Allied war crimes during World War II

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

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

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

Background

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

Major Allies

War crimes were committed by the Western Allied powers, but not on the same scale as those of the Axis powers and the Soviet Union. The Western Allies prosecuted a number of war crimes committed by their own forces, but Allied war crimes were not prosecuted by the post-war international military tribunals.

Allied soldiers in all theatres sometimes killed enemy soldiers who were attempting to surrender or after they had surrendered. This was particularly common on the Eastern Front and in the Asia-Pacific theatre.

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

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

Soviet Union

Main article: Soviet war crimes § World War II

See also: Soviet atrocities committed against prisoners of war during World War II

The Soviet Union was responsible for imprisoning, deporting and often massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians and POWs from occupied or annexed territories. This included the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in 1940 and the Gegenmiao massacre of over 1,000 Japanese women and children in 1945.

Mass grave of the victims of the Katyn massacre after discovery in 1943

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

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

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

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

The expulsion of 12 million to 14 million ethnic Germans from Soviet occupied territories is estimated to have caused between 500,000 and 2 million deaths from 1944 to 1946.

United Kingdom

Main article: British war crimes § World War II

Area bombing of cities

The city centre of Dresden after the bombing

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

Unrestricted naval warfare

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

Historian Alfred de Zayas writes that while it was British policy to rescue shipwreck survivors, German military documents provide credible evidence that the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force sometimes fired on survivors after the sinking of German vessels. In July 1941, the submarine commander Anthony Miers of HMS Torbay twice ordered his crew to kill enemy shipwreck survivors in the Mediterranean. Historian Jürgen Rohwer calls this "the only instance of a war crime committed by a British submarine commander." Miers was reprimanded but later was awarded the Victoria Cross and promoted to admiral.

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

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

Abuses against enemy military and POWs

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

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

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

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

Abuses against civilians

On the Western Front in 1944-1945, British troops sometimes killed civilians or destroyed their homes if they had undisclosed weapons in them or showed support for the Nazis.

Italian statistics record eight rapes and nineteen attempted rapes by British soldiers in Italy between September 1943 and December 1945. However, it is likely that this understates the incidence of rape as many victims probably did not report the crime for fear of retribution or dishonouring their family. Although there were numerous reports of British troops sexually assaulting German civilians, they were lower than the British authorities expected. Nevertheless, reports of sexual assaults in Germany and other occupied areas increased in the final months of the war and in the early months of peace.

Looting farms and other civilian properties of food, alcohol, livestock and valuables was common, particularly when British troops reached Germany. The British paid French civilians over £60,000 compensation for looting and theft by October 1944. In May 1945, British and US authorities paid £220,000 compensation for looting in the Nijmegen region of the Netherlands. Over 280,000 claims for compensation were settled by March 1945. The authorities generally tolerated British looting in Germany until fighting ceased in May.

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

United States

Main article: United States war crimes § World War II

See also: List of war crimes committed during World War II § Crimes perpetrated by the United States

Area bombing of cities

The American policy of area bombing of cities and towns in Axis and occupied territory is sometimes considered a war crime, particularly in relation to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the bombing of Tokyo and the bombing of Dresden. However, the legality of aerial bombing of civilian areas was unclear at the time.

Unrestricted naval warfare

On December 7, 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US Navy declared unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan, in contravention of international law.

On September 16, 1942, a US Army Air Force (USAAF) B-24 Liberator bomber was ordered to attack the German submarine U-156 which was rescuing survivors after it had sunk the British troopship Laconia. The submarine displayed a red cross flag and had survivors on its deck and in life rafts it was towing. The bomber attacked the submarine with bombs and depth charges, forcing the submarine to cut the rafts adrift and crash dive. One of the B-24's bombs also landed among the life rafts, overturning them. The following day, the same B-24 attacked another German submarine with survivors on board. According to historians Sally and Thomas Malleson, the attack on the U-156 was a prima facie war crime.

On January 26, 1943, the American submarine USS Wahoo sank the Japanese transport ship Buyo Maru off New Guinea. The submarine's commander Dudley Morton then ordered his crew to fire on the survivors in the water and on life boats, thinking that they were Japanese troops. In fact, the majority of the survivors were British Indian prisoners of war. Out of the 1,126 men on board the Japanese ship, 195 Indian troops and 82 Japanese soldiers died in the sinking and subsequent attack. The attack on the survivors of the sinking breached international law.

During and immediately after the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (March 3–5, 1943), U.S. patrol boats and Allied aircraft systematically attacked the survivors of the Japanese warships and troop transport ships sunk or wrecked in the battle. The Allies justified the attacks on the grounds that the survivors were Japanese troops close to their military base and could have quickly returned to the front line.

Abuses against enemy military and POWs

Illegal orders to take no prisoners were sometimes issued by allied commanders. In July 1943, general Patton gave a speech to officers of the US 45th Division, which some of them considered as orders to shoot enemy prisoners. Following the Malmedy massacre of US POWs by SS troops in December 1944, there were formal and informal orders in some American units not to take SS prisoners and, sometimes, no German prisoners at all. Major-General Raymond Hufft admitted that he gave orders to take no prisoners when his troops crossed the Rhine.

Dachau liberation reprisals. Soldiers of the US Seventh Army and SS prisoners in a coal yard at Dachau concentration camp during its liberation. April 29, 1945 (US Army photograph)

There were a number of incidents where American forces killed surrendering troops and prisoners of war in western Europe. Among the deadliest were the Biscari massacre of 11 July 1943, in which American soldiers killed 73 Italian and German prisoners; the Chenogne massacre, in which 50 to 80 German prisoners were shot; and the massacre of about 30 to 50 German guards following the American liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945.

In April 1945, during Operation Teardrop, eight survivors of the sunken German submarine U-546 were tortured by US military personnel in order to gain information on supposed V-1 flying bomb or V-2 rocket attacks on the continental United States.

The killing of POWs and enemy soldiers who were attempting to surrender was particularly common in the Asia-Pacific theatre. Historian John W. Dower writes that while it was "not official policy" for Allied personnel to take no POWs, "over wide reaches of the Asian battleground it was everyday practice". Niall Ferguson and others state that this was a reaction to the bitterness of the fighting in this theatre, to reports of the Japanese mistreating Allied soldiers and prisoners of war and faking surrender to launch surprise attacks, to Allied propaganda dehumanising the Japanese, and to the logistical problems of taking prisoners.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant (j.g.) E. V. McPherson with a Japanese skull on board PT-341

Although some American officers condoned the shooting of surrendering Japanese soldiers, senior officials attempted to stamp it out. Additional leave and other inducements were offered to soldiers who took prisoners, and General Macarthur ordered investigations into alleged shootings of surrendering Japanese. Propaganda leaflets assured the Japanese that if they surrendered they would be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Ferguson suggests that these efforts probably contributed to the fall in the captured-to-killed ratio of Japanese soldiers from 1:100 in late 1944 to 1:7 by July 1945.

There were also several highly publicised cases of American troops collecting body parts from dead Japanese soldiers as trophies. According to historian James Weingartner, "The percentage of U.S. troops who engaged in the collection of Japanese body parts cannot be ascertained, but it is clear that the practice was not uncommon." In January 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered all theatre commanders to supress the practice, but efforts to enforce the directive were patchy.

Abuses against civilians

Ninety-five US personnel were executed for war crimes, mostly for rape or murder of civilians. There were also cases where possible war crimes involving the killing of civilians did not lead to prosecutions, such as in the Sicilian town of Canicatti in July 1943, when an American officer and some infantry shot dead six to eight Italian civilians who were looting a soap factory. Similar cases were also reported in Piano Stella and Vittoria, where US troops allegedly shot Italian civilians accused of collaborating with enemy troops.

There were 904 reported allegations of rape committed by American personnel during the war, resulting in 461 convictions. Criminologist J. Robert Lilly, assuming that only five per cent of rapes were reported, estimates that American servicemen committed 3,640 rapes in France and 11,040 in Germany from 1944 to 1945. Black soldiers were more likely than white soldiers to be charged by military courts with rape, and were usually more severely punished. In the American-occupied zones in Germany and Austria, the number of rapes peaked in mid-1945.

Yuki Tanaka writes that there were "relatively limited" instances of rape of civilians by American forces in the Pacific theatre until the last months of the war. However, there was "a sharp increase" in rapes from the time the Americans invaded Okinawa. George Feifer writes that despite officers warning that the death penalty would be enforced for rape "there were probably thousands of incidents [of rape]" during the battle of Okinawa and immediately after.

There were 76 reported cases of rape or rape and murder in Okinawa in the first five years of occupation, but Tanaka believes most cases went unreported. Historian Peter Schrijvers states that there were 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of Kanagawa Prefecture after the Japanese surrender. However, historian Brian Walsh states that this claim originates from a misreading of Japanese Government crime figures that had actually reported 1,326 criminal incidents of all types involving American forces, including an unspecified number of rapes.

The Yokohama police reported 197 cases of American troops committing rape in September 1945, and the metropolitan police reported 165 such cases in Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture from March 1946 to September 1946. Tanaka considers these figures represent only a small proportion of actual rapes committed by American forces because many went unreported. For the Far East Command as a whole, there were 455 reports of American troops committing rape from 1947 to the end of 1949, resulting in 104 court martials and 53 convictions. Walsh concludes, "there is no credible evidence of mass rape by American soldiers during the Occupation."

China

Some victims of the Tongzhou massacre.

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

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

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

Examples of war crimes committed by Chinese associated forces include:

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

France

French Army

See also: Abbeville massacre

Some civilian victims of the Abbeville massacre, May 1940.

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

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

Maquis

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

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

Goumiers

See also: Marocchinate

Moroccan Goumiers at Monte Cassino, 1944.

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

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

Other Allies

Australia

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

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

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

Canada

Murder of POWs

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

Wanton destruction of property

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

Yugoslavia

Armed conflict		Perpetrator
World War II in Yugoslavia		Yugoslav Partisans
Incident	Type of crime	Persons responsible	Notes
Bleiburg repatriations	Alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	The victims were mostly Yugoslav collaborationist troops (ethnic Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes), but also included a number of civilians. They were executed without trial in an act of vengeance for the genocide committed by the pro-Axis collaborationist states (in particular the Ustaše) installed by the Nazis during the German occupation of Yugoslavia.
Foibe massacres	War crimes, crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians. Ethnic cleansing.	No prosecutions.	Following Italy's 1943 armistice with the Allied powers up to 1947, OZNA and Yugoslav Partisans executed in Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia a number between 11,000 and 20,000 of the local ethnic Italian population (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians), as well against anti-communists in general (even Croats and Slovenes), usually associated with Fascism, Nazism and collaboration with Axis, as well as against real, potential or presumed opponents of Tito communism. The type of attack was state terrorism, reprisal killings, and ethnic cleansing against Italians. The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus.
Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–45	War crimes, crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	1944–1945 killings of ethnic Germans (Danube Swabians), Rusyns (Ruthenians) and Hungarians in Bačka, as well as Serb prisoners of war and civilians.
Kočevski Rog massacre	War crimes, crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	Massacres of prisoners of war, and their families.
Macelj massacre	Crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	Massacres of prisoners of war, and their families.
Tezno trench	Crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	Massacres of prisoners of war, and their families.
Barbara Pit	Crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	Massacres of prisoners of war, and their families.
Prevalje mass grave	Crimes against humanity: murder of prisoners of war and civilians.	No prosecutions.	Massacres of prisoners of war, and their families.

Comparative death rates of POWs

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

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

Killed by the Allied powers

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

Killed by Axis powers

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

Summary table

Percent killed

		Origin
		Soviet Union	United States and United Kingdom	China	Western Allies	Germany	Japan
Held by	Soviet Union	–	–	–	–	14.70 –35.80	10.00
	United Kingdom	–	–	–	–	0.03
	United States	–	–	–	–	0.15	varying
	France	–	–	–	–	2.58
	East European	–	–	–	–	32.90
	Germany	57.50	4.00			–	–
	Japan		included in Western Allies (27)	not documented	27.00	–	–

Moral equivalence arguments

Historians in the 21st century have showed an increasing interest in Allied war crimes. Grayling argues that that this interest is legitimate but should not descend into revisionist arguments that Allied actions were morally equivalent to the Holocaust and other major war crimes committed by Germany and Japan.

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

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

See also

War crimes committed by the Axis powers and their collaborators

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

Allied war crimes

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

Other

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

References

Sources

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Further reading

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