 's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast their remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
• Operation Teardrop: Eight of the surviving, captured crewmen from the sunken German submarine U-546 were tortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' desire to quickly get information on what the US believed were potential V-1 flying bombs or V-2 rocket attacks on the continental US by German submarines.^[70][71]
• Bombing of Gorla: On 20 October 1944, a US B-24 heavy bomber belonging to the Fifteenth Air Force unloaded a set of approximately 10 tons of bombs on the heavily populated Milanese suburbs of Gorla and Precotto. The main stairwell of Gorla's Francesco Crispi Elementary School was hit as the children and school personnel were rushing down to the air raid shelters. The explosion killed 184 of the 200 children as well as the entire staff of 19 teachers at the school.^{[72][73][74][75]} There were some 614 victims in the neighborhood as a whole. In 2019 Milan's mayor Giuseppe Sala appealed to US authorities to apologize for the bombing.^[76]
• Bombing of Grosseto: On 26 April 1943, day of Easter Monday, the city of Grosseto, Tuscany, was struck by over 2,000 cluster bombs dropped by Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft from the US Army's Twelfth Air Force.^[77] The air raid began at 2 PM, when most citizens were in the streets celebrating the holiday. For unknown reasons, 19 of the 48 assigned military planes diverged from their path and began attacking the city itself, instead of the targeted airport.^[78] At least 134 inhabitants were killed, mostly children aged between 5 and 14 who were playing at a funfair in the Porta Vecchia suburb.^[77][78] The air raid sirens initially did not sound, and most victims died before being able to reach the air raid shelters on the city's walls.^[77] The residential areas of Grosseto, located around the historic centre, sustained heavy damage during the attacks. The raid also hit care buildings such as the Red Cross hospital set up in the diocese's seminary and the House of Mother and Child.^[77]

No quarter orders were occasionally issued by allied commanders during the war, according to historian Peter Lieb, many US and Canadian units were explicitly ordered not to take enemy prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If correct, this may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of the 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings.^[79] Massacres of unarmed civilians (including arbitrary executions of suspected civilian snipers and collaborators) were also not uncommon: during the invasion of Sicily, several massacres of civilians by US troops were reported, including in the town of Vittoria, where 12 Italians died (including a 17-year-old boy),^[80] and in Piano Stella, where a group of civilians were murdered.^[81]

In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre, a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight.^[82] Major-General Raymond Hufft (US Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"^[83] Stephen Ambrose related: "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."^[84]

According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs of Allied soldiers have been wilfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds with the "greatest generation" mythology surrounding World War II. However, this has recently started to change, with books such as The Day of Battle, by Rick Atkinson, in which he describes Allied war crimes in Italy, and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor.^[79] Beevor's latest work suggests that Allied war crimes in Normandy were much more extensive "than was previously realized".^[65]

Among American WWII veterans who admitted to having committed war crimes was former Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran. In interviews with his biographer Charles Brandt, Sheeran recalled his war service with the Thunderbird Division as the time when he first developed a callousness to the taking of human life. By his own admission, Sheeran participated in numerous massacres and summary executions of German POWs, acts which violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs. In his interviews with Brandt, Sheeran divided such massacres into four different categories.

1. Revenge killings in the heat of battle. Sheeran told Brandt that, when a German soldier had just killed his close friends and then tried to surrender, he would often "send him to hell, too." He described often witnessing similar behavior by fellow GIs.^[85]
2. Orders from unit commanders during a mission. When describing his first murder for organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. You did what you had to do."^[86]
3. The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and trustee inmates.^[87]
4. Calculated attempts to dehumanize and degrade German POWs. While Sheeran's unit was climbing the Harz Mountains, they came upon a Wehrmacht mule train carrying food and drink up the mountainside. The female cooks were first allowed to leave unmolested, then Sheeran and his fellow GIs "ate what we wanted and soiled the rest with our waste." Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their own shallow graves." Sheeran later joked that they did so without complaint, likely hoping that he and his buddies would change their minds. But the mule drivers were shot and buried in the holes they had dug. Sheeran explained that by then, "I had no hesitation in doing what I had to do."^[88]

