more infor about allied war crimes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II
United Kingdom
[edit]See also: British war crimes § World War II
The city centre of Dresden after the bombingLooting, rape, and prisoner executions were committed by British soldiers at a similar scale compared to other armies throughout the war.[29] [page needed]
Abuses against civilians and POWs
[edit]On 21 April 1945, British soldiers randomly selected and burned two cottages in Seedorf, Germany, in reprisal against local civilians who had hidden German soldiers in their cellars.[30] Historian Sean Longden claims that violence against German prisoners and civilians who refused to cooperate with the British army "could be ignored or made light of".[31]
After the end of the war in Europe, German prisoners in Norway were reportedly forced to clear minefields under British supervision. The Germans complained to British Commander, General Andrew Thorne, but he dismissed the accusations arguing that the Germans prisoners were not POWs but "disarmed forces who had surrendered unconditionally." By 1946, when the cleanup ended, 392 were injured and 275 had died; this was contrary to the terms of the Geneva Conventions.[32][page needed]
The "London Cage", a MI19 prisoner of war facility in the UK during and immediately after the war, was subject to allegations of torture.[33] 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".[34]
Rape and sexual harassment
[edit]The Italian statistics record eight rapes and nineteen attempted rapes by British soldiers in Italy between September 1943 and December 1945. Various sources, including the Special Investigation Branch as well as evidences from Belgian reporters, said that rape and sexual harassment by British troops occurred frequently following the invasion of Sicily in 1943.[35]
Rape also took place during the advance towards the Rhine,[36] especially once British forces had entered Germany.[36] During late 1944, with the army based across Belgium and the Netherlands, soldiers were billeted with local families or befriended them. In December 1944, it came to the attention of the authorities that there was a "rise of indecency with children" where abusers had exploited the "atmosphere of trust" that had been created with local families. While the army "attempted to investigate allegations, and some men were convicted, it was an issue that received little publicity."[31]
In Germany, rapes of local women were committed by British and Canadian troops.[37] Even elderly women were targeted.[37] Though the Royal Military Police tended to turn a blind eye towards abuse of German prisoners and civilians who obstructed the army, rape was considered differently. Some officers, however, treated the behaviour of their men with leniency. Some rapes were impulsively committed under the effects of alcohol or post-traumatic stress, but there were cases of premeditated attacks.[31] One such case was the rape of three German women in the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge on a single day in April 1945,[36] or the attempted rape of two local girls at gunpoint in the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, where two soldiers attempted to coerce two girls into going into a nearby wood, and, upon their refusal, one was grabbed and dragged into the woods, where, according to Longden, after she began screaming, "one of the soldiers pulled a gun to silence her. Whether intentionally or in error, the gun went off, hitting her in the throat and killing her."[37]
Unrestricted submarine warfare and shooting of shipwreck survivors
[edit]On 4 May 1940, in response to Germany's intensive unrestricted submarine warfare, during the Battle of the Atlantic and its invasion of Denmark and Norway, the Royal Navy conducted its own unrestricted submarine campaign. The Admiralty announced that all vessels in the Skagerrak were to be sunk on sight without warning. This was contrary to the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty.[38][39]
According to Alfred de Zayas, there are numerous documented cases of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force deliberately firing upon shipwreck survivors.[40] In July 1941, the submarine HMS Torbay (under the command of Anthony Miers) was based in the Mediterranean where it sank several German ships. On two occasions, once off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and the other off the coast of Crete, the crew attacked and killed dozens of shipwrecked German sailors and troops. None of the shipwrecked survivors posed a major threat to Torbay's crew. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions, and reported them in his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from his superiors following the first incident. Miers' actions violated the Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances.[41][42]
On 10 September 1942, the Italian hospital ship Arno was torpedoed and sunk by RAF torpedo bombers north-east of Ras el Tin, near Tobruk. The British claimed that a decoded German radio message intimated that the vessel was carrying supplies to the Axis troops.[43] Arno was the third Italian hospital ship sunk by British aircraft after the loss of the Po in the Adriatic Sea to aerial torpedoes on 14 March 1941[44][45] and the bombing of the California off Syracuse on 11 August 1942.[46]
On 18 November 1944, the German hospital ship Tübingen was sunk by two Beaufighter bombers off Pola, in the Adriatic Sea. The vessel had paid a brief visit to the allied-controlled port of Bari to pick up German wounded under the auspices of the Red Cross; despite the calm sea and the good weather that allowed a clear identification of the ship's Red Cross markings, it was attacked with rockets nine times. Six crewmembers were killed.[47] American author Alfred M. de Zayas, who evaluated the 266 extant volumes of the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, identifies the sinking of Tübingen and other German hospital ships as war crimes.[48]
Looting
[edit]During Operation Overlord, British line of communication troops conducted small-scale looting in Bayeux and Caen in France, following their liberation, in violation of the Hague Conventions.[49][better source needed] On 23 May 1945, British troops in Schleswig-Holstein were alleged to have plundered Glücksburg castle, stealing jewellery, and desecrating 38 coffins from the castle's mausoleum.[50]
