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"Nevertheless, the prevalent international legal opinion is that these bombings were not a war crime." I deleted this part because it is a very PoV and subjective section. If 16,000 innocent victims during the Invasion of Poland was a war crime, then this certainly is. The winner of a war writes history as we all know, and Wikipedia has a Neutral Point of View. Both sources are American foundations which are obviously biased. If these are not classified as one of the heaviest war crimes ever committed, we could scrap 90% of the German war crimes article. Salaskan 15:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Fixed the first citation to the journal it was published it. That he was US UN ambassador's at the time is significant as he represents the US Government's position on this issue . -- Philip Baird Shearer 17:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
According to WP:V,
English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to foreign-language sources, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly.
So, in my reading, one cannot discard information just on the basis of it being sourced in the language of the country where the event happened.
And 2003 papers can't be labeled as "german propaganda"...
-- Lou Crazy 11:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
The Nazis did not have many good things to say about the Māori Battalion of the New Zealand 2nd Division, the soldiers of British Indian Army (especially the Gurkhas). I would take a long hard look at any document which uses primary sources based on WWII German sources. -- Philip Baird Shearer 21:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Dresden was a city on a rail hub close to the front lines, ("...figures for October 1944 ... A total of 28 military trains, altogether carrying almost twenty thousand officers and men, were in transit through Dresden-Neustadt each day. There is no reason to believe that three months later ... movements from eastern and western fronts would have decreased substantially" Taylor Dresden Tuesday 13th February 1945 page 186,187) that was the primary reason it was a target, the secondary reason was it was the largest unbombed German city and it contained war industries. Before the Rotterdam Blitz and the decision on May 15 1940 to change RAF directives, the British had bombed German towns west of the Rhine if they were rail hubs (Taylor page 111) because they considerd them to be legitimate even under the restricted rules of engagement they were using at that time. Also before the 1944 June Landings in Normandy the RAF and the USAAF had bombed the French rail network at least as far removed from Normandy as Dresden was from the Eastern Front in a purly tacitcal support role.
Much better examples of German towns of the type that Friedrich is talking about are those which Detlef Siebert wrote about in an article on British Bombing Strategy in World War Two for the BBC: "Some ... like Würzburg or Pforzheim, were selected primarily because they were easy for the bombers to find and destroy. Because they had a medieval centre, they were expected to be particularly vulnerable to fire attack." -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem with that source was that Operation Thunderclap was never launched, (it was a contingency plan never activated), What Grierson said was: "First of all they [Dresden and similar towns] are the centres to which evacuees are being moved. They are centres of communications through which traffic is moving across to the Russian Front, and from the Western Front to the East, and they are sufficiently close to the Russian Front for the Russians to continue the successful prosecution of their battle. I think these three reasons probably cover the bombing." Taylor writes on page 413 of Dresden Tuesday 13 Feb 45 that "another journalist asked Grierson whether 'the principal aim of such bombing of Dresden would be to cause confusion among the refugees or to blast communications carrying military supplies'. 'primary communications' Grierson affirmed. 'To prevent them moving military supplies. To stop movement in all directions if possible - movement is everything.' He then added a fairly offhand remark about also trying to destroy 'what is left of German morale'"
The point is that Dresden was a major rail hub near to the front lines and was targeted primerily for that reason. (It would have fallen into the communications zone in the theater of operations). This is made clear in the section Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Reasons for the attack. For example see the memo from Secretary of State for Air, to Churchill "The Air Staff have now arranged that, subject to the overriding claims of attacks on enemy oil production and other approved target systems within the current directive, available effort should be directed against Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig or against other cities where severe bombing would not only destroy communications vital to the evacuation from the east, but would also hamper the movement of troops from the west." coupled with the JIC recommendation "We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end." -- Philip Baird Shearer 16:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
"Not only was Dresden an important transport hub, used to transfer men and materials to the eastern front, it was also by 1945 a major centre of war manufactury." That's a lie. The city had no industry and it was bombed after it was filled with reffuges from Soviet-occupied Germany. Mitsos 09:14, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, White Guard, I find you comments to be grotesque.
Dresden as 'Goebbels last victory?' That's absurd. Would you have us believe that everyone who feels pity for the defenseless German civilians who were killed in Dresden is a proponet of Nazism and Nazi racial ideology? Because if that's true, then I suppose everyone who feels pity for defenseless British civilians who were killed in London is a proponent of British imperialism and British racial ideology.
Automatically branding everyone who disagrees with you as a Nazi is the worst kind of slander, and totally destructive to civil discussion.
So I suppose you would have us believe that the wanton destruction of lives and property that was the fire-bombing of Dresden was justfied simply because Dresden was an important German city. Perhaps you also believe that the Blitz is justified simply because London is an important British city?
Its also interesting how you use sanitizing language: you say that incendary bombs 'soften up' 'targets'. Actually, incendary bombs burn and destroy men, women, and children. And the city was 'vulnerable' to 'the final knock-out blow'. Yes, vulnerable because they were defenseless civlians living in flammable wooden houses. And it was to be 'the final knock-out blow' even though there were no military personnel in the city- no one who could fight back. Defenseless. As you yourself point out, that's why it was chosen.
And you call the Germans the criminals! Its their own fault for being helpless, you say! Lets blame the victim, shall we? Lets blame the British for not being able to properly defend London, lets call them the real criminals of the Blitz! Could anything be more insane?
But at least your honest: you are very open in admitting- it would be a confession if it wasn't so brazen- that you don't much care about the Germans who were killed. Its not worth apologizing for, not worth feeling sorry for.
Imagine if the Germans failed to apologize for their murders, for their crimes! The world would be up in arms! But if the Germans are the ones who suffer, the crime is less grevious, more palatible.
Perhaps German lives are not as valuable? -- Filippo Argenti 02:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
not are considered as war crimes in USA, but it is from the rest of the world. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arigato1 ( talk • contribs) 17:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC).
Actually three issues: 1. Is this article about actual prosecuted war crimes or can anyone's assumed war crime be added? 2. Does the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constitute a war crime? 3. Can references given by Americans automatically get removed as "biased" when discussing American actions as a war crime or not a war crime?
There are a couple of people that are actively reverting on both sides of the issue, and this page needs to be stabilized. The assistance of Admins would be appreciated. CodeCarpenter 15:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
IvoShandor and Parsecboy have you read the entry for the A-bombings? If so why talk in vague terms and not comment on the quality of the references supplied for the A-bombings? IvoShandor why only scholars are not court cases better?
CodeCarpenter not all war crimes come to trial for example see Le Paradis massacre and Wormhoudt massacre, which is why we have the sentence in the introduction which reads "Other incidents are alleged by certain historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but that for a variety of reasons were not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute." -- Philip Baird Shearer 21:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
The difference is not always that clear because politics gets involved. For example at Nuremberg Trials it stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was a breach of treaty obligations. And it noted that the Allies had done that, but no one from the a Allied side was tried for the crime. So did the Allies commit a war crime or not in adopting unrestricted submarine warfare?
It is beyond doubt that the Soviets committed mass rape in eastern Germany. But few if any were prosecuted for those crimes. Should the historical record as mentioned by many sources one of the most prominent English language sources being the Military historian Anthony Beevor or should we not include it in this article as there were no trails?
The two sources given for the A-bomb was not a war crime are sufficient to show that there is a contrary view and to give a NPOV. It goes without saying that the war time government of the USA did not think that they were committing a crime and the sources given, show that the current US government still thinks that no crime was committed under the international law framed by the treaties that the USA has ratified, and the second source explains how little international law there was in this area in 1945. -- Philip Baird Shearer 22:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
CodeCarpenter I think you are confused about something. There is a difference between alleging that OJ committed a murder, and stating that Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered (by person or persons unknown). Jack the Ripper was never bought to trial but his victims were murdered. It is a difference between a list of perpetrators and a list of victims. The latter tends to be a more complete list :-( It is beyond doubt that the Wormhoudt massacre took place and that it was a war crime, but unlike the Le Paradis massacre the perpetrator(s) were never brought to justice. -- Philip Baird Shearer 22:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
CodeCarpenter, this cannot be compared to a murder trial, and those Japanese infants killed in the bombings weren't throwing grenades at Americans, so self-defence wouldn't work either. This is more comparable to the fire-bombing of Dresden during WWII. This was a deliberate targeting of civilians, Hiroshima was a city with practically nil military value. Using your reasoning CodeCarpenter, Hitler was not responsible for the murder of 6 million jews because he was never tried. This whole dispute can be solved by stating in the article something along the lines of "The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are heavily disputed, with many people on both sides of the issue."
-- Jadger 06:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
There is a problem on the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki page though, which is kernel of the problem for all articles like this were there are advocates on both sides of an issue like "was it a war crime or not". It is "does one put such articles in the Category:War crimes?". This is AFAICT this is a binary decision: either Yes or No where there is no possibility of a "However sentence". -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Parsecboy said: It is not gentlemanly. People die in war; sometimes the wrong people, but it's not necessarily intentional. well, in this case it was intentional, the Americans knew that civilians and infants lived in the city, and intentionally targeted it knowing these civilians would die. It was not an army depot, it was a city that was based around the treatment of wounded soldiers, if in defining a military target you use the number of invalides, then yes, Hiroshima was a military target. But other then that, it was not a military target.
The fact that we are having this discussion points out in the first place that it is viewed as a war crime, maybe not by everyone, but by a sizeable number of people.
-- Jadger 02:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
This was a deliberate targetting of civilians, surely you can't support that? This is entirely different than conventional bombings, because conventional bombings are meant to destroy a target/factory and its immediate surroundings. This is more comparable to the bombing of Rotterdam or Dresden than it is to a conventional bombing, because conventional bombings atleast pretended they were trying to hit a specific target rather than civilians. As for your explanation of its military importance, that is using a bazooka on an anthill, it was unwarranted.
-- Jadger 17:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Your whole argument is Original Research, and cannot be verified at all. In most other cases cities were not targeted, the railway stations, factories, etc. were targeted, they were in the cities, but it did not mean the whole city was the target. You can not excuse something that happened and say "that was (total) war", we must acknowledge that it happened and that it was a horrible thing and move on. The atomic bombings were different in that they were meant to destroy the whole city, and to force the Japanese government to surrender by telling them "If you don't surrender, we will do this to more of your civilians"
-- Jadger 02:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
The argument that Japan was ready to surrender, and had the Allies indicated that they would've allowed Hirohito to retain his position, they would have surrendered without the A-bombs/August Storm is irrelvant. that is OR, so is It wasn't to deliberately kill civilians, it was to cow the Japanese into surrendering, to avoid an incredibly costly (in terms of military and civilian lives lost) invasion. because an invasion wasn't going to be necessary anyways, the Japanese had already started arranging for peace talks before the first A bomb was dropped. And the intentional targetting of a place where you know thousands of civilians is entirely a war crime. unless you think the bombing of Frampol was not a war crime. It was totally reckless and ignored the obvious loss of innocent life. Would you poison your dog's food (killing your dog) just to kill the racoon that comes around each night and eats its food? of course not, it was overkill and reckless.
yes, it was a total war, I think you are confused, total war does not mean basic humanity can be thrown out the window and international laws can be broken. And for the record, I don't necessarily think it was a warcrime in the strictest sense of the word, but should be included on this page because many would see it as an atrocity and this article is about atrocious things done by the Allies.
-- Jadger 07:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Have we reached a solution here? Or has everyone lost interest? Parsecboy 15:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
With the add of this new section into the article, once again we have someone who tries to stress so-called war crimes committed by the Allied (or, in the case at hand, by the US troops) in order to make those committed by the Axis Powers more acceptable. This is a well known strategy and has been used for instance by people like David Irving a.o. ( [2]) All what has been added about this "policy of killing surrending soldiers and POWs" is based on one single book. Which of course explains why only 7,500 Japanese were taken prisoner while 75,000 were killed. So, the cover-up about what happened at Okinawa worked perfectly almost till know. Most of the people were convinced that the fanatic Japanese soldiers prefered to die than to surrender, as most of the books, articles and reports about Okinawe say. In fact this was a cover-up operation created to hide the truth: the Japanese were not fanatics. They tried to surrender but were killed by blood hungry and ruthless American soldiers. Thanks God, someone here restaured the truth. Just like David Irving did in a speech he made at Dresden’s Palace of Culture in February 1990 when he said "The Holocaust suffered by the Germans in Dresden was real. The one against the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz is complete fiction". -- Lebob-BE 03:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I think I'd better respond properly to Lebob-BE ( talk · contribs)s ramblings.
“ |
A History of Sexual Violence in Okinawa by U.S. Servicemen. Although formal U.S. occupation ended in 1952, Okinawa remained under U.S. military authority until 1972, when the island reverted to Japanese rule. The United States and Japan signed a SOFA in 1960 to establish, among other things, the jurisdictional boundaries applying to U.S. military personnel on the island. This relationship between the U.S. military and the local populace of Okinawa is marred with hundreds of allegations of sexual crimes. Okinawan police reports from 1945 to 1950, for example, reveal 278 reported rapes by U.S. servicemen, including the rape of a nine month old girl in 1949. Similarly, in 1955, local records indicate that a U.S. serviceman kidnapped, raped, and murdered a six year old Okinawa girl.
With the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, local authorities gained more authority to address problems caused by the U.S. military, but acts of sexual violence persisted nonetheless. A local human rights group, Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence, cite Okinawan police records that report U.S. military personnel raped 200 Okinawan women between 1972 and 1997. This number, however, is likely to be artificially low not only because of the difficulty and uncertainty of criminal justice processes, but also because of the historical under-reporting of sex crimes. |
” |
“ | We Americans have the dangerous tendency in our international thinking to take a holier-than-thou attitude toward other nations. We consider ourselves to be more noble and decent than other peoples, and consequently in a better position to decide what is right and wrong in the world. What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers. We topped off our saturation bombing and burning of enemy civilians by dropping atomic bombs on two nearly defenseless cities, thereby setting an all-time record for instantaneous mass slaughter.
As victors we are privileged to try our defeated opponents for their crimes against humanity; but we should be realistic enough to appreciate that if we were on trial for breaking international laws, we should be found guilty on a dozen counts. We fought a dishonorable war, because morality had a low priority in battle. The tougher the fighting, the less room for decency, and in Pacific contests we saw mankind reach the blackest depths of bestiality. |
” |
“ | The first form of fury is most often linked to the hatred American troops felt towards the Japanese. The following words from a lieutenant of the 11th Airborne Division to his mother illustrate vividly this point: "Nothing can describe the hate we feel for the Nips--the destruction, the torture, burning & death of countless civilians, the savage fight without purpose--to us they are dogs and rats--we love to kill them--to me and all of us killing Nips is the greatest sport known--it causes no sensation of killing a human being but we really get a kick out of hearing the bastards scream" (p. 207). This hatred heightened the dehumanization of the Japanese soldiers whether alive or already dead. Most dead Japanese were desecrated and mutilated. "American soldiers on
Okinawa were seen urinating into the gaping mouth of the slain. They were 'rebutchered.' 'As the bodies jerked and quivered,' a marine on Guadalcanal wrote of the repeated shooting of corpses, 'we would laugh gleefully and hysterically'" (p. 209). As the GIs closed in on the Japanese archipelago, the more the difference between combatants and noncombatants became fuzzy and almost pointless to them.
For instance, rape--which is considered a way to sharpen aggressiveness of soldiers, steeling male bonding among warriors, and, moreover, "reflects a burning need to establish total dominance of the other" (p. 211)--was a general practice against Japanese women. "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone" (p. 212). |
” |
-- Stor stark7 Talk 00:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I removed the section based on a article written by Niall Ferguson "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 11, no. 2 (April 2004): 34-78. because I think all of the sentences need discussing before they are included in the article. -- Philip Baird Shearer 16:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
The mortality rate for German POW's in U.S. hands was more than 4 times higher than the rate for those who surrendered to the British.
Further, another advantage with surrendering to the British rather than the Americans was that besides treating them better than the U.S. did, the British also refrained from handing prisoners over to the Soviet Union.
Violating the Geneva Convention of 1929, large numbers of German prisoners were transfered between the Allies. The U.S gave 765,000 to France, 76,000 to Benelux countries, and 200,000 to the Soviet Union.
The U.S. also chose to refuse to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender in Saxony and Bohemia. These soldiers were instead handed over to the Soviet Union.
(The Soviet Union in turn handed German prisoners over to other Eastern European nations, for example 70,000 to Poland)
@Lebob-BE, reading you rant in the previous section, and then seing you start comparing German warcrimes in this section... seems a bit inconsequential to me. Not that I'm surprised.
The exact quotes from the published article.
¨ That was a widespread sentiment. Until the third quarter of 1944, more than half of all German prisoners were held in the East. But thereafter, the share captured by the Americans rose rapidly, as Figure 7 shows. It is clear that many German units sought to surrender to the Americans in preference to other Allied forces, and particularly the Red Army. With the benefit of hindsight, they would have done better to look for British captors, since the British treated German prisoners better than the Americans did, and were also less willing to hand them over to the Soviets.189 But successful psychological warfare led the Germans to expect the kindest treatment from US forces.
(Footnote text 189) Contrary to the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1929, a substantial number of German prisoners were transferred to other powers by those they surrendered to. The Americans handed over 765000 to France, 76000 to the Benelux countries and 200000 to Russia. In Saxony and Bohemia they also refused to accept the surrender of German troops, who were handed over to the Russians: H. Nawratil, Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen und Verschleppter: mit einer bersicht ber die europa¨ischen Nachkriegsverluste (Munich and Berlin, 1988), pp. 36f.
Similar efforts were made to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. ‘Surrender passes’ and translations of the Geneva Convention were dropped on Japanese positions, and concerted efforts were made to stamp out the practice of taking no prisoners. On 14 May 1944 General MacArthur sent a telegram to the commander of the Alamo Force demanding an ‘investigation . . . of numerous reports reaching this headquarters that Japanese carrying surrender passes and attempting to surrender in Hollandia area have been killed by our troops’.190 The Psychological Warfare Branch representative at X Corps, Captain William R. Beard, complained that his efforts were being negated ‘by the front-line troops shooting [Japanese] when they made an attempt to surrender’.191 But gradually the message got through, especially to more experienced troops. ‘Don’t shoot the bastard!’ shouted one veteran when a Japanese emerged from a foxhole waving a surrender lea et.192
Obviously I should have used the word Germans more, but I was anxious not to violate copyright to much.
As to the rants heard here trying to blacklabel the author, please, The source was listed here as further reading for quite a while, and freely available then to boot. The fact that you obviously never bothered to read it speaks volumes of your "knowledge" of history, since you seem unable to even make an attempt to read available information.
The sources used for death rates. Sources: B. Moore and K. Fedorowich, ‘Prisoners of War’, in B. Moore and K. Fedorowich, Prisoners of War (Oxford and Washington,DC, 1986), p. 1; M. Burleigh, Third Reich (London, Basingstoke and Oxford, 2000), pp. 512–13; S. Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale (New York, 1997), p. 242; S.P.Mackenzie,‘Treatment of Prisoners of War’, Journal of Modern History LXVI (1994), pp. 516–17; J. Keegan (ed.), Times Atlas of the Second World War (London, 1989), p. 205; R. Overmans, ‘German Historiography’, in G. Bischof and S. Ambrose (eds), Eisenhower and the German POWs (Baton Rouge and London, 1992), p. 155.
And just to remind you. I respect your opinions. If you can provide a reliable source that also says the same, they are possibly worthy of inclusion in wikipedia. If not, then stop wasting everybody's time!-- Stor stark7 Talk 22:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
The original text the says "less willing to hand them over to the Soviets." which is not the same as "refrained from handing prisoners over to the Soviet Union". Besides I thought throughout the war the British shipped POWs to Canada and it is not at all clear to me that to do so was in breach of the Geneva Convention (1929). Having written most of the article on the 1929 GC and gone through it article by article, I can not remember an article which placed such a prohibition on the movement of prisoners (that is not to say it was not in the Hague regulations on which the GC 1929 was built, unlike GC 1949 supplanted Hague in this area). There is also a further complication because the Allies considered prisoners after the Debellatio of the Third Reich to be Disarmed Enemy Forces not POWs, and as GC 1949 was drafted to cover this, it suggests that that was the prevalent legal understanding that such prisoners were not POWs and covered by GC 1929. All in all I have not yet read anything here that suggests that the text as written and removed is relevant to this article. (For references to the status of Disarmed Enemy Forces see the footnotes to the ICRC in that article). BTW Stor stark7, the above about Debellation is not for your benefit because I see from the talk page of Talk:Disarmed Enemy Forces that you have already considered that page. -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
My reading of the [
commentary by the ICRC on GCIII] was that transfer of prisoners between powers was not covered by GC 1929. Hence for the need for the additional paragraphs in GCIII. Article 12 (paragraph 2) which were not in GC 1929 Articles 2,25,26 --
Philip Baird Shearer 10:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
At the moment these incidents are listed in the article but the article on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea does not investigate the alleged war crime, and the others do not have reliable sources that the incidents were war crimes. If such sources can not be provided with page numbers for books and the names of the people making the allegations they should be removed:
-- Philip Baird Shearer 09:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The section that Stor stark7 wishes to introduce about Niall Ferguson's alleged American war crimes against the Japanese has I think raised several an important issues.
Like all crimes, war crimes fall into different categories. Some are only war crimes if the person is caught while still behind enemy lines. People like F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas were given their county's highest awards for their gallantry while on a mission which when German agents preformed similar missions against the British, that if caught in Britain resulted in a guilty verdict for spying and an execution unless the agent was useful in the ( Double Cross System). Should all Allied agents who parachuted into Europe be listed here?
During World War II the armies of the major parties to the war were conscript armies. So the criminal profile an army was likely to mirror that of the society from which they came. However two further considerations have to be applied.
If this page is not to be a list of every petty war crime committed by the Allies then we may need a paragraph explaining this.
Returning to Stor stark7's text: That some most American marines came to see the Japanese as the enemy and less than human is part of the indoctrination that all soldiers conscripted to fight a war are put through. That some of them had a tendency not to want to take prisoners is not surprising given the tenaciousness of the Japanese soldier and their tendency (as the American soldiers rightly or wrongly thought) of some of them not to abide by the laws of war when offering to surrender. But what is important is what was the reaction of the American command system? Did they encourage it or try to stop breaches of the Geneva Conventions. (Usually authorities encourage the taking of prisoners because of the information they can provide and because as Niall Ferguson pointed out in the Pity of War, taking prisoners is the fastest way to inflicting casualties on the enemy). I see no harm in mentioning that such incidents took place particularly if the paragraph is phrased explicitly to mention that this is from a research paper by Niall Ferguson. But not every insident needs to be listed and for a NPOV paragraph it should also be highlighted that no quarter was not the policy of the US Army. I mention this because the section where this is discussed on this talk page is called " #Policy of killing surrendering soldiers and POWs" which implies it was US policy which is was not. -- Philip Baird Shearer 12:17, 4 May 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 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 10 |
"Nevertheless, the prevalent international legal opinion is that these bombings were not a war crime." I deleted this part because it is a very PoV and subjective section. If 16,000 innocent victims during the Invasion of Poland was a war crime, then this certainly is. The winner of a war writes history as we all know, and Wikipedia has a Neutral Point of View. Both sources are American foundations which are obviously biased. If these are not classified as one of the heaviest war crimes ever committed, we could scrap 90% of the German war crimes article. Salaskan 15:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Fixed the first citation to the journal it was published it. That he was US UN ambassador's at the time is significant as he represents the US Government's position on this issue . -- Philip Baird Shearer 17:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
According to WP:V,
English-language sources should be given whenever possible, and should always be used in preference to foreign-language sources, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly.
So, in my reading, one cannot discard information just on the basis of it being sourced in the language of the country where the event happened.
And 2003 papers can't be labeled as "german propaganda"...
-- Lou Crazy 11:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
The Nazis did not have many good things to say about the Māori Battalion of the New Zealand 2nd Division, the soldiers of British Indian Army (especially the Gurkhas). I would take a long hard look at any document which uses primary sources based on WWII German sources. -- Philip Baird Shearer 21:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Dresden was a city on a rail hub close to the front lines, ("...figures for October 1944 ... A total of 28 military trains, altogether carrying almost twenty thousand officers and men, were in transit through Dresden-Neustadt each day. There is no reason to believe that three months later ... movements from eastern and western fronts would have decreased substantially" Taylor Dresden Tuesday 13th February 1945 page 186,187) that was the primary reason it was a target, the secondary reason was it was the largest unbombed German city and it contained war industries. Before the Rotterdam Blitz and the decision on May 15 1940 to change RAF directives, the British had bombed German towns west of the Rhine if they were rail hubs (Taylor page 111) because they considerd them to be legitimate even under the restricted rules of engagement they were using at that time. Also before the 1944 June Landings in Normandy the RAF and the USAAF had bombed the French rail network at least as far removed from Normandy as Dresden was from the Eastern Front in a purly tacitcal support role.
Much better examples of German towns of the type that Friedrich is talking about are those which Detlef Siebert wrote about in an article on British Bombing Strategy in World War Two for the BBC: "Some ... like Würzburg or Pforzheim, were selected primarily because they were easy for the bombers to find and destroy. Because they had a medieval centre, they were expected to be particularly vulnerable to fire attack." -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem with that source was that Operation Thunderclap was never launched, (it was a contingency plan never activated), What Grierson said was: "First of all they [Dresden and similar towns] are the centres to which evacuees are being moved. They are centres of communications through which traffic is moving across to the Russian Front, and from the Western Front to the East, and they are sufficiently close to the Russian Front for the Russians to continue the successful prosecution of their battle. I think these three reasons probably cover the bombing." Taylor writes on page 413 of Dresden Tuesday 13 Feb 45 that "another journalist asked Grierson whether 'the principal aim of such bombing of Dresden would be to cause confusion among the refugees or to blast communications carrying military supplies'. 'primary communications' Grierson affirmed. 'To prevent them moving military supplies. To stop movement in all directions if possible - movement is everything.' He then added a fairly offhand remark about also trying to destroy 'what is left of German morale'"
The point is that Dresden was a major rail hub near to the front lines and was targeted primerily for that reason. (It would have fallen into the communications zone in the theater of operations). This is made clear in the section Bombing of Dresden in World War II#Reasons for the attack. For example see the memo from Secretary of State for Air, to Churchill "The Air Staff have now arranged that, subject to the overriding claims of attacks on enemy oil production and other approved target systems within the current directive, available effort should be directed against Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz and Leipzig or against other cities where severe bombing would not only destroy communications vital to the evacuation from the east, but would also hamper the movement of troops from the west." coupled with the JIC recommendation "We consider, therefore, that the assistance which might be given to the Russians during the next few weeks by the British and American strategic bomber forces justifies an urgent review of their employment to this end." -- Philip Baird Shearer 16:47, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
"Not only was Dresden an important transport hub, used to transfer men and materials to the eastern front, it was also by 1945 a major centre of war manufactury." That's a lie. The city had no industry and it was bombed after it was filled with reffuges from Soviet-occupied Germany. Mitsos 09:14, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, White Guard, I find you comments to be grotesque.
Dresden as 'Goebbels last victory?' That's absurd. Would you have us believe that everyone who feels pity for the defenseless German civilians who were killed in Dresden is a proponet of Nazism and Nazi racial ideology? Because if that's true, then I suppose everyone who feels pity for defenseless British civilians who were killed in London is a proponent of British imperialism and British racial ideology.
Automatically branding everyone who disagrees with you as a Nazi is the worst kind of slander, and totally destructive to civil discussion.
So I suppose you would have us believe that the wanton destruction of lives and property that was the fire-bombing of Dresden was justfied simply because Dresden was an important German city. Perhaps you also believe that the Blitz is justified simply because London is an important British city?
Its also interesting how you use sanitizing language: you say that incendary bombs 'soften up' 'targets'. Actually, incendary bombs burn and destroy men, women, and children. And the city was 'vulnerable' to 'the final knock-out blow'. Yes, vulnerable because they were defenseless civlians living in flammable wooden houses. And it was to be 'the final knock-out blow' even though there were no military personnel in the city- no one who could fight back. Defenseless. As you yourself point out, that's why it was chosen.
And you call the Germans the criminals! Its their own fault for being helpless, you say! Lets blame the victim, shall we? Lets blame the British for not being able to properly defend London, lets call them the real criminals of the Blitz! Could anything be more insane?
But at least your honest: you are very open in admitting- it would be a confession if it wasn't so brazen- that you don't much care about the Germans who were killed. Its not worth apologizing for, not worth feeling sorry for.
Imagine if the Germans failed to apologize for their murders, for their crimes! The world would be up in arms! But if the Germans are the ones who suffer, the crime is less grevious, more palatible.
Perhaps German lives are not as valuable? -- Filippo Argenti 02:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
not are considered as war crimes in USA, but it is from the rest of the world. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arigato1 ( talk • contribs) 17:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC).
Actually three issues: 1. Is this article about actual prosecuted war crimes or can anyone's assumed war crime be added? 2. Does the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constitute a war crime? 3. Can references given by Americans automatically get removed as "biased" when discussing American actions as a war crime or not a war crime?
There are a couple of people that are actively reverting on both sides of the issue, and this page needs to be stabilized. The assistance of Admins would be appreciated. CodeCarpenter 15:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
IvoShandor and Parsecboy have you read the entry for the A-bombings? If so why talk in vague terms and not comment on the quality of the references supplied for the A-bombings? IvoShandor why only scholars are not court cases better?
CodeCarpenter not all war crimes come to trial for example see Le Paradis massacre and Wormhoudt massacre, which is why we have the sentence in the introduction which reads "Other incidents are alleged by certain historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but that for a variety of reasons were not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute." -- Philip Baird Shearer 21:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
The difference is not always that clear because politics gets involved. For example at Nuremberg Trials it stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was a breach of treaty obligations. And it noted that the Allies had done that, but no one from the a Allied side was tried for the crime. So did the Allies commit a war crime or not in adopting unrestricted submarine warfare?
It is beyond doubt that the Soviets committed mass rape in eastern Germany. But few if any were prosecuted for those crimes. Should the historical record as mentioned by many sources one of the most prominent English language sources being the Military historian Anthony Beevor or should we not include it in this article as there were no trails?
The two sources given for the A-bomb was not a war crime are sufficient to show that there is a contrary view and to give a NPOV. It goes without saying that the war time government of the USA did not think that they were committing a crime and the sources given, show that the current US government still thinks that no crime was committed under the international law framed by the treaties that the USA has ratified, and the second source explains how little international law there was in this area in 1945. -- Philip Baird Shearer 22:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
CodeCarpenter I think you are confused about something. There is a difference between alleging that OJ committed a murder, and stating that Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered (by person or persons unknown). Jack the Ripper was never bought to trial but his victims were murdered. It is a difference between a list of perpetrators and a list of victims. The latter tends to be a more complete list :-( It is beyond doubt that the Wormhoudt massacre took place and that it was a war crime, but unlike the Le Paradis massacre the perpetrator(s) were never brought to justice. -- Philip Baird Shearer 22:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
CodeCarpenter, this cannot be compared to a murder trial, and those Japanese infants killed in the bombings weren't throwing grenades at Americans, so self-defence wouldn't work either. This is more comparable to the fire-bombing of Dresden during WWII. This was a deliberate targeting of civilians, Hiroshima was a city with practically nil military value. Using your reasoning CodeCarpenter, Hitler was not responsible for the murder of 6 million jews because he was never tried. This whole dispute can be solved by stating in the article something along the lines of "The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are heavily disputed, with many people on both sides of the issue."
-- Jadger 06:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
There is a problem on the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki page though, which is kernel of the problem for all articles like this were there are advocates on both sides of an issue like "was it a war crime or not". It is "does one put such articles in the Category:War crimes?". This is AFAICT this is a binary decision: either Yes or No where there is no possibility of a "However sentence". -- Philip Baird Shearer 10:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Parsecboy said: It is not gentlemanly. People die in war; sometimes the wrong people, but it's not necessarily intentional. well, in this case it was intentional, the Americans knew that civilians and infants lived in the city, and intentionally targeted it knowing these civilians would die. It was not an army depot, it was a city that was based around the treatment of wounded soldiers, if in defining a military target you use the number of invalides, then yes, Hiroshima was a military target. But other then that, it was not a military target.
The fact that we are having this discussion points out in the first place that it is viewed as a war crime, maybe not by everyone, but by a sizeable number of people.
-- Jadger 02:39, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
This was a deliberate targetting of civilians, surely you can't support that? This is entirely different than conventional bombings, because conventional bombings are meant to destroy a target/factory and its immediate surroundings. This is more comparable to the bombing of Rotterdam or Dresden than it is to a conventional bombing, because conventional bombings atleast pretended they were trying to hit a specific target rather than civilians. As for your explanation of its military importance, that is using a bazooka on an anthill, it was unwarranted.
-- Jadger 17:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Your whole argument is Original Research, and cannot be verified at all. In most other cases cities were not targeted, the railway stations, factories, etc. were targeted, they were in the cities, but it did not mean the whole city was the target. You can not excuse something that happened and say "that was (total) war", we must acknowledge that it happened and that it was a horrible thing and move on. The atomic bombings were different in that they were meant to destroy the whole city, and to force the Japanese government to surrender by telling them "If you don't surrender, we will do this to more of your civilians"
-- Jadger 02:14, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
The argument that Japan was ready to surrender, and had the Allies indicated that they would've allowed Hirohito to retain his position, they would have surrendered without the A-bombs/August Storm is irrelvant. that is OR, so is It wasn't to deliberately kill civilians, it was to cow the Japanese into surrendering, to avoid an incredibly costly (in terms of military and civilian lives lost) invasion. because an invasion wasn't going to be necessary anyways, the Japanese had already started arranging for peace talks before the first A bomb was dropped. And the intentional targetting of a place where you know thousands of civilians is entirely a war crime. unless you think the bombing of Frampol was not a war crime. It was totally reckless and ignored the obvious loss of innocent life. Would you poison your dog's food (killing your dog) just to kill the racoon that comes around each night and eats its food? of course not, it was overkill and reckless.
yes, it was a total war, I think you are confused, total war does not mean basic humanity can be thrown out the window and international laws can be broken. And for the record, I don't necessarily think it was a warcrime in the strictest sense of the word, but should be included on this page because many would see it as an atrocity and this article is about atrocious things done by the Allies.
-- Jadger 07:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Have we reached a solution here? Or has everyone lost interest? Parsecboy 15:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
With the add of this new section into the article, once again we have someone who tries to stress so-called war crimes committed by the Allied (or, in the case at hand, by the US troops) in order to make those committed by the Axis Powers more acceptable. This is a well known strategy and has been used for instance by people like David Irving a.o. ( [2]) All what has been added about this "policy of killing surrending soldiers and POWs" is based on one single book. Which of course explains why only 7,500 Japanese were taken prisoner while 75,000 were killed. So, the cover-up about what happened at Okinawa worked perfectly almost till know. Most of the people were convinced that the fanatic Japanese soldiers prefered to die than to surrender, as most of the books, articles and reports about Okinawe say. In fact this was a cover-up operation created to hide the truth: the Japanese were not fanatics. They tried to surrender but were killed by blood hungry and ruthless American soldiers. Thanks God, someone here restaured the truth. Just like David Irving did in a speech he made at Dresden’s Palace of Culture in February 1990 when he said "The Holocaust suffered by the Germans in Dresden was real. The one against the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz is complete fiction". -- Lebob-BE 03:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
I think I'd better respond properly to Lebob-BE ( talk · contribs)s ramblings.
“ |
A History of Sexual Violence in Okinawa by U.S. Servicemen. Although formal U.S. occupation ended in 1952, Okinawa remained under U.S. military authority until 1972, when the island reverted to Japanese rule. The United States and Japan signed a SOFA in 1960 to establish, among other things, the jurisdictional boundaries applying to U.S. military personnel on the island. This relationship between the U.S. military and the local populace of Okinawa is marred with hundreds of allegations of sexual crimes. Okinawan police reports from 1945 to 1950, for example, reveal 278 reported rapes by U.S. servicemen, including the rape of a nine month old girl in 1949. Similarly, in 1955, local records indicate that a U.S. serviceman kidnapped, raped, and murdered a six year old Okinawa girl.
With the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, local authorities gained more authority to address problems caused by the U.S. military, but acts of sexual violence persisted nonetheless. A local human rights group, Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence, cite Okinawan police records that report U.S. military personnel raped 200 Okinawan women between 1972 and 1997. This number, however, is likely to be artificially low not only because of the difficulty and uncertainty of criminal justice processes, but also because of the historical under-reporting of sex crimes. |
” |
“ | We Americans have the dangerous tendency in our international thinking to take a holier-than-thou attitude toward other nations. We consider ourselves to be more noble and decent than other peoples, and consequently in a better position to decide what is right and wrong in the world. What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers. We topped off our saturation bombing and burning of enemy civilians by dropping atomic bombs on two nearly defenseless cities, thereby setting an all-time record for instantaneous mass slaughter.
As victors we are privileged to try our defeated opponents for their crimes against humanity; but we should be realistic enough to appreciate that if we were on trial for breaking international laws, we should be found guilty on a dozen counts. We fought a dishonorable war, because morality had a low priority in battle. The tougher the fighting, the less room for decency, and in Pacific contests we saw mankind reach the blackest depths of bestiality. |
” |
“ | The first form of fury is most often linked to the hatred American troops felt towards the Japanese. The following words from a lieutenant of the 11th Airborne Division to his mother illustrate vividly this point: "Nothing can describe the hate we feel for the Nips--the destruction, the torture, burning & death of countless civilians, the savage fight without purpose--to us they are dogs and rats--we love to kill them--to me and all of us killing Nips is the greatest sport known--it causes no sensation of killing a human being but we really get a kick out of hearing the bastards scream" (p. 207). This hatred heightened the dehumanization of the Japanese soldiers whether alive or already dead. Most dead Japanese were desecrated and mutilated. "American soldiers on
Okinawa were seen urinating into the gaping mouth of the slain. They were 'rebutchered.' 'As the bodies jerked and quivered,' a marine on Guadalcanal wrote of the repeated shooting of corpses, 'we would laugh gleefully and hysterically'" (p. 209). As the GIs closed in on the Japanese archipelago, the more the difference between combatants and noncombatants became fuzzy and almost pointless to them.
For instance, rape--which is considered a way to sharpen aggressiveness of soldiers, steeling male bonding among warriors, and, moreover, "reflects a burning need to establish total dominance of the other" (p. 211)--was a general practice against Japanese women. "The estimate of one Okinawan historian for the entire three-month period of the campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10 days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone" (p. 212). |
” |
-- Stor stark7 Talk 00:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I removed the section based on a article written by Niall Ferguson "Prisoner Taking and Prisoner Killing in the Age of Total War: Towards a Political Economy of Military Defeat" War in History 11, no. 2 (April 2004): 34-78. because I think all of the sentences need discussing before they are included in the article. -- Philip Baird Shearer 16:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
The mortality rate for German POW's in U.S. hands was more than 4 times higher than the rate for those who surrendered to the British.
Further, another advantage with surrendering to the British rather than the Americans was that besides treating them better than the U.S. did, the British also refrained from handing prisoners over to the Soviet Union.
Violating the Geneva Convention of 1929, large numbers of German prisoners were transfered between the Allies. The U.S gave 765,000 to France, 76,000 to Benelux countries, and 200,000 to the Soviet Union.
The U.S. also chose to refuse to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender in Saxony and Bohemia. These soldiers were instead handed over to the Soviet Union.
(The Soviet Union in turn handed German prisoners over to other Eastern European nations, for example 70,000 to Poland)
@Lebob-BE, reading you rant in the previous section, and then seing you start comparing German warcrimes in this section... seems a bit inconsequential to me. Not that I'm surprised.
The exact quotes from the published article.
¨ That was a widespread sentiment. Until the third quarter of 1944, more than half of all German prisoners were held in the East. But thereafter, the share captured by the Americans rose rapidly, as Figure 7 shows. It is clear that many German units sought to surrender to the Americans in preference to other Allied forces, and particularly the Red Army. With the benefit of hindsight, they would have done better to look for British captors, since the British treated German prisoners better than the Americans did, and were also less willing to hand them over to the Soviets.189 But successful psychological warfare led the Germans to expect the kindest treatment from US forces.
(Footnote text 189) Contrary to the terms of the Geneva Convention of 1929, a substantial number of German prisoners were transferred to other powers by those they surrendered to. The Americans handed over 765000 to France, 76000 to the Benelux countries and 200000 to Russia. In Saxony and Bohemia they also refused to accept the surrender of German troops, who were handed over to the Russians: H. Nawratil, Die deutschen Nachkriegsverluste unter Vertriebenen, Gefangenen und Verschleppter: mit einer bersicht ber die europa¨ischen Nachkriegsverluste (Munich and Berlin, 1988), pp. 36f.
Similar efforts were made to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. ‘Surrender passes’ and translations of the Geneva Convention were dropped on Japanese positions, and concerted efforts were made to stamp out the practice of taking no prisoners. On 14 May 1944 General MacArthur sent a telegram to the commander of the Alamo Force demanding an ‘investigation . . . of numerous reports reaching this headquarters that Japanese carrying surrender passes and attempting to surrender in Hollandia area have been killed by our troops’.190 The Psychological Warfare Branch representative at X Corps, Captain William R. Beard, complained that his efforts were being negated ‘by the front-line troops shooting [Japanese] when they made an attempt to surrender’.191 But gradually the message got through, especially to more experienced troops. ‘Don’t shoot the bastard!’ shouted one veteran when a Japanese emerged from a foxhole waving a surrender lea et.192
Obviously I should have used the word Germans more, but I was anxious not to violate copyright to much.
As to the rants heard here trying to blacklabel the author, please, The source was listed here as further reading for quite a while, and freely available then to boot. The fact that you obviously never bothered to read it speaks volumes of your "knowledge" of history, since you seem unable to even make an attempt to read available information.
The sources used for death rates. Sources: B. Moore and K. Fedorowich, ‘Prisoners of War’, in B. Moore and K. Fedorowich, Prisoners of War (Oxford and Washington,DC, 1986), p. 1; M. Burleigh, Third Reich (London, Basingstoke and Oxford, 2000), pp. 512–13; S. Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale (New York, 1997), p. 242; S.P.Mackenzie,‘Treatment of Prisoners of War’, Journal of Modern History LXVI (1994), pp. 516–17; J. Keegan (ed.), Times Atlas of the Second World War (London, 1989), p. 205; R. Overmans, ‘German Historiography’, in G. Bischof and S. Ambrose (eds), Eisenhower and the German POWs (Baton Rouge and London, 1992), p. 155.
And just to remind you. I respect your opinions. If you can provide a reliable source that also says the same, they are possibly worthy of inclusion in wikipedia. If not, then stop wasting everybody's time!-- Stor stark7 Talk 22:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
The original text the says "less willing to hand them over to the Soviets." which is not the same as "refrained from handing prisoners over to the Soviet Union". Besides I thought throughout the war the British shipped POWs to Canada and it is not at all clear to me that to do so was in breach of the Geneva Convention (1929). Having written most of the article on the 1929 GC and gone through it article by article, I can not remember an article which placed such a prohibition on the movement of prisoners (that is not to say it was not in the Hague regulations on which the GC 1929 was built, unlike GC 1949 supplanted Hague in this area). There is also a further complication because the Allies considered prisoners after the Debellatio of the Third Reich to be Disarmed Enemy Forces not POWs, and as GC 1949 was drafted to cover this, it suggests that that was the prevalent legal understanding that such prisoners were not POWs and covered by GC 1929. All in all I have not yet read anything here that suggests that the text as written and removed is relevant to this article. (For references to the status of Disarmed Enemy Forces see the footnotes to the ICRC in that article). BTW Stor stark7, the above about Debellation is not for your benefit because I see from the talk page of Talk:Disarmed Enemy Forces that you have already considered that page. -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
My reading of the [
commentary by the ICRC on GCIII] was that transfer of prisoners between powers was not covered by GC 1929. Hence for the need for the additional paragraphs in GCIII. Article 12 (paragraph 2) which were not in GC 1929 Articles 2,25,26 --
Philip Baird Shearer 10:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
At the moment these incidents are listed in the article but the article on the Battle of the Bismarck Sea does not investigate the alleged war crime, and the others do not have reliable sources that the incidents were war crimes. If such sources can not be provided with page numbers for books and the names of the people making the allegations they should be removed:
-- Philip Baird Shearer 09:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
The section that Stor stark7 wishes to introduce about Niall Ferguson's alleged American war crimes against the Japanese has I think raised several an important issues.
Like all crimes, war crimes fall into different categories. Some are only war crimes if the person is caught while still behind enemy lines. People like F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas were given their county's highest awards for their gallantry while on a mission which when German agents preformed similar missions against the British, that if caught in Britain resulted in a guilty verdict for spying and an execution unless the agent was useful in the ( Double Cross System). Should all Allied agents who parachuted into Europe be listed here?
During World War II the armies of the major parties to the war were conscript armies. So the criminal profile an army was likely to mirror that of the society from which they came. However two further considerations have to be applied.
If this page is not to be a list of every petty war crime committed by the Allies then we may need a paragraph explaining this.
Returning to Stor stark7's text: That some most American marines came to see the Japanese as the enemy and less than human is part of the indoctrination that all soldiers conscripted to fight a war are put through. That some of them had a tendency not to want to take prisoners is not surprising given the tenaciousness of the Japanese soldier and their tendency (as the American soldiers rightly or wrongly thought) of some of them not to abide by the laws of war when offering to surrender. But what is important is what was the reaction of the American command system? Did they encourage it or try to stop breaches of the Geneva Conventions. (Usually authorities encourage the taking of prisoners because of the information they can provide and because as Niall Ferguson pointed out in the Pity of War, taking prisoners is the fastest way to inflicting casualties on the enemy). I see no harm in mentioning that such incidents took place particularly if the paragraph is phrased explicitly to mention that this is from a research paper by Niall Ferguson. But not every insident needs to be listed and for a NPOV paragraph it should also be highlighted that no quarter was not the policy of the US Army. I mention this because the section where this is discussed on this talk page is called " #Policy of killing surrendering soldiers and POWs" which implies it was US policy which is was not. -- Philip Baird Shearer 12:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)