Elements of Sheeran's reasoning are supported by historian James J. Weingartner. Weingartner states that "Prisoners were killed in reprisal for real or imagined atrocities, for the utilitarian reason that keeping them was impractical or inconvenient, or out of frustration with a war that was going badly or was being unnecessarily prolonged by the enemy. Civilians often fell victim to the fury of ground combatants, particularly in situations where occupying forces were real or imagined objects of guerilla warfare".^[89] James J. Weingartner also identified what he views as a disparity in treatment between American and German war crimes in the court martial of American soldiers and the post-war trials of Germans, arguing that United States war crimes were judged "by a more indulgent standard" than comparable German atrocities, particularly in regard to the principle of following orders.^[90]

American soldiers in the Pacific often deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered. According to Richard J. Aldrich, a professor of history at the University of Warwick, who has published a study of the diaries kept by United States and Australian soldiers, they sometimes massacred prisoners of war.^[91] Dower states that in "many instances ... Japanese who did become prisoners were killed on the spot or en route to prison compounds".^[7] According to Aldrich it was common practice for U.S. troops not to take prisoners.^[92] This analysis is supported by British historian Niall Ferguson,^[93] 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".^[93]

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,^[93] 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 US troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.^[93] Ferguson also suggests that "it was not only the fear of disciplinary action or of dishonor that deterred German and Japanese soldiers from surrendering. More important for most soldiers was the perception that prisoners would be killed by the enemy anyway, and so one might as well fight on."^[94]

Ulrich Straus, a US Japanologist, suggests that frontline troops intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners, as they believed that Allied personnel who surrendered, got "no mercy" from the Japanese.^[95] Allied soldiers believed that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign surrender in order to make surprise attacks, a practice which was outlawed by the Hague Convention of 1907.^[96][95] Therefore, according to Straus, "Senior officers opposed the taking of prisoners on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks".^[95] When prisoners nevertheless were taken at Guadalcanal, interrogator Army Captain Burden noted that many times these were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take him in".^[97]

US historian James J. Weingartner attributes the very low number of Japanese in US POW compounds to two important 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.^[98] The latter reason is supported by Ferguson, who says that "Allied troops often saw the Japanese in the same way that Germans regarded Russians—as Untermenschen".^[93]

On January 26, 1943, the submarine USS Wahoo fired on survivors in lifeboats from the Japanese transport Buyo Maru. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood asserted that the survivors were Japanese soldiers who had turned machine-gun and rifle fire on the Wahoo after she surfaced, and that such resistance was common in submarine warfare.^[99] According to the submarine's executive officer, the fire was intended to force the Japanese soldiers to abandon their boats and none of them were deliberately targeted.^[100] Historian Clay Blair stated that the submarine's crew fired first and the shipwrecked survivors returned fire with handguns.^[101] The survivors were later determined to have included Allied POWs of the Indian 2nd Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment, who were guarded by Japanese Army Forces from the 26th Field Ordnance Depot.^[102] Of 1,126 men originally aboard Buyo Maru, 195 Indians and 87 Japanese died, some killed during the torpedoing of the ship and some killed by the shootings afterwards.^[103]

On 4 March 1943, during and after the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (March 3–5, 1943), General George Kenney ordered U.S. patrol boats and Allied aircraft to attack Japanese rescue vessels, as well as the approximately 1,000 survivors from eight sunken Japanese troop transport ships on life rafts and swimming or floating in the sea.^[104][105] This was later State justified on the grounds that the rescued servicemen were next to their destination, and would have been rapidly landed at their military destination and promptly returned to active service in the battle.^[104][106] Many of the Allied aircrew accepted the attacks as necessary, while others were sickened.^[107]

