"Overlooked" Atrocities & War Crimes of WWII

November 14, 2021 Rodolfo Ragonesi

When General Field Marshall Paulus and his 6th Army surrendered In Stalingrad, around 85,000 soldiers suffered a slow execution at the hands of the Soviets in their long captivity following surrender.

The Geneva Conventions made it clear at the time that once a war was over the soldiers of the defeated nations that surrendered had to be released, yet of the 90,000 German soldiers of the 6th Army taken to Siberia, almost all of them died there over several years long after the war was over. In the end, 10 years after the war only around 5,000 survived imprisonment and were finally allowed to return home to Germany. In all hundreds of thousands of German POW’s died in captivity in the Soviet Union and tens of thousands died in France, Belgium and elsewhere after the war.

Such incidents are hardly given any mention in documentaries that seem to have taken over from the history books as the main medium of communication of history to the masses in our audio visual age. Neither do such documentaries usually mention that in the Nuremberg Trials an extremely small number of Nazis were actually tried, despite all the hype about Nuremberg, or that some top ones convicted as war criminals, mostly rich industrialists, were released by the Allies after just 4 or 5 years in prison "for good behaviour". The henchmen at the top look after their own, even of those of the losing sides, while the common soldiers and civilians always bear the full brunt of the war and the punishment afterwards.

Meanwhile many, many Nazi war criminals slipped through the net by being helped to escape Germany and sneak into the USA or Fascist run Latin America by means of the Rat Lines in Operation Paperclip, orchestrated by American Nazi sympathisers, including brothers Alan and John Foster Dulles, who as lawyers had some very high powered Nazis as their clients before war broke out. Alan went on to become head of the CIA and John became Secretary of State.

Instead the average German soldier suffered a very different fate after being captured in battle, and often died after years of great hardship and suffering, like Paulus' men. Even German POW's held by the Americans, the French, the Belgians and the British after the end of the war suffered and died of maltreatment and neglect, though nowhere on the scale of the captured 6th Army taken to Siberia. How was this different from the German forced labour camps that suffered so many casualties? This was covered up by General Eisenhower and co at the time, though it came to light years later thanks to a very courageous officer who was a war historian and had easy access to all the military records, unlike his civilian historian counterparts. Had it not been for him the history of the maltreatment of German prisoners by the French, Belgians, British and Americans would never have come to light. The fact that the war was already over made these atrocities even more heinous.

Then of course once the war was over there were also all the rapes of German women and the expulsion of a staggering 12 million Germans from parts of Europe whose roots had been established there for several generations. This post war ethnic cleansing was carried out by victorious European nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia. This has been buried away in some history books and is unknown by Europeans today.

The atrocities carried out by the Nazis, on their part, were not limited to the members of the SS, as history likes to portray. They were also carried out by soldiers in the Wehrmacht, on orders from their superiors, or on their own bat, as a result of policies by High Command not to take action against them for summarily executing captured enemy combatants and civilians. Amongst other places this happened in Russia, it happened in Italy including in the fight for Naples when the Napolitans put up resistance against Nazi occupation and actually defeated them before the allies arrived, and it happened against Italian soldiers taken prisoners by the Nazis when Italy overthrew the Fascist Regime and changed sides after the 8th September, 1943.

If there is any humanity in us as a human race, over 75 years after the war, we should finally start to discuss these things and admit that 2 wrongs never make a right, and that inhuman and inexcusable atrocities were carried out by both sides in the conflict. They were carried out by the German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and not just by the SS and the Gestapo. They were carried out by the Soviet High Command against its own people through Stalin’s extreme Scorched Earth Policy, that left millions of Soviets to suffer and starve as the Soviet forces retreated eastward.

The obvious examples of allied atrocities and war crimes were Churchill's personal insistence on getting his Chief of Bomber Command, Bomber Harris (known by his own pilots as "the Butcher") to carpet bomb German towns and cities. This was euphemistically referred to "area bombing", and even took place at night, when it was impossible to locate any specific military targets, with the intention of wiping them out, old men, women and children included. Even incendiary bombs were used, in order to make sure that the cities burned to the ground (against the Geneva Conventions) in order to terrorise the civilian population into submission. Some cities went on to burn for days, and so many civilians, young and old alike, were burned to death if they had not already been crushed to death under the rubble.

Churchill had also wanted to use poison gas in the conflict, which had been declared a war crime by the Geneva Conventions. We know this from his correspondence with the military that came to light. Luckily his military command would have none of it, it argued that it could backfire and hit friendly troops with wind changes and refused to use gas.

