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The paragraph in question deals with the common practice in parts of the Pacific theater to take no prisoners.
Two sources are available for the information; one is an article referring to a detailed study of memoirs of the Second World War performed by Professor Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University. The second source is a paper by Niall Ferguson, published in "War in History" 2004 11 (2) 148–192.
There are two Issues with repeated edits by editor: [1] Using the summary "copyedit for encyclopedic style" the Editor:
1. Editor waters-out content on previously thoroughly debated and agreed upon paragraph.
2 Editor is apparently unhappy with the text singling out U.S. and in particular Australian soldiers. Editor engages in original research/inserting irrelevant material by adding sub-paragraph. [3]
-- Stor stark7 Talk 17:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I am an American of Taiwanese descent, born and raised for the most part in the United States. I lived in Japan during my middle school years. Take my comments with whatever grains of salt you deem appropriate.
I have looked at all the diff's provided above. I have not read the long discussions above on this Talk Page. Here are my "off the cuff" impressions based solely on a quick scan of the article, the description of the RFC and diffs provided above. I am not going to attempt to pass judgment on each and every edit dispute. At least not today. Maybe I'll join in as a contributor to this article later.
Below I address the points raised in the RFC point-by-point:
1. Editor waters-out content on previously thoroughly debated and agreed upon paragraph.
2 Editor is apparently unhappy with the text singling out U.S. and in particular Australian soldiers. Editor engages in original research/inserting irrelevant material by adding sub-paragraph. [10]
[12].
I don't think the two versions about POW seriously differ in facts. Of cource the version by Grant65 contaied a phrase "it is not clear that..." This is clearly wikipedian's judgement, i.e., inadmissible OR, so I deletd it. On the other hand, his version removes unnecessary repetition: (1) source titles are in references and no real need to repeat them in the text (2) the phrase complained as "According to Aldrich it became common..." is a paraphrase of another one: "taking no prisoners became standard practice".
My second remark is that the article talk page must discuss article text, rather than what another editor does wrong. Otherwise the discussion becomes a mess. The text must be discussed sentence by sentence rather than accusative diffs. If one wants something in or out, just say what exactly you want. As it looks now, it looks as someone wants to kicks someon else's ass, and someone else helps to do this. This is not the purpose of article talk pages. For example the #Comment by User:Richardshusr says acccusatively "Seems like a bad edit to remove the sentence". The proper, non-confrontational, way would be "Please explain why you deleted this sentence". And so on. You get the idea.
Concluding, I suggest to stop kicking mutual asses right away and start asking questions. `' Míkka 22:42, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
“ | In the
Pacific War American and Australian soldiers massacred Japanese prisoners of war, according to "The Faraway War", a detailed study of diaries made by Professor Richard Aldrich of
Nottingham University. According to Aldrich it became common for U.S troops in parts of the Pacific War not to take prisoners.
[1]
This analysis is supported by Niall Fergusson, in "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" [2], who states that taking no prisoners became standard practice amongst U.S. troops. Ferguson writes that this practice played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. In 1944 efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice and instead encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945. |
” |
“ | The Empire of Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and its forces frequently disregarded its provisions relating to POWs (see Japanese war crimes). They were also more inclined to fight to the death than Allied forces, as evidenced by tactics like the kamikaze and banzai charges. These factors influenced US, Australian, British and other Commonwealth soldiers, who often killed Japanese personnel who had surrendered. [3] Niall Fergusson, in "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", [4] states that not taking prisoners became standard practice amongst U.S. troops. Ferguson writes that this practice played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. In 1944 efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice and instead encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945. | ” |
“ | According to Richard Aldrich, who has made made a study of diaries kept by Allied personnel in the Pacific, US and Australian soldiers deliberately massacred killed Japanese prisoners of war. [5] This claim is supported by Niall Fergusson, who states in a 2004 article, that taking no prisoners became standard practice amongst US troops. [6] Ferguson states that by late 1944, the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead was 1:100. During 1944, efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice, and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945. It is not clear if Aldrich or Ferguson have subjected Chinese, British, and other Allied forces in the Chinese and Burmese campaigns to the same level of scrutiny. | ” |
And your point is? That it's wrong to seek a wording that is acceptable to everyone by editing the page? Grant | Talk 05:57, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I am removing this RFC from the list of RFCs. If it is still active then please resubmit. -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to say that but it really is. Most of it reads like a laundry list that doesn't really help the reader understand the topic. It's more data than it is information.
IMO, the key idea to present here is that "war crimes" are generally associated primarily with the Axis powers (specifically Germany and Japan) and not with the Allied Powers. There were war crimes tribunals and people were convicted and punished. However, there are indications and allegations of war crimes committed by the Allies. The most prominent of these are Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Katyn Forest. However, no one was ever charged with any of these, let alone convicted. Other "lesser" war crimes have also been alleged. And then take it from there. (Note that I wrote "allegations of war crimes". If there was no crime, there was no reason to try anybody for the non-crime.)
I would urge that we go after this article and turn it into prose rather than just being a laundry list. The treatment of US/Australian war crimes in the Pacific Theater comes closest to being an encyclopedic article. The rest of the article needs to have more prose along those lines.
-- Richard 20:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with your analysis. The Katyn Forest massacre was not carried out by an ally of the Allies. It was carried out by a neutral power. The A-bombings are not universally agreed war crimes as they were not a breach of positive international law, but unrestricted submarine warfare was a breach of positive international law and was judged to be so. Incidents such as the Biscari massacre was judged to be a war crime by the Allies. -- Philip Baird Shearer 23:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
There's much more than "German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich". See for example http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,1722904,00.html and replace this crap. -- HanzoHattori 08:25, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh rly?
A.C. Grayling: For this very reason I’m careful to say that I judge area bombing to be a moral crime, thus not using the expression 'war crime', a concept which technically gets its content from the Nuremberg Principles of 1945. But in view of the international law which has arisen since the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the question of protecting civilians in time of war – the First Protocol of which is a direct response to area bombing in WWII – retrospectively it is clear that the international community regards it as an act that should be called a war crime. -- HanzoHattori 12:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Google is your friend. He fights for FREEDOM (even if not in China) Anyway, "not" a war crime only becuase he says there was no concept of war crime yet when it was commited. But we agree the Nazis AND Allies were commiting war crimes at all, right? Because we have this article and it's not empty, right? And so, "in retropsective", it's "clear" "it as an act that should be called a war crime". (It's all kind of saying nazis were "not" commiting genocide because there was no word " genocide" yet) -- HanzoHattori 14:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Let's just see this from the today's perspective. Otherwise, Nazis did not commit genocide - there was no term of crime of genocide yet, it was created in response to what was done in the war, and this included the Genocide Convention (same the laws regarding urban carpet bombings). So, should I "correct" all the articles about Nazi Gaermany and the Holocaust? Of course not.
Instead, we have some odd German neo-Nazi "historian" claiming. Uh. -- HanzoHattori 19:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
AGAIN, there was no law against genocide then (no such word even). So, the Nazis are not guilty of genocide? y/n Talking about Wikipedia. See: [16] -- HanzoHattori 07:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
We do not have to decide if the Holocaust was a genocide, all we have to do is report those who state that it was. In this case Grayling has made it clear that he thinks area bombing was a moral crime and explains why he does not think it a war crime. We have reported that Jörg Friedrich thinks it was a war crime. If there is any other notable historian or judicial review that holds the same opinion as him then it should be added. -- Philip Baird Shearer 14:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Can we move book titles and academic positions from the main text to the footnotes? It makes the article unecessarily wordy, and it is not standard practice in encyclopedias or scholarly works to give titles and the backgrounds of the authors cited, except in footnotes. Grant | Talk 11:58, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I inserted into the intro a comparison of the magnitude of the Allied war crimes as compared to those of the Germans and Japanese but Philip Baird Shearer deleted it.
I think it is important to provide a comparison between the scale of the Holocaust and the scale of war crimes that the Allies were charged with. Even Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden do not match the Holocaust in scale.
I'm not sure whether there is an appropriate comparison for the war crimes that the Japanese were charged with. Is it reasonable to compare numbers of Allied POWs mistreated by Japanese forces versus numbers of Japanese POWs mistreated by Allied forces? Would there be a significant difference?
Can it be argued that Japanese and German war crimes were intentional strategies formulated and sanctioned by the highest authorities whereas Allied war crimes (other than bombings such as Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden) were more spontaneous, grass-roots actions which higher command may have failed to respond to adequately but did not initiate?
NB: Yes, I realize that Katyn Forest was probably an intentional strategy formulated and sanctioned by Stalin. The difficulty of drawing these distinctions doesn't make it any less important to draw them for the reader.
-- Richard 07:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Francisco Gómez points out in an article published in the International Review of the Red Cross that, with respect to the "anti-city" or "blitz" strategy, that "in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property."
It may be factual that he pointed this out, but the quote itself is false. Francisco Gómez (and the person who added this pointless tidbit) apparently never read the Hague Convention of 1907.
-- 76.224.88.36 05:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, Philip Baird Shearer, but this article is also on my watchlist and it has occurred to me that Dresden certainly deserves to be mentioned by name here since the articles say "Many things classified as war crimes today were not such at the time. Some things classified as a war crimes today, such as area bombing, were not war crimes during World War II."
"Incidents that occurred during the involvement of the relevant nation in World War II include the following. Not all of these are agreed to be war crimes."
"The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to [area] bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime."
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned here, then surely Dresden also deserves mention here as well. Of course, we have to caveat the mention with all the standard reasons why it was not considered a war crime then and why it should or should not be considered a war crime now.
-- Richard 08:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Do you think this article might be improved by splitting it up? One article would be titled Allied war crimes in the Pacific Theater during World War II. I'm not sure what the other one would be called. Perhaps Allied war crimes in the European Theater during World War II. My thought here is that there could be two good articles on each theater if we were allowed to focus on each theater separately. Mashing the two together leads to the "laundry list" feel and results in a lack of focus. -- Richard 03:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I could see a good case for splitting this between the "eastern" and "western" allies. The British, United States, Canadians, Free French vrs. the Soviet Union and Eastern European Nations. From a cultural and historical perspective one can say that Stalin's Soviet Union was not entirely comparable to the other allies. It's well known that Stalin committed crimes against humanity after World War II, and independent of the war. This seems to be relatively well accepted. Also, the war between Germany and the Soviets and other Eastern Allies can be considered a very different dynamic. The British/US/Canadians fought along side each other and also all had involvement in the pacific. The Germans treated the POW's on the Western Fround differently then those on the Eastern, and the USSR responded in kind. It was much a war of attrition. For these reasons, and because of uneasy alience and later estrangement and independance of the fights, I think it would be worth considering whether the "Allies" should be lumped together in such a manner. DrBuzz0 04:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I am opposed to splitting the article, but the large sub article on the Treatment of POWs in the Far East should be moved into its own article with only a one line summary here as Grant has done Stirling work turning it into a generalised accusations. -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
DrBuzz0, as with the Pacific War, the war in Eastern Europe was fought according to quite different standards than elsewhere (by both sides). That is why I suggested separate articles on Allied war crimes in Western Europe during World War II and Soviet war crimes during World War II.
I stress that I am not actually suggesting this article be split, merely that new articles on those subjects be created. Grant | Talk 10:12, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Death rates of POWs held by Axis powers
The list doesn't include Polish POWs in German hands. Does anybody know the number of them and POWs that were Jewish ?-- Molobo 23:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I’ve asked this question here before and because it is so ridiculous I’m going to ask it again. How is burning houses by Canadians a war crime? There were some Canadian and American Shermans right after the end of the war who either did not have enough of the fight or arrived too late to see action and were driving up and down the streets of one German town firing their main guns at houses at random. Some of them burned no doubt. Was this a war crime? Or because it took place after VE day is it considered to not be a war crime? I’ve read the long discussion page and don’t really understand why there is a conflict. For people who have their heads in the sand the Hague Convention is something that is talked about during peace time. During war the rules of war go out the window and killing of the enemy after they surrender, becomes after a while, as natural as killing the enemy on the battlefield. The Canadians also killed prisoners in Italy after they learnt how the peasents had been treated and also killed prisoners in NW Europe. Sometimes because of having no one to spare to escort the prisoners to the back sometimes because of the prisoners smart talking back to their captors and somtimes just because and it happened often with no concern of it being a war crime. Every Army did it and it happened in every war. The Poles in NW Europe were well known for finishing off the wounded enemy after a battle and it was tolerated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brocky44 ( talk • contribs) 17:10, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Here's a little story, by a Canadian soldier who witnessed the war, about how easy it was to kill and a hint that it happened many times.
I don't think we were any better than the Germans, I don't think that for one minute. We did a lot of things too. I've seen them. You couldn't be up to your arse in the thing and not know that what they were doing, we were doing too. There's one man in this town-and I could point him out to you who's killed lots of Germans. And he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met. Officer in the Legion. Helps with the kids' soccer league. Good, decent business man. But I was in the same outfit with him. I know. This was in Holland. There was a lot of snow on the ground. We were on patrol and we ambushed this bunch of Jerries. Eight of them. Two were Panzer officers, because they wore those black uniforms the captains of German tanks wore. The other guys with them were their crew. We saw them coming around the edge of this little forest, and they just walked in and that was it. One officer was a young guy and his English was good and he said they had been trying toget back to their lines. I guess they didn’t like the snow any more than we did, or the cold. He made a couple of little jokes, one about if they got the firewood then we could light the fire and we’d all stay warm. Another little joke he made was we could roast a pig, and we sort of laughed too. He said they’d passed a Dutch farmyard back a bit and there might be a pig-and schnapps. The war was over for him, and I guess he was glad. So we’re standing there and I’m thinking that we’ll have to take these prisoners back, so that
would be the end of the patrol. And then this lieutenant, he just turned to the guy with the Bren and he said, “Shoot them.” Just like that. Shoot them down. The officer with the blond hair, the one who was making the jokes, he sort of made a little run forward and put his arms across his chest and he said something and the guy with the Bren just cut loose. He just opened up. He just cut them down every which way, about chest level because he’s shooting from the hip. There were two, I think, still flopping like gaffed salmon, and this guy we called Whitey from Cape Breton-we called him whitey because he was always boasting how good a coalminer he was-he shot those two with a pistol the lieutenant let him carry. That was it. It probably went into our history , I guess, as a German patrol wiped out. None of us really thought too much
about it. They might have done the same to us. But I’ll tell you this, a year before, if I’d been there, I’d have been puking up my guts. It only took a minute. Maybe less than that. One of our guys who understood German said what the lieutenant said just before he was shot down was “Mother.”
There is more where that came from. I hope that some Wiki editor has the decency to delete the terrible burning houses war crime and add something a little more believable. Brocky44 04:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
"in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property."
Does this include war crimes?
~~collective conscious
The list of accused war crimes by allied forces is seriously lacking. The number of accusations against the Allied powers for war crimes and the ackowledgement of them is severly inequitable. Viewing numerous military documents form both sides, I ma surprised that the U.S. has not even addressed or denied but ignored many accusations of war crimes by such victims as the Vietnamese. For example, several witnesses and North Vietnamese PAVN units witnessed and testified that U.S. soldiers took a whole village and one by one drowned them in a river. Another examlpe would be My LAi 4 which was a seperate hamlet from the My Lai massacre where B Company was acussed of killing many innocent villagers. B company soldiers never admitted nor denied allegations, they stated they "couldn't remember". The U.S. has ignored numeorus accusations as such. Granted there are many that are easily faked. Yet compare the treatment of accusations of U.S. war crimes to others. Anyone that actually looks at primary rather than secondary sources will see a wealth of information that is unexplored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.127.109.240 ( talk) 04:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Why was the US food policy part deleted as well? It was properly sourced. Wiki1609 ( talk) 12:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
The paragraph in question deals with the common practice in parts of the Pacific theater to take no prisoners.
