See also:
United States war crimes § World War II
Photo showing execution of
Waffen-SS troops in a coal yard in the area of the Dachau concentration camp during its liberation. 29 April 1945 (
US Army photograph)
[note 1]
- Laconia incident: US aircraft attacking Germans rescuing the sinking British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean. For example, the pilots of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24 Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British seamen, killed dozens of Laconia 's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast their remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
- Unrestricted submarine warfare. Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the wartime commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, provided unapologetic written testimony on Karl Dönitz's behalf at his trial that the U.S. Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the very first day the U.S. entered the war.
- Canicattě massacre: killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel McCaffrey. A confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with an offense relating to the incident. He died in 1954. This incident remained virtually unknown until Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, publicized it.[47][48]
- In the Biscari massacre, which consists of two instances of mass murders, US troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.[49][50]
- Near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert, 30 German Wehrmacht prisoners (probably German Army soldiers) were killed by U.S. paratroopers.[2]
- In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre, a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight.[51] Major-General Raymond Hufft (US Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"[52] Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner ... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans ... however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."[53]
- Chenogne massacre: On 1 January 1945, members of the 11th Armored Division executed 80 Wehrmacht soldiers.[54]
- Jungholzhausen massacre: On 15 April 1945, the 254th Infantry Regiment of the 63rd Infantry Division executed between 13 and 30 Waffen SS and Wehrmacht prisoners of war.[55]
- Treseburg massacre: On 19 April 1945, the 18th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division captured and murdered 9 unarmed Hitler Youths near the village of Treseburg.[56]
- Lippach massacre: On 22 April 1945 American soldiers from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division killed 24 Waffen SS soldiers who had been taken prisoners of war in the German town of Lippach. Members of the same unit are also alleged to have raped 20 women in the town.[57]
- The Dachau liberation reprisals: Upon the liberation of Dachau concentration camp on 29 April 1945, about a dozen guards in the camp were shot by a machine gunner who was guarding them. Other soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, of the US 45th (Thunderbird) Division killed other guards who resisted. In all, about 30 were killed, according to the commanding officer Felix L. Sparks.[58][59] Later, Colonel Howard Buechner wrote that more than 500 were killed.[60][61]
- Operation Teardrop: Eight of the surviving, captured crewmen from the sunken German submarine U-546 were tortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' desire to quickly get information on what the U.S. believed were potential cruise missile or ballistic missile attacks on the continental US by German submarines.[62][63]
- Historian Peter Lieb has found that many U.S. and Canadian units were ordered not to take enemy prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If this view is correct, it may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of the 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings.[1]
War rape
Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that
American GIs committed more than 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945.
[64] A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.
[65][66] It is estimated that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war and one historian has claimed that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.
[67]
In
Taken by Force, J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.
[68] As in the case of the American occupation of France after the
D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint.
[69]
Although
non-fraternization policies were instituted for the Americans in Germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternization" was used as a motto by United States Army troops.
[70] The journalist
Osmar White, a war correspondent from Australia who served with the American troops during the war, wrote that
After the fighting moved on to German soil, there was a good deal of rape by combat troops and those immediately following them. The incidence varied between unit and unit according to the attitude of the commanding officer. In some cases offenders were identified, tried by court martial, and punished. The army legal branch was reticent, but admitted that for brutal or perverted sexual offences against German women, some soldiers had been shot – particularly if they happened to be Negroes. Yet I know for a fact that many women were raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the culprits. In one sector a report went round that a certain very distinguished army commander made the wisecrack, 'Copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternisation.'
[71]A typical victimization with sexual assault by drunken American personnel marching through occupied territory involved threatening a German family with weapons, forcing one or more women to engage in sex, and putting the entire family out on the street afterward.
[70]
As in the eastern sector of the occupation, the number of rapes peaked in 1945, but a high rate of violence against the German and Austrian populations by the Americans lasted at least into the first half of 1946, with five cases of dead German women found in American barracks in May and June 1946 alone.
[69]
Carol Huntington writes that the American soldiers who raped German women and then left gifts of food for them may have permitted themselves to view the act as a prostitution rather than rape. Citing the work of a Japanese historian alongside this suggestion, Huntington writes that Japanese women who begged for food "were raped and soldiers sometimes left food for those they raped."
[69]
The black soldiers of America's segregated occupation force were both more likely to be charged with rape and severely punished.
[69] Heide Fehrenbach writes that, while the American black soldiers were in fact by no means free from indiscipline,
The point, rather, is that American officials exhibited an explicit interest in a soldier's race, and then only if he were black, when reporting behavior they feared would undermine either the status or the political aims of the U.S. Military Government in Germany.
[72]In 2015, German news magazine
Der Spiegel reported that German historian
Miriam Gebhardt "believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany. The author bases her claims in large part on reports kept by Bavarian priests in the summer of 1945."
[73]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied...#United_States