Talk:Allied war crimes during World War II/Archive 7

message: I don't think the two versions about POW seriously differ in facts. Of cource the version by Grant65 contaied a phrase "it is not clear that..." This is clearly wikipedian's judgement, i.e., inadmissible OR, so I deletd it. On the other hand, his version removes unnecessary repetition: (1) source titles are in references and no real need to repeat them in the text  (2) the phrase  complained as "According to Aldrich it became common..." is a paraphrase of another one: "taking no prisoners became standard practice". 
:I disagree with you. When a subject is controversial (and they don't come much more controversial than this one), the author of the  controversy should be mentioned in the main text and not just in a footnote. --Philip Baird Shearer 22:54, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment by [[User:Mikkalai]]

message: I inserted into the intro a comparison of the magnitude of the Allied war crimes as compared to those of the Germans and Japanese but Philip Baird Shearer deleted it.
I think it is important to provide a comparison between the scale of the Holocaust and the scale of war crimes that the Allies were charged with.  Even Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden do not match the Holocaust in scale.
I'm not sure whether there is an appropriate comparison for the war crimes that the Japanese were charged with.  Is it reasonable to compare numbers of Allied POWs mistreated by Japanese forces versus numbers of Japanese POWs mistreated by Allied forces?  Would there be a significant difference?
Can it be argued that Japanese and German war crimes were intentional strategies formulated and sanctioned by the highest authorities whereas Allied war crimes (other than bombings such as Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden) were more spontaneous, grass-roots actions which higher command may have failed to respond to adequately but did not initiate?
NB: Yes, I realize that Katyn Forest was probably an intentional strategy formulated and sanctioned by Stalin.  The difficulty of drawing these distinctions doesn't make it any less important to draw them for the reader.
--Richard 07:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Magnitude, scope and scale of war crimes 

message: Francisco Gómez points out in an article published in the International Review of the Red Cross that, with respect to the "anti-city" or "blitz" strategy, that "in examining these events in the light of international humanitarian law, it should be borne in mind that during the Second World War there was no agreement, treaty, convention or any other instrument governing the protection of the civilian population or civilian property."
It may be factual that he pointed this out, but the quote itself is false. Francisco Gómez (and the person who added this pointless tidbit) apparently never read the Hague Convention of 1907.
--76.224.88.36 05:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uh, what? 

message: Sorry, Philip Baird Shearer, but this article is also on my watchlist and it has occurred to me that Dresden certainly deserves to be mentioned by name here since the articles say "Many things classified as war crimes today were not such at the time. Some things classified as a war crimes today, such as area bombing, were not war crimes during World War II."
"Incidents that occurred during the involvement of the relevant nation in World War II include the following. Not all of these are agreed to be war crimes."
"The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to [area] bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime."
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned here, then surely Dresden also deserves mention here as well.  Of course, we have to caveat the mention with all the standard reasons why it was not considered a war crime then and why it should or should not be considered a war crime now.  
--Richard 08:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is in the list  and you have quoted it. Find a reliable source that explains why Dresden was a war crime and all other area bombardments with conventional munitions were not, and we can include it by name.  The reason that H&N are mentioned specifically is because there is a judicial review of those attacks that found them to be a breach of the laws of war. If such a review is ever held over the bombing of Dresden that found the bombings to be a breach of the laws of war then of course it should be in included here. --Philip Baird Shearer 14:02, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is the bombing of Dresden not mentioned in this article? 

message: Death rates of POWs held by Axis powers
The list doesn't include Polish POWs in German hands. Does anybody know the number of them and POWs that were Jewish ?--Molobo 23:18, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Errrrm, that would be an Axis war crime and not an Allied one. Grant | Talk 06:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death rates 

message: I’ve asked this question here before and because it is so ridiculous I’m going to ask it again. How is burning houses by Canadians a war crime? There were some Canadian and American Shermans right after the end of the war who either did not have enough of the fight or arrived too late to see action and were driving up and down the streets of one German town firing their main guns at houses at random. Some of them burned no doubt. Was this a war crime? Or because it took place after VE day is it considered to not be a war crime? I’ve read the long discussion page and don’t really understand why there is a conflict. For people who have their heads in the sand the Hague Convention is something that is talked about during peace time. During war the rules of war go out the window and killing of the enemy after they surrender, becomes after a while, as natural as killing the enemy on the battlefield. The Canadians also killed prisoners in Italy after they learnt how the peasents had been treated and also killed prisoners in NW Europe. Sometimes because of having no one to spare to escort the prisoners to the back sometimes because of the prisoners smart talking back to their captors and somtimes just because and it happened often with no concern of it being a war crime. Every Army did it and it happened in every war. The Poles in NW Europe were well known for finishing off the wounded enemy after a battle and it was tolerated.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brocky44 (talk • contribs) 17:10, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Burning Houses 

message: The list of accused war crimes by allied forces is seriously lacking. The number of accusations against the Allied powers for war crimes and the ackowledgement of them is severly inequitable. Viewing numerous military documents form both sides, I ma surprised that the U.S. has not even addressed or denied but ignored many accusations of war crimes by such victims as the Vietnamese. For example, several witnesses and North Vietnamese PAVN units witnessed and testified that U.S. soldiers took a whole village and one by one drowned them in a river. Another examlpe would be My LAi 4 which was a seperate hamlet from the My Lai massacre where B Company was acussed of killing many innocent villagers. B company soldiers never admitted nor denied allegations, they stated they "couldn't remember". The U.S. has ignored numeorus accusations as such. Granted there are many that are easily faked. Yet compare the treatment of accusations of U.S. war crimes to others. Anyone that actually looks at primary rather than secondary sources will see a wealth of information that is unexplored.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.127.109.240 (talk) 04:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wrong war? --LiamE (talk) 19:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  the victors write history 

message: Why was the US food policy part deleted as well? It was properly sourced. Wiki1609 (talk) 12:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: When I deleted it I had not noticed that you had added below the USAAF accusation. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 13:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: US food policy