Two sources are available for the information; one is an article referring to a detailed study of memoirs of the Second World War performed by Professor Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University. The second source is a paper by Niall Ferguson, published in "War in History" 2004 11 (2) 148–192.
There are two Issues with repeated edits by editor: [1] Using the summary "copyedit for encyclopedic style" the Editor:
1. Editor waters-out content on previously thoroughly debated and agreed upon paragraph.
2 Editor is apparently unhappy with the text singling out U.S. and in particular Australian soldiers. Editor engages in original research/inserting irrelevant material by adding sub-paragraph. [3]
-- Stor stark7 Talk 17:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I am an American of Taiwanese descent, born and raised for the most part in the United States. I lived in Japan during my middle school years. Take my comments with whatever grains of salt you deem appropriate.
I have looked at all the diff's provided above. I have not read the long discussions above on this Talk Page. Here are my "off the cuff" impressions based solely on a quick scan of the article, the description of the RFC and diffs provided above. I am not going to attempt to pass judgment on each and every edit dispute. At least not today. Maybe I'll join in as a contributor to this article later.
Below I address the points raised in the RFC point-by-point:
1. Editor waters-out content on previously thoroughly debated and agreed upon paragraph.
2 Editor is apparently unhappy with the text singling out U.S. and in particular Australian soldiers. Editor engages in original research/inserting irrelevant material by adding sub-paragraph. [10]
[12].
I don't think the two versions about POW seriously differ in facts. Of cource the version by Grant65 contaied a phrase "it is not clear that..." This is clearly wikipedian's judgement, i.e., inadmissible OR, so I deletd it. On the other hand, his version removes unnecessary repetition: (1) source titles are in references and no real need to repeat them in the text (2) the phrase complained as "According to Aldrich it became common..." is a paraphrase of another one: "taking no prisoners became standard practice".
My second remark is that the article talk page must discuss article text, rather than what another editor does wrong. Otherwise the discussion becomes a mess. The text must be discussed sentence by sentence rather than accusative diffs. If one wants something in or out, just say what exactly you want. As it looks now, it looks as someone wants to kicks someon else's ass, and someone else helps to do this. This is not the purpose of article talk pages. For example the #Comment by User:Richardshusr says acccusatively "Seems like a bad edit to remove the sentence". The proper, non-confrontational, way would be "Please explain why you deleted this sentence". And so on. You get the idea.
Concluding, I suggest to stop kicking mutual asses right away and start asking questions. `' Míkka 22:42, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
“ | In the
Pacific War American and Australian soldiers massacred Japanese prisoners of war, according to "The Faraway War", a detailed study of diaries made by Professor Richard Aldrich of
Nottingham University. According to Aldrich it became common for U.S troops in parts of the Pacific War not to take prisoners.
[1]
This analysis is supported by Niall Fergusson, in "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" [2], who states that taking no prisoners became standard practice amongst U.S. troops. Ferguson writes that this practice played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. In 1944 efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice and instead encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945. |
” |
“ | The Empire of Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and its forces frequently disregarded its provisions relating to POWs (see Japanese war crimes). They were also more inclined to fight to the death than Allied forces, as evidenced by tactics like the kamikaze and banzai charges. These factors influenced US, Australian, British and other Commonwealth soldiers, who often killed Japanese personnel who had surrendered. [3] Niall Fergusson, in "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat", [4] states that not taking prisoners became standard practice amongst U.S. troops. Ferguson writes that this practice played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. In 1944 efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice and instead encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945. | ” |
“ | According to Richard Aldrich, who has made made a study of diaries kept by Allied personnel in the Pacific, US and Australian soldiers deliberately massacred killed Japanese prisoners of war. [5] This claim is supported by Niall Fergusson, who states in a 2004 article, that taking no prisoners became standard practice amongst US troops. [6] Ferguson states that by late 1944, the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead was 1:100. During 1944, efforts were taken by the Allied high command to suppress the "no prisoners" practice, and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. According to Ferguson it is plausible that this may account for the drop of the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead to 1:7 by July 1945. It is not clear if Aldrich or Ferguson have subjected Chinese, British, and other Allied forces in the Chinese and Burmese campaigns to the same level of scrutiny. | ” |
And your point is? That it's wrong to seek a wording that is acceptable to everyone by editing the page? Grant | Talk 05:57, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I am removing this RFC from the list of RFCs. If it is still active then please resubmit. -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to say that but it really is. Most of it reads like a laundry list that doesn't really help the reader understand the topic. It's more data than it is information.
IMO, the key idea to present here is that "war crimes" are generally associated primarily with the Axis powers (specifically Germany and Japan) and not with the Allied Powers. There were war crimes tribunals and people were convicted and punished. However, there are indications and allegations of war crimes committed by the Allies. The most prominent of these are Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Katyn Forest. However, no one was ever charged with any of these, let alone convicted. Other "lesser" war crimes have also been alleged. And then take it from there. (Note that I wrote "allegations of war crimes". If there was no crime, there was no reason to try anybody for the non-crime.)
I would urge that we go after this article and turn it into prose rather than just being a laundry list. The treatment of US/Australian war crimes in the Pacific Theater comes closest to being an encyclopedic article. The rest of the article needs to have more prose along those lines.
-- Richard 20:33, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with your analysis. The Katyn Forest massacre was not carried out by an ally of the Allies. It was carried out by a neutral power. The A-bombings are not universally agreed war crimes as they were not a breach of positive international law, but unrestricted submarine warfare was a breach of positive international law and was judged to be so. Incidents such as the Biscari massacre was judged to be a war crime by the Allies. -- Philip Baird Shearer 23:02, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
There's much more than "German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich". See for example http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,1722904,00.html and replace this crap. -- HanzoHattori 08:25, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh rly?
A.C. Grayling: For this very reason I’m careful to say that I judge area bombing to be a moral crime, thus not using the expression 'war crime', a concept which technically gets its content from the Nuremberg Principles of 1945. But in view of the international law which has arisen since the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the question of protecting civilians in time of war – the First Protocol of which is a direct response to area bombing in WWII – retrospectively it is clear that the international community regards it as an act that should be called a war crime. -- HanzoHattori 12:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Google is your friend. He fights for FREEDOM (even if not in China) Anyway, "not" a war crime only becuase he says there was no concept of war crime yet when it was commited. But we agree the Nazis AND Allies were commiting war crimes at all, right? Because we have this article and it's not empty, right? And so, "in retropsective", it's "clear" "it as an act that should be called a war crime". (It's all kind of saying nazis were "not" commiting genocide because there was no word " genocide" yet) -- HanzoHattori 14:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Let's just see this from the today's perspective. Otherwise, Nazis did not commit genocide - there was no term of crime of genocide yet, it was created in response to what was done in the war, and this included the Genocide Convention (same the laws regarding urban carpet bombings). So, should I "correct" all the articles about Nazi Gaermany and the Holocaust? Of course not.
Instead, we have some odd German neo-Nazi "historian" claiming. Uh. -- HanzoHattori 19:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
AGAIN, there was no law against genocide then (no such word even). So, the Nazis are not guilty of genocide? y/n Talking about Wikipedia. See: [16] -- HanzoHattori 07:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
We do not have to decide if the Holocaust was a genocide, all we have to do is report those who state that it was. In this case Grayling has made it clear that he thinks area bombing was a moral crime and explains why he does not think it a war crime. We have reported that Jörg Friedrich thinks it was a war crime. If there is any other notable historian or judicial review that holds the same opinion as him then it should be added. -- Philip Baird Shearer 14:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Can we move book titles and academic positions from the main text to the footnotes? It makes the article unecessarily wordy, and it is not standard practice in encyclopedias or scholarly works to give titles and the backgrounds of the authors cited, except in footnotes. Grant | Talk 11:58, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I inserted into the intro a comparison of the magnitude of the Allied war crimes as compared to those of the Germans and Japanese but Philip Baird Shearer deleted it.
I think it is important to provide a comparison between the scale of the Holocaust and the scale of war crimes that the Allies were charged with. Even Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden do not match the Holocaust in scale.
I'm not sure whether there is an appropriate comparison for the war crimes that the Japanese were charged with. Is it reasonable to compare numbers of Allied POWs mistreated by Japanese forces versus numbers of Japanese POWs mistreated by Allied forces? Would there be a significant difference?
Can it be argued that Japanese and German war crimes were intentional strategies formulated and sanctioned by the highest authorities whereas Allied war crimes (other than bombings such as Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden) were more spontaneous, grass-roots actions which higher command may have failed to respond to adequately but did not initiate?
NB: Yes, I realize that Katyn Forest was probably an intentional strategy formulated and sanctioned by Stalin. The difficulty of drawing these distinctions doesn't make it any less important to draw them for the reader.
-- Richard 07:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Francisco Gómez points out in an article published in the International Review of the Red Cross that, with respect to the "anti-city" or "blitz" strategy, that "in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property."
It may be factual that he pointed this out, but the quote itself is false. Francisco Gómez (and the person who added this pointless tidbit) apparently never read the Hague Convention of 1907.
-- 76.224.88.36 05:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, Philip Baird Shearer, but this article is also on my watchlist and it has occurred to me that Dresden certainly deserves to be mentioned by name here since the articles say "Many things classified as war crimes today were not such at the time. Some things classified as a war crimes today, such as area bombing, were not war crimes during World War II."
"Incidents that occurred during the involvement of the relevant nation in World War II include the following. Not all of these are agreed to be war crimes."
"The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to [area] bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime."
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned here, then surely Dresden also deserves mention here as well. Of course, we have to caveat the mention with all the standard reasons why it was not considered a war crime then and why it should or should not be considered a war crime now.
-- Richard 08:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Do you think this article might be improved by splitting it up? One article would be titled Allied war crimes in the Pacific Theater during World War II. I'm not sure what the other one would be called. Perhaps Allied war crimes in the European Theater during World War II. My thought here is that there could be two good articles on each theater if we were allowed to focus on each theater separately. Mashing the two together leads to the "laundry list" feel and results in a lack of focus. -- Richard 03:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I could see a good case for splitting this between the "eastern" and "western" allies. The British, United States, Canadians, Free French vrs. the Soviet Union and Eastern European Nations. From a cultural and historical perspective one can say that Stalin's Soviet Union was not entirely comparable to the other allies. It's well known that Stalin committed crimes against humanity after World War II, and independent of the war. This seems to be relatively well accepted. Also, the war between Germany and the Soviets and other Eastern Allies can be considered a very different dynamic. The British/US/Canadians fought along side each other and also all had involvement in the pacific. The Germans treated the POW's on the Western Fround differently then those on the Eastern, and the USSR responded in kind. It was much a war of attrition. For these reasons, and because of uneasy alience and later estrangement and independance of the fights, I think it would be worth considering whether the "Allies" should be lumped together in such a manner. DrBuzz0 04:02, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I am opposed to splitting the article, but the large sub article on the Treatment of POWs in the Far East should be moved into its own article with only a one line summary here as Grant has done Stirling work turning it into a generalised accusations. -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
DrBuzz0, as with the Pacific War, the war in Eastern Europe was fought according to quite different standards than elsewhere (by both sides). That is why I suggested separate articles on Allied war crimes in Western Europe during World War II and Soviet war crimes during World War II.
I stress that I am not actually suggesting this article be split, merely that new articles on those subjects be created. Grant | Talk 10:12, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Death rates of POWs held by Axis powers
The list doesn't include Polish POWs in German hands. Does anybody know the number of them and POWs that were Jewish ?-- Molobo 23:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I’ve asked this question here before and because it is so ridiculous I’m going to ask it again. How is burning houses by Canadians a war crime? There were some Canadian and American Shermans right after the end of the war who either did not have enough of the fight or arrived too late to see action and were driving up and down the streets of one German town firing their main guns at houses at random. Some of them burned no doubt. Was this a war crime? Or because it took place after VE day is it considered to not be a war crime? I’ve read the long discussion page and don’t really understand why there is a conflict. For people who have their heads in the sand the Hague Convention is something that is talked about during peace time. During war the rules of war go out the window and killing of the enemy after they surrender, becomes after a while, as natural as killing the enemy on the battlefield. The Canadians also killed prisoners in Italy after they learnt how the peasents had been treated and also killed prisoners in NW Europe. Sometimes because of having no one to spare to escort the prisoners to the back sometimes because of the prisoners smart talking back to their captors and somtimes just because and it happened often with no concern of it being a war crime. Every Army did it and it happened in every war. The Poles in NW Europe were well known for finishing off the wounded enemy after a battle and it was tolerated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brocky44 ( talk • contribs) 17:10, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
Here's a little story, by a Canadian soldier who witnessed the war, about how easy it was to kill and a hint that it happened many times.
I don't think we were any better than the Germans, I don't think that for one minute. We did a lot of things too. I've seen them. You couldn't be up to your arse in the thing and not know that what they were doing, we were doing too. There's one man in this town-and I could point him out to you who's killed lots of Germans. And he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met. Officer in the Legion. Helps with the kids' soccer league. Good, decent business man. But I was in the same outfit with him. I know. This was in Holland. There was a lot of snow on the ground. We were on patrol and we ambushed this bunch of Jerries. Eight of them. Two were Panzer officers, because they wore those black uniforms the captains of German tanks wore. The other guys with them were their crew. We saw them coming around the edge of this little forest, and they just walked in and that was it. One officer was a young guy and his English was good and he said they had been trying toget back to their lines. I guess they didn’t like the snow any more than we did, or the cold. He made a couple of little jokes, one about if they got the firewood then we could light the fire and we’d all stay warm. Another little joke he made was we could roast a pig, and we sort of laughed too. He said they’d passed a Dutch farmyard back a bit and there might be a pig-and schnapps. The war was over for him, and I guess he was glad. So we’re standing there and I’m thinking that we’ll have to take these prisoners back, so that
would be the end of the patrol. And then this lieutenant, he just turned to the guy with the Bren and he said, “Shoot them.” Just like that. Shoot them down. The officer with the blond hair, the one who was making the jokes, he sort of made a little run forward and put his arms across his chest and he said something and the guy with the Bren just cut loose. He just opened up. He just cut them down every which way, about chest level because he’s shooting from the hip. There were two, I think, still flopping like gaffed salmon, and this guy we called Whitey from Cape Breton-we called him whitey because he was always boasting how good a coalminer he was-he shot those two with a pistol the lieutenant let him carry. That was it. It probably went into our history , I guess, as a German patrol wiped out. None of us really thought too much
about it. They might have done the same to us. But I’ll tell you this, a year before, if I’d been there, I’d have been puking up my guts. It only took a minute. Maybe less than that. One of our guys who understood German said what the lieutenant said just before he was shot down was “Mother.”
There is more where that came from. I hope that some Wiki editor has the decency to delete the terrible burning houses war crime and add something a little more believable. Brocky44 04:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
"in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property."
Does this include war crimes?
~~collective conscious
The list of accused war crimes by allied forces is seriously lacking. The number of accusations against the Allied powers for war crimes and the ackowledgement of them is severly inequitable. Viewing numerous military documents form both sides, I ma surprised that the U.S. has not even addressed or denied but ignored many accusations of war crimes by such victims as the Vietnamese. For example, several witnesses and North Vietnamese PAVN units witnessed and testified that U.S. soldiers took a whole village and one by one drowned them in a river. Another examlpe would be My LAi 4 which was a seperate hamlet from the My Lai massacre where B Company was acussed of killing many innocent villagers. B company soldiers never admitted nor denied allegations, they stated they "couldn't remember". The U.S. has ignored numeorus accusations as such. Granted there are many that are easily faked. Yet compare the treatment of accusations of U.S. war crimes to others. Anyone that actually looks at primary rather than secondary sources will see a wealth of information that is unexplored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.127.109.240 ( talk) 04:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Why was the US food policy part deleted as well? It was properly sourced. Wiki1609 ( talk) 12:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)