Then there was US President Truman's insistence on dropping the Atom Bombs on the major cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945, specifically choosing places with large civilian populations, after ignoring Japan's attempts to surrender once Germany had been defeated in May. The Japanese knew that it was all over for them by then, both in the Pacific and once the Soviets started moving their enormous military machine from Europe to Vladivostok to launch an attack on Japan after having just declared war on it. But hey, Truman and his henchmen wanted to show the world America's new super weapons in action on civilian populations (rather than in some uninhabited locations). He then lied to the world and his fellow Americans, saying that it was to save American soldiers' lives, and that the targets chosen were not civilian ones, but military ones. It did not take long to see through the lie of the military nature of the targets, but to this day most people still believe the other lie that it was to save American lives, although this lame excuse would not have changed the fact that it would have been a war crime regardless.

It is such atrocities on both sides and the covering up of facts and twisting of history that makes many so vehemently anti war, and thus by definition anti fascist and anti nazi, since fascism was largely based upon domination through war mongering.

It is tragic that so many years after WWII the winning side still refuses by and large to acknowledge its own war crimes.

But this is not surprising, because the power mongers in the west still glorify war and use it as a tool for expansion, neo colonialism, and for the continued rise of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower himself had warned us and his successor Kennedy about in his farewell speech, after coining the phrase in his final address to the nation.

For the record, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, Eisenhower was against the dropping of the Atom Bombs. He had more integrity than Truman, his predecessor as US President, more integrity than his counterpart Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, and more integrity than Churchill, who all consented to the dropping of the Atom bombs.

Yes, unknown to most, Churchill had consented to this. The Allies had undertaken not to take any major decisions in the war without getting the consent of their allies. The Russians were however not consulted over this one. Truman did not have the same rapport with the Soviets that Roosevelt had had.

Furthermore, at that point Truman, General George Marshall, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and MacArthur were panicking, as the Soviets were moving fast against Japan as Stalin had agreed and undertaken to do once Germany was defeated. They feared that Japan would suddenly be defeated by the Soviets with an imminent all out invasion launched from Vladivostok before the Americans could defeat it from the Pacific.

Of course President Truman could have accepted a Japanese surrender as stated above, making it unnecessary for the Soviets to invade. But his priority was to show the force of the new super power by dropping the A bombs, while kicking off anew cold war with the Soviet Union, that had not been the intention of his predecessor Roosevelt.

The fact that the Japanese were trying to negotiate a surrender as early as May 1945 has all but disappeared from history and the collective consciousness of humankind. In fact it is one of the best kept secrets, hardly known to anyone. So much for trying to "save American soldiers' lives" huh? How many American lives would have been saved had the American Govt accepted Japan's surrender in May, June or July, 1945 while the Manhattan Project was frantically racing to get the Atom bombs finished and tested?

The only condition the Japanese were trying to negotiate back in June, 1945, was to retain their Emperor as Head of State, because the Japanese considered their Emperor as a living god, and this would have broken the entire spirit of the Japanese People. In fact, in the end, the Americans allowed the Japanese to retain their Emperor after their surrender in August. So why did Truman not accept their surrender back in June and July, and spare them the atom bombs, which is now forever etched in human history?

One wonders if President Roosevelt would have ever given the go ahead to drop the A bombs, had he lived to see the victory in Europe and not died in office. We will never know, and it is pure speculation, though I cannot help suspecting that his humanitarian side would have won out in the end, and Nagasaki and Hiroshima would have been spared. Roosevelt was a Statesman of the highest calibre, at least as far as Statesmen go, although his black mark remains his consent to the area bombing of German towns and cities with American planes and bombs. Truman on his part was no statesman at all, and not even a shadow of his predecessor!

All of the characters mentioned above are depicted as war heroes in the west and its history books. But make no mistake about it, all of them have some very dark and rotten skeletons in their cupboards that stink of atrocious war crimes.

Eisenhower tended to have much more integrity than the others mentioned here, though he too slipped up when he tragically consented to the “area bombing” of civilians that left well over one million German women, children and old men dead under all the rubble or horrifically burnt alive in the enormous firestorms caused by the incendiary bombs.

General Eisenhower, his boss General George Marshall, his President and the old Bull Dog Churchill across the Pond will forever carry that very dark stain with them throughout history, regardless of how the "area bombing" policy may be portrayed, seen or interpreted in a one sided manner by many in our time. The same goes for the players behind the decision to drop the A Bombs on Japanese civilians.

War crimes should never be forgotten or swept under the carpet by the victors.

It is often said that those who forget their history are destined to repeat it.

So just imagine what destiny may lie in store for us whenever we actually suppress history, distort it, or refuse to acknowledge it in an objective manner.

In such cases, simply forgetting would have been the least of our failings.

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References:

https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/area-bombing-directive-wwii-1942-45-a-32102/

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-bombing-timeline

https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/german-pows-deaths-under-allied-control/

Allied Atrocities against German POA’s after the war:

http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

Churchill on Drenching Germany in Poison Gas:

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p501b_weber.html

Stalin’s Destructive Scorched Earth Policy: