page_title: List of war crimes
section_title: Crimes perpetrated by Germany
hierarchical_section_title: List of war crimes / 1939–1945: World War II / Axis powers / Crimes perpetrated by Germany
caption_attribution_description: English: A German police officer shoots Jewish women still alive after a mass execution of Jews from the Mizocz ghetto. October 14, 1942. Published in 1946Русский: Немецкий полицейский добивает выживших еврейских женщин после массовой казни в гетто в Мизоче. 14 октября 1942 года. Опубликовано в 1946 году. This is USHMM photo # 17878
context_page_description: Since many war crimes are not prosecuted, historians and lawyers will often make a serious case that war crimes occurred, even if there was no formal investigations or prosecution of the alleged crimes or an investigation cleared the alleged perpetrators.
  War crimes under international law were firmly established by international trials such as the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials, in which Austrian, German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II.
context_section_description: According to the Nuremberg Trials, there were four major war crimes that were alleged against German military (and Waffen-SS and NSDAP) men and officers, each with individual events that made up the major charges.
  1. Participation in a common plan of conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace
  2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
  Planning and executing a campaign of invasion of its European neighbors, as well as the conspiracy to violate the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain through the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
  3. War Crimes
  Atrocities against enemy combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:
  Invasion of Poland: During the period of 1 September – 25 October 1939 German forces in their military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombing hospitals, murdering civilians, shooting refugees, and executing wounded soldiers. The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered victims.
  Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland: During the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers.
  Le Paradis massacre: In May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein was tried found guilty and hanged.
  Wormhoudt massacre: In May 1940, British and French soldiers were captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
  d'Ardenne Massacres: In June 1944 Canadian soldiers were captured by the SS and murdered by the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) was sentenced to be shot 1946. His sentence was commuted and he was released in 1954.
  Malmedy massacre: In December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside Malmedy, Belgium.
  Gardelegen (war crime): The German SS forced 1,016 slave laborers who were part of a transport evacuated from the Dora labor sub-camp into a large barn which was then lit on fire. Most of the prisoners were burned alive; some were shot trying to escape.
  Marzabotto massacre: The German SS killing of at least 770 civilians of Marzabotto as a collective punishment for their support of Italian partisans and the Italian resistance movement
  Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre: A massacre was committed in the hill village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany, Italy, in the course of an operation against the Italian resistance movement during the Italian Campaign of World War II.  560 local villagers and refugees were murdered and their bodies burnt in a scorched earth policy action by the Nazis.
  Cefalonia Massacre: The mass execution of the men of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division by the Germans on the island of Cephalonia, Greece was committed after the Italian armistice.
  Oradour-sur-Glane massacre: On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in then Nazi occupied France was destroyed.  642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a Waffen-SS company.
  The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice was committed as an act of vengeance for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
  Massacre of Kalavryta: The extermination of the male population and the total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying forces during World War II, was committed on 13 December 1943.
  Distomo massacre: This attack was perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo, Greece, during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.
  Kragujevac massacre:  This was a nazi war crime in which Serbs, Jews and Roma men and boys in Kragujevac, Serbia, were murdered by German Wehrmacht soldiers on 20 and 21 October 1941.
  The suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subsequent leveling of the whole city was a war crime. 
  The treatment of Sovi
caption: German police shooting women and children from the Mizocz Ghetto, 14 October 1942
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