German war crimes

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The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized, and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Nama genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notable of these is the Holocaust, in which millions of European Jews were systematically abused, deported, and murdered, along with Romani in the Romani Holocaust and non-Jewish Poles. Millions of civilians and prisoners of war also died as a result of German abuses, mistreatment, and deliberate starvation policies in those two conflicts. Much of the evidence was deliberately destroyed by the perpetrators, such as in Sonderaktion 1005, in an attempt to conceal their crimes.

Herero Wars

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Considered to have been the first genocide of the 20th century, the Herero and Nama genocide was perpetrated by the German Empire between 1904 and 1907 in German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia),[1] during the Scramble for Africa.[1][2][3][4][5][6] On January 12, 1904, the Herero people, led by Samuel Maharero, rebelled against German colonialism. In August, General Lothar von Trotha of the Imperial German Army defeated the Herero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of thirst. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans only to suffer a similar fate.

In total, from 24,000 up to 100,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama died.[7][8][9][10][11] The genocide was characterized by widespread death by starvation and thirst because the Herero who fled the violence were prevented from returning from the Namib Desert. Some sources also claim that the German colonial army systematically poisoned wells in the desert.[12][13]

World War I

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File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-F0313-0208-007, Gaskrieg (Luftbild).jpg
Aerial photograph of a German gas attack on the Eastern Front of World War I. Lethal poison gas was first introduced by Germany and subsequently utilized by the other major belligerents in violation of the Hague Convention IV of 1907.

Documentation regarding German war crimes in World War I was seized and destroyed by Nazi Germany during World War II, after occupying France, along with monuments commemorating their victims.[14]

Chemical weapons in warfare

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Poison gas was first introduced as a weapon by Imperial Germany, and subsequently used by all major belligerents, in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which explicitly forbade the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.[15][16]

Belgium

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File:L'exécution des notables de Blégny, 1914 (par Evariste Carpentier).jpg
Depiction of the execution of civilians in Blégny by Évariste Carpentier

In August 1914, as part of the Schlieffen Plan, the German Army invaded and occupied the neutral nation of Belgium without explicit warning, which violated a treaty of 1839 that the German chancellor dismissed as a "scrap of paper" and the 1907 Hague Convention on Opening of Hostilities.[17] Within the first two months of the war, the German occupiers terrorized the Belgians, killing thousands of civilians and looting and burning scores of towns, including Leuven, which housed the country's preeminent university, mainly in retaliation for Belgian guerrilla warfare, (see francs-tireurs). This action was in violation of the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare provisions that prohibited collective punishment of civilians and looting and destruction of civilian property in occupied territories.[18]

Bombardment of English coastal towns

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The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, which took place on December 16, 1914, was an attack by the Imperial 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 in violation of the ninth section of the 1907 Hague Convention which prohibited naval bombardments of undefended towns without warning,[19] because only Hartlepool was protected by shore batteries.[20] Germany was a signatory of the 1907 Hague Convention.[21] 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. Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Unrestricted submarine warfare

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Unrestricted submarine warfare was instituted in 1915 in response to the British naval blockade of Germany. 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 Script error: No such module "WPSHIPS utilities". on 7 May 1915 and subsequent public outcry in various neutral countries, including the United States, the practice was withdrawn. However, Germany resumed the practice on 1 February 1917 and declared that all merchant ships regardless of nationalities would be sunk without warning. This outraged the U.S. public, prompting the U.S. to break diplomatic relations with Germany two days later, and, along with the Zimmermann Telegram, led the U.S. entry into the war two months later on the side of the Allied Powers.

World War II

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Chronologically, the first German World War II crime, and also the very first act of the war, was the bombing of Wieluń, a town where no targets of military value were present.[22][23]

More significantly, the Holocaust of the European Jews, the extermination of millions of Poles, the Action T4 killing of the disabled, and the Porajmos of the Romani are the most notable war crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. Not all of 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: Script error: No such module "Multiple image".

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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."

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War criminals

Massacres and war crimes of World War II by location

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Austria

File:Alkoven Schloss Hartheim 2005-08-18 3589.jpg
Hartheim Euthanasia Centre, where over 18,000 people were killed in Aktion T4

Belarus

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1970-043-52, Russland, bei Minsk, tote Zivilisten.jpg
Mass murder of Soviet civilians near Minsk, 1943
1941
1942
1943
1944

Belgium

1940
1944

Croatia

1943
1944

Czechoslovakia

File:Koncentracni tabor Mauthausen Praha 2012 7934.JPG
The relatives and helpers of Czech resistance fighters Jan Kubiš and Josef Valčík executed en masse on October 24, 1942

Estonia

1941
1942

France

File:Car in Oradour-sur-Glane4.jpg
Burned out cars and buildings still litter the remains of the original village in Oradour-sur-Glane, as left by Das Reich SS division.

Germany

1945

Greece

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File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-166-0527-02A, Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten.jpg
Massacre of Kondomari in Greece, June 1941

In addition, more than 90 villages and towns are recorded from the Hellenic network of martyr cities.[33] During the triple German, Italian and Bulgarian, occupation about 800,000 people lost their lives in Greece (see World War II casualties).

Italy

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-312-0983-10, Rom, Soldaten vor Gebäude.jpg
A body lies in the via Rasella, Rome, during the round up of civilians by Italian collaborationist soldiers and German troops after the partisan bombing on 13 March 1944.

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Latvia

1941

Lithuania

File:Massacre Kovno Garage 27 JUNE 1942.jpg
The anti-Jewish pogrom in Kaunas, in which thousands of Jews were killed in the last few days of June 1941
1941

Netherlands

1940
  • 14 May, Rotterdam bombing (nearly 1,000 people were killed and 85,000 made homeless.)
1944

Norway

Poland

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File:Warsaw ghetto - infant corpse.jpg
Man showing corpse of a starved infant in the Warsaw ghetto, 1941
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-695-0423-14, Warschauer Aufstand, flüchtende Zivilisten.jpg
A column of Polish civilians being led by German troops through Wolska Street in early August 1944
1939
1940
1941
File:Einsatzgruppe shooting.jpg
German police shooting women and children from the Mizocz Ghetto, 14 October 1942
1942
1943
1944
File:Polish civilians murdered by German-SS-troops in Warsaw Uprising Warsaw August 1944.jpg
Film footage taken by the Polish Underground showing the bodies of women and children murdered by SS troops in Warsaw, August 1944
1945
  • 21–22 January, Marchwacz massacre (63 Polish civilians, 12 Soviet POWs)
  • 31 January, Podgaje massacre (160–210 Polish POWs)
  • 9 February, Leśno massacre (64 Jewish women)[45]

Russia

File:Дистрофия алиментарная.jpg
A victim of starvation in besieged Leningrad in 1941

Serbia

1941

Slovenia

1942
1945

Ukraine

1941
1943
1944

See also

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Notes

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  1. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  2. ↑ Olusoga, David and Erichsen, Casper W (2010). The Kaiser's Holocaust. Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. Faber and Faber. Template:ISBN
  3. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  4. ↑ Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001, p. 12
  5. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  6. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  7. ↑ Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: The Socio-Legal Context of Claims under International Law by the Herero against Germany for Genocide in Namibia, 1904–1908 (PSI Reports) by Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes
  8. ↑ Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History (War and Genocide) (War and Genocide) (War and Genocide) A. Dirk Moses -page 296(From Conquest to Genocide: Colonial Rule in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa. 296, (29). Dominik J. Schaller)
  9. ↑ The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany) by Sara L. Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne M. Zantop page 87 University of Michigan Press 1999
  10. ↑ Walter Nuhn: Sturm über Südwest. Der Hereroaufstand von 1904. Bernard & Graefe-Verlag, Koblenz 1989. Template:ISBN.
  11. ↑ Marie-Aude Baronian, Stephan Besser, Yolande Jansen, "Diaspora and memory: figures of displacement in contemporary literature, arts and politics", pg. 33 Rodopi, 2007,
  12. ↑ Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, Israel W. Charny, "Century of genocide: critical essays and eyewitness accounts" pg. 51, Routledge, 2004,
  13. ↑ Dan Kroll, "Securing our water supply: protecting a vulnerable resource", PennWell Corp/University of Michigan Press, pg. 22
  14. ↑ France: the dark years, 1940–1944 page 273 Julian Jackson Oxford University Press 2003
  15. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  16. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  17. ↑ Robinson, James J., ABA Journal 46(9), p. 978.
  18. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  19. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  20. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  21. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  22. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
  23. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  24. ↑ Telford Taylor "When people kill a people" in The New York Times, March 28, 1982
  25. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  26. ↑ [1] GERMAN ATROCITIES DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
  27. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  28. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  29. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  30. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
  31. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  32. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  33. ↑ Δήμος Λαμιέων: Δίκτυο μαρτυρικών πόλεων & χωριών της Ελλάδος | Δήμος Λαμιέων, accessdate: 19. Oktober 2015
  34. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  35. ↑ a b c d e f g Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  36. ↑ a b c d e Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  37. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  38. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  39. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  40. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  41. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  42. ↑ Muzeum Powstania otwarte, BBC Polish edition, 2 October 2004, Children accessed on 13 April 2007
  43. ↑ O Powstaniu Warszawskim opowiada prof. Jerzy Kłoczowski, Gazeta Wyborcza – local Warsaw edition, 1998-08-01. Children accessed on 13 April 2007
  44. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  45. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
  46. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  47. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

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References

Media (on-line)

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