After the war, Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, provided unapologetic written testimony on Karl Dönitz's behalf at his trial that the US Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare (including attacks on hospital, rescue and transport vessels, as well as the shooting of prisoners and shipwreck survivors) in the Pacific from the very first day the US entered the war.^[108]

In the Pacific theater, Allied servicemen engaged in human trophy collecting from Japanese soldiers. The phenomenon of "trophy-taking", especially by American personnel, occurred on "a scale large enough to concern the Allied military authorities throughout the conflict, and was widely reported and commented on in the American and Japanese wartime press", with magazines and journals reporting widespread cases. Franklin Roosevelt himself was reportedly given a gift of a letter-opener made of a Japanese soldier's arm by U.S. Representative Francis E. Walter in 1944, which Roosevelt later ordered to be returned, calling for its proper burial.^{[109]: 65 [110]: 825} The news was also widely reported to the Japanese public, where the Americans were portrayed as "deranged, primitive, racist and inhuman". This, compounded by a previous Life magazine picture of a young woman with a skull trophy, was reprinted in the Japanese media and presented as a symbol of "American barbarism", causing national shock and outrage.^{[111][110]: 833 [110]}

The collection of Japanese body parts began quite early in the war, prompting a September 1942 order for disciplinary action against such souvenir taking.^[110] Harrison concludes that, since this was the first real opportunity to take such items (the Battle of Guadalcanal), "clearly, the collection of body parts on a scale large enough to concern the military authorities had started as soon as the first living or dead Japanese bodies were encountered".^[110]

When Japanese remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands after the war, roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls.^[110]

In a 13 June 1944 memorandum, the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Major General Myron C. Cramer, asserted that "such atrocious and brutal policies", were both "repugnant to the sensibilities of all civilized people"^[98] and also violations of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field, which stated that: "After each engagement, the occupant of the field of battle shall take measures to search for the wounded and dead, and to protect them against pillage and maltreatment."^[112] Cramer recommended the distribution to all commanders of a directive ordering them to prohibit the misuse of enemy body parts.^[98]

These practices were also in violation of the unwritten customary rules of land warfare and could lead to the death penalty.^[98] The US Navy JAG mirrored that opinion one week later, and also added that "the atrocious conduct of which some US personnel were guilty could lead to retaliation by the Japanese which would be justified under international law".^[98]

Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that American GIs committed more than 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945.^[113] A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.^[114][115] It is estimated that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war and one historian has claimed that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.^[116]

In Taken by Force, J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by US servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.^[117] As in the case of the American occupation of France after the D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint.^[118] A typical victimization with sexual assault by drunken American personnel marching through occupied territory involved threatening a German family with weapons, forcing one or more women to engage in sex, and putting the entire family out on the street afterward.^[119]

Although non-fraternization policies were instituted for the Americans in Germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternization" was used as a motto by United States Army troops.^[119] The journalist Osmar White, a war correspondent from Australia who served with the American troops during the war, wrote that

After the fighting moved on to German soil, there was a good deal of rape by combat troops and those immediately following them. The incidence varied between unit and unit according to the attitude of the commanding officer. In some cases offenders were identified, tried by court martial, and punished. The army legal branch was reticent, but admitted that for brutal or perverted sexual offences against German women, some soldiers had been shot – particularly if they happened to be Negroes. Yet I know for a fact that many women were raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the culprits. In one sector a report went round that a certain very distinguished army commander made the wisecrack, 'Copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternisation.'^[120]

Black and Colored soldiers of America's segregated occupation force were both more likely to be charged by military courts with rape, and were usually more severely punished as a result of these charges.^[118] Heide Fehrenbach writes that, "while black American soldiers were in fact by no means free from indiscipline":

The point, rather, is that American officials exhibited an explicit interest in a soldier's race, and then only if he were black, when reporting behavior they feared would undermine either the status or the political aims of the US Military Government in Germany.^[121]

Carol Huntington writes that American soldiers who raped German women and then left "gifts" or food for them may have permitted themselves to view the act as a prostitution rather than rape. Citing the work of a Japanese historian alongside this suggestion, Huntington writes that Japanese women who begged for food "were raped and soldiers sometimes left food for those they raped."^[118]

U.S. military personnel raped Okinawan women during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.^[122]

Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes based on several years of research:

Soon after the U.S. Marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers. At the time, there were only women, children, and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the Marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces. Taking advantage of the situation, they started 'hunting for women' in broad daylight, and those women who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.^[123]

According to interviews carried out by The New York Times and published by them in 2000, several elderly people from an Okinawan village confessed that after the United States had won the Battle of Okinawa, three armed Marines kept coming to the village every week to force the villagers to gather all the local women, who were then carried off into the hills and raped. The article goes deeper into the matter and claims that the villagers' tale—true or not—is part of a "dark, long-kept secret" the unraveling of which "refocused attention on what historians say is one of the most widely ignored crimes of the war": 'the widespread rape of Okinawan women by American servicemen."^[124] Although Japanese reports of rape were largely ignored at the time, academic estimates have been that as many as 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped. It has been claimed that the rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 around the year 2000 either knew or had heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war. Military officials denied the mass rapings, and all surviving veterans refused The New York Times' request for an interview.^[125]

Professor of East Asian Studies and expert on Okinawa, Steve Rabson, said: "I have read many accounts of such rapes in Okinawan newspapers and books, but few people know about them or are willing to talk about them."^[125] He notes that plenty of old local books, diaries, articles and other documents refer to rapes by American soldiers of various races and backgrounds.

An explanation given for why the US military has no record of any rapes is that few—if any—Okinawan women reported abuse, mostly out of fear and embarrassment. According to Nago, Okinawan police spokesman: "Victimized women feel too ashamed to make it public."^[125] Those who did report them are believed by historians to have been ignored by the U.S. military police. A large scale effort to determine the extent of such crimes has also never been called for. Over five decades after the war has ended the women who were believed to have been raped still refused to give a public statement, with friends, local historians and university professors who had spoken with the women instead saying they preferred not to discuss it publicly. Many people wondered why it never came to light after the inevitable American-Japanese babies the many women must have given birth to. In interviews, historians and Okinawan elders said that some of those Okinawan women who were raped and did not commit suicide did give birth to biracial children, but that many of them were immediately killed or left behind out of shame, disgust or fearful trauma. More often, however, rape victims underwent crude abortions with the help of village midwives. A large scale effort to determine the possible extent of these crimes has never been conducted. Over five decades after the war had ended, in the late 1990s, the women who were believed to have been raped still overwhelmingly refused to give public statements, instead speaking through relatives and a number of historians and scholars.^[125]

There is substantial evidence that the U.S. had at least some knowledge of what was going on. Samuel Saxton, a retired captain, explained that the American veterans and witnesses may have intentionally kept the rape a secret, largely out of shame: "It would be unfair for the public to get the impression that we were all a bunch of rapists after we worked so hard to serve our country."^[125] Military officials formally denied the mass rapes, and all surviving related veterans refused request for interviews from The New York Times. Masaie Ishihara, a sociology professor, supports this: "There is a lot of historical amnesia out there, many people don't want to acknowledge what really happened."^[125] Author George Feifer in his book Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, noted that by 1946 there had been fewer than 10 reported cases of rape in Okinawa. He explained that it was "partly because of shame and disgrace, partly because Americans were victors and occupiers". Feifer claimed: "In all there were probably thousands of incidents, but the victims' silence kept rape another dirty secret of the campaign."^[126]

However, American professor of Japanese studies Michael S. Molasky and some other authors have argued that they noted that Okinawan civilians "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy."^[127][128] According to Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by the American Mark Selden, the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as Japanese military officials had warned."^[129]

According to some authors, there were 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa Prefecture after the Japanese surrender,^[122] however author Brian Walsh states that this claim originates from a misreading of Japanese Government crime figures that had actually reported 1,326 criminal incidents of all types involving American forces, including an unspecified number of rapes.^[130]

In the American-occupied zones in Germany and Austria, the number of rapes peaked in 1945 (similarly to the Soviet and British sectors of the occupation), but a high rate of violence against German and Austrian populations by American forces lasted at least into the first half of 1946, with five cases of dead German women found in American barracks in May and June 1946 alone.^[118]

In 2015, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that German historian Miriam Gebhardt "believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany. The author bases her claims in large part on reports kept by Bavarian priests in the summer of 1945."^[131]

There has been relatively little research into the general treatment of Japanese prisoners of war taken by Chinese Nationalist forces, such as the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), according to R. J. Rummel.^[132] However, civilians and conscripts, as well as Japanese civilians in China, were frequently maltreated by the Chinese military. Rummel says that Chinese peasants "often had no less to fear from their own soldiers than ... from the Japanese".^[133] The Nationalist military was reinforced by recruits gained through violent campaigns of conscription directed at Chinese civilians. According to Rummel:

This was a deadly affair in which men were kidnapped for the army, rounded up indiscriminately by press-gangs or army units among those on the roads or in the towns and villages, or otherwise gathered together. Many men, some the very young and old, were killed resisting or trying to escape. Once collected, they would be roped or chained together and marched, with little food or water, long distances to camp. They often died or were killed along the way, sometimes less than 50 percent reaching camp alive. Then recruit camp was no better, with hospitals resembling Nazi concentration camps... Probably 3,081,000 died during the Sino-Japanese War; likely another 1,131,000 during the Civil War—4,212,000 dead in total. Just during conscription [emphasis added].^[134]

Within some intakes of Nationalist conscripts, there was a death rate of 90% from disease, starvation or violence before they commenced training.^[135]

Examples of war crimes committed by Chinese associated forces include:

• in 1937 near Shanghai, the killing, torture and assault of Japanese POWs and Chinese civilians accused of collaboration, were recorded in photographs taken by Swiss businessman Tom Simmen.^[136] In 1996, Simmen's son released the pictures, showing Nationalist Chinese soldiers committing summary executions by decapitation and shooting, as well as public torture.
• the Yan'an Rectification Movement; from 1942 to 1945 in the Communist-controlled zones, ordered by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. Over 10,000 people were tortured or killed and it is often regarded by many as the beginning of Mao Zedong's cult of personality.
• the Tongzhou mutiny of August 1937; Chinese soldiers recruited by Japan mutinied and switched sides in Tongzhou, Beijing, before raping, torturing, mutilating and murdering 260 Japanese and Korean civilians.^[132][137]
• Nationalist troops in Hubei Province, during May 1943, ordered whole towns to evacuate and then "plundered" them; any civilians who refused or were unable to leave, were killed.^[133]

During the German invasion of Belgium, Belgian authorities arrested a number of suspects ("enemy Belgians and enemy foreigners") between 10 and 15 May on the orders of the auditor general Walter Ganshof van der Meersch. "It is clear that the arrests were very irresponsible and arbitrary. They just picked up some people: out of revenge, out of jealousy, because of their political beliefs, their Jewish origin or because of their foreign nationality," wrote survivor Gaby Warris.^[138]

Three days later, on 19 May, 79 of these detainees were taken to Abbeville and locked up under the music kiosk on the market square. When the city of Abbeville was heavily bombed from the air by German squadrons on the night of 19 to 20 May, the French guards feared the prisoners would be released by the Germans and decided to summarily execute them.^[139] Twenty-one prisoners were taken from the kiosk, placed against the wall, and shot without trial on the orders of the French Capitaine Marcel Dingeon, who was Abbeville's deputy commander. Of the dead, only four were found to have actually worked for the Germans. Dingeon killed himself several months after France surrendered. In January 1942, two French soldiers who participated in the massacre, Lieutenant René Caron and Sergeant Émile Molet, were tried by a German court-martial in wartime Paris. They were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on 7 April 1942 at Mont-Valérien.^[140]

Following the Operation Dragoon landings in southern France and the collapse of the German military occupation in August 1944, large numbers of German troops could not escape from France and surrendered to the French Forces of the Interior. The Resistance executed a few of the Wehrmacht and most of the Gestapo and SS prisoners.^[141]

The Maquis also executed 17 German prisoners of war at Saint-Julien-de-Crempse (in the Dordogne region), on 10 September 1944, 14 of whom have since been positively identified. The murders were revenge killings for German murders of 17 local inhabitants of the village of St. Julien on 3 August 1944, which were themselves reprisal killings in response to Resistance activity in the St. Julien region, which was home to an active Maquis cell.^[142]

French Moroccan troops of the French Expeditionary Corps, known as Goumiers, committed mass crimes in Italy during and after the Battle of Monte Cassino^[143] and in Germany.^[144] According to Italian sources, more than 12,000 civilians, above all young and old women, children, were kidnapped, raped, or killed by Goumiers.^[145] This is featured in the Italian film La Ciociara (Two Women) with Sophia Loren.

French troops took part in the invasion of Germany, and France was assigned an occupation zone in Germany. Perry Biddiscombe quotes the original survey estimates that the French Goumiers for instance committed "385 rapes in the Constance area; 600 in Bruchsal; and 500 in Freudenstadt."^[146] The soldiers are also alleged to have committed widespread rape in the Höfingen District near Leonberg.^[147] Katz and Kaiser,^[148] though they mention rape, found no specific occurrences in either Höfingen or Leonberg compared to other towns. Anthony Clayton, in his book France, Soldiers, and Africa,^[149] devotes several pages to the criminal activities of the Goumiers, which he partially ascribes to typical practices in their homeland.

According to historian Mark Johnston, "the killing of unarmed Japanese was common" and Australian command tried to put pressure on troops to actually take prisoners, but the troops proved reluctant.^[150] When prisoners were indeed taken "it often proved difficult to prevent them from killing captured Japanese before they could be interrogated".^[151] According to Johnston, as a consequence of this type of behavior, "Some Japanese soldiers were almost certainly deterred from surrendering to Australians".^[151]

Major General Paul Cullen indicated that the killing of Japanese prisoners in the Kokoda Track Campaign was not uncommon. In one instance he recalled during the battle at Gorari that "the leading platoon captured five or seven Japanese and moved on to the next battle. The next platoon came along and bayoneted these Japanese."^[152] He also stated that he found the killings understandable but that it had left him feeling guilty.

British, American and Japanese sources often identified Australians as having the worst criminal record among the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan from 1946 to 1952. Gerster argues that Japanese victims of crime sometimes misidentified perpetrators as Australians, and Allied officials sometimes used the Australians as scapegoats for more general ill-discipline among occupational forces. Nevertheless, there are numerous cases of Australian troops being convicted of rape, murder and manslaughter of Japanese civilians.^[153] Australian courts often quashed convictions or mitigated the sentences of Australians convicted by courts martial.^[154]

According to Mitch-am and Avon Hohenstaufen, the Canadian army unit "The Loyal Edmonton Regiment" murdered German prisoners of war during the invasion of Sicily.^[155]

On 10 April 1945, the Canadian Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders destroyed homes in the German village of Sögel in reprisal for civilians joining a skirmish in which five Canadian soldiers were killed. On 14 April, the Highlanders also demolished homes in the town of Friesoythe after a popular commander was killed in a skirmish with German soldiers. The reprisals, ordered by Major-General Christopher Vokes, were contrary to the Hague Convention.^{[156][157]: 373}

According to James D. Morrow, "Death rates of POWs held is one measure of adherence to the standards of the treaties because substandard treatment leads to death of prisoners". The "democratic states generally provide good treatment of POWs".^[177]

After the surrender of Germany, the conditions of recently German personnel apprehended by the Allies significantly worsened; it is estimated that tens of thousands of prisoners died from hunger and disease at that stage. The Allies were not prepared for the large influx of POWs, and conveniently argued that the POW status was not eligible for the military person taken into custody after the surrender, as the German state ceased to exist (the German captives were instead designated Disarmed Enemy Forces or Surrendered Enemy Personnel.^[178] Similar argument was made for the Japanese Surrendered Personnel .^[179]: 322

• German POWs in East European (not including the Soviet Union) hands 32.9%^[93]
• German soldiers held by Soviet Union: 15–33% (14.7% in The Dictators by Richard Overy, 35.8% in Ferguson)^[93]
• Italian soldiers held by the Soviet Union: 79%^[180]
• Japanese POWs held by Soviet Union: 10%
• German POWs in British hands 0.03%^[93]
• German POWs in American hands 0.15%^[93]
• German POWs in French hands 2.58%^[93]
• Japanese POWs held by U.S.: relatively low, mainly suicides according to James D. Morrow.^[181]
• Japanese POWs in Chinese hands: 24%

• US and British Commonwealth POWs held by Germany: ≈4%^[177]
• Soviet POWs held by Germany: 57.5%^[93]
• Italian POWs and military internees held by Germany: between 6% and 8.4%^{[note 2]}
• Western Allied POWs held by Japan: 27%^[182] (Figures for Japan may be misleading, as sources indicate that either 10,800^[183] or 19,000^[184] of 35,756 fatalities among Allied POW's were from "friendly fire" at sea when their transport ships were sunk. The Geneva convention required the labelling of hospital ships as such, but had no provision for the labelling of such craft as POW ships. All sides killed many of their own POWs when sinking enemy ships.)

Historians in the 21st century have showed an increasing interest in Allied war crimes.^{[79][65][185]: 1–2} Grayling argues that that this interest is legitimate but should not descend into revisionist arguments that Allied actions were morally equivalent to the Holocaust and other major war crimes committed by Germany and Japan.^{[186]: 4–5}

A focus on Allied behaviour during the war has long been a theme of Holocaust denial literature.^[187] According to historian Deborah Lipstadt, the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the post-war expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and Allied war crimes, is at the centre of, and a continuously repeated theme of, contemporary Holocaust denial; phenomenon she calls "immoral equivalencies".^[188]

Japanese neo-nationalists argue that the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal represented "victors' justice" and that Allied war crimes were equivalent to those committed by Japanese forces during the war.^[189] American historian John W. Dower has written that this position is "a kind of historiographic cancellation of immorality—as if the transgressions of others exonerate one's own crimes".^[190]

War crimes committed by the Axis powers and their collaborators

• Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia
• German war crimes
• The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia
• Italian war crimes
• Japanese war crimes
• Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

Allied war crimes

• American mutilation of Japanese war dead
• American war crimes
• Bleiburg repatriations
• British war crimes
• Churchill's advocacy of chemical strike against German cities
• Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–1945
• Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)
• Foibe massacres
• Forced labour of Germans after World War II
• Forced labour of Germans in the Soviet Union
• Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, which was involved in experiments on German and Japanese prisoners of war
• Soviet partisans, atrocities against civilians in Finland
• Soviet war crimes
• Thiaroye massacre

Other

• Crimes against humanity
• Ethnic cleansing
• Genocide
• Genocides in history
• List of ethnic cleansing campaigns
• List of genocides
• List of war crimes
• Looted art
• Philosophy of history
• Taken by Force (book)
• Victor's justice
• World War II casualties

• Harris, Justin Michael. "American Soldiers and POW Killing in the European Theater of World War II"; Archived 18 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine