War crimes

Allied war crimes during World War II

Allied war crimes were violations of the laws of war committed by the Allies of World War II against civilian populations or military personnel of the Axis Powers.

At the end of World War II, several trials of Axis war criminals took place, most famously the Nuremberg Trials. However, in Europe, these tribunals were set up under the authority of the London Charter, and could only consider allegations of war crimes committed by persons who acted in the interests of the European Axis countries.

There were a number of alleged war crimes involving Allied personnel that were investigated by the Allied powers and that led in some instances to courts-martial. Other incidents are alleged by historians to have been crimes under the law of war in operation at the time, but that for a variety of reasons were not investigated by the Allied powers during the war, or they were investigated and a decision was taken not to prosecute.

Leonforte, July 1943. According to Mitcham and von Stauffenberg in The Battle of Sicily, The Loyal Edmonton Regiment killed captured German prisoners. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada randomly burned houses in Friesoythe, northwestern Germany in April 1945.

French Moroccan troops, known as Goumiers, committed mass rapes and other war crimes in Italy after the Battle of Monte Cassino and in Germany. In Italy, victims of the mass rape committed after the Battle of Monte Cassino by Goumiers, colonial troops of the French Expeditionary Corps, are known as Marocchinate. According to Italian sources, more than 7,000 Italian civilians, including women and children, were raped by Goumiers.

The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. This cast doubt on whether the Soviet treatment of Axis POWs was a war crime, although they "were treated even remotely in accordance with the Geneva Convention", causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands. However, The Nuremberg Tribunal rejected this as a general argument, and held that the Hague Conventions (which the 1929 Geneva Convention did not replace but only augmented, and unlike the 1929 convention were ones which the Russian Empire had ratified) and other customary laws of war regarding the treatment of prisoners of war were binding on all nations in a conflict.

Mass rape and other war crimes by Soviet troops during the occupation of East Prussia (Danzig), parts of Pomerania and Silesia; during the Battle of Berlin, and the Battle of Budapest.

The German revisionist historian Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to bomb Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime." The historian Donald Bloxham states that "The bombing of Dresden on 13-14 February 1945 was a war crime". He further argues that there was a strong prima facie for trying Winston Churchill among others and that there is theoretical case that he could have been found guilty. "This should be a sobering thought. If, however it is also a startling one, this is probably less the result of widespread understanding of the nuance of international law and more because in the popular mind 'war criminal', like 'paedophile' or 'terrorist', has developed into a moral rather than a legal categorisation." The subject of British involvement in war crimes during the campaign in North West Europe, between D Day and VE Day, was covered by historian Sean Longden in a chapter entitled 'Rage Revenge and Retribution' in his book 'To the Victor the Spoils'.

In the Nuremberg Trial, German Admiral Karl Dönitz was tried (among other crimes) for issuing orders to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare. He was found guilty and served over 10 years in prison, despite evidence that both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy also issued similar orders.

In 1963, the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State. The District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war." 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." The possibility that attacks like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings could be considered war crimes is one of the reasons given by John R. Bolton (Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (2001-2005) and U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2005)) for the United States not agreeing to be bound by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Allied soldiers in Pacific and Asian theatres sometimes killed Japanese soldiers who were attempting to surrender or after they had surrendered. A social historian of the Pacific War, John W. Dower, states that "y the final years of the war against Japan, a truly vicious cycle had developed in which the Japanese reluctance to surrender had meshed horrifically with Allied disinterest in taking prisoners." Dower suggests that most Japanese personnel were told that they would be "killed or tortured" if they fell into Allied hands and, as a consequence, most of those faced with defeat on the battlefield fought to the death or committed suicide. In addition, it was held to be shamefully disgraceful for a Japanese soldier to surrender, leading many to suicide or fight to the death regardless of beliefs concerning their possible treatment as POWs. In fact, the Japanese Field Service Code said that surrender was not permissable. And while it was "not official policy" for Allied personnel to take no prisoners, "over wide reaches of the Asian battleground it was everyday practice." There were also widespread reports at the time of Japanese prisoners killing Allied medical personnel and guards with concealed weapons after surrendering, leading many Allied soldiers to conclude that taking prisoners was too risky.

R. J. Rummel states that there is little information regarding the general treatment of Japanese prisoners taken by Chinese Nationalist forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). However, Chinese civilians and conscripts, as well as Japanese civilians, were maltreated by Chinese soldiers. Rummel claims that Chinese peasants "often had no less to fear from their own soldiers than they did from the Japanese." He also wrote that, in some intakes of Nationalist conscripts, 90% died from disease, starvation or violence, before they had even commenced training.

Ferguson states such practices played a role in the ratio of Japanese prisoners to dead being 1:100 in late 1944. That same year, efforts were taken by Allied high commanders to suppress "take no prisoners" attitudes, among their own personnel (as these were affecting intelligence gathering) and to encourage Japanese soldiers to surrender. Ferguson adds that measures by Allied commanders to improve the ratio of Japanese prisoners to Japanese dead, resulted in it reaching 1:7, by mid-1945. Nevertheless, taking no prisoners was still standard practice among U. S. troops at the Battle of Okinawa, in April–June 1945.

Ulrich Straus, a US Japanologist, suggests that frontline troops intensely hated Japanese military personnel and were "not easily persuaded" to take or protect prisoners, as they believed that Allied personnel who surrendered, got "no mercy" from the Japanese. Allied soldiers believed that Japanese soldiers were inclined to feign surrender, in order to make surprise attacks. Therefore, according to Straus, "enior officers opposed the taking of prisoners on the grounds that it needlessly exposed American troops to risks..." When prisoners nevertheless were taken, many times these were shot during transport because "it was too much bother to take in".

Many dead Japanese were desecrated and/or mutilated, for example by urinating on them, shooting corpses, or taking Japanese body parts (such as ears or even skulls) as souvenirs or trophies.

When Japanese remains were repatriated from the Mariana Islands after the war, roughly 60 percent were missing their skulls.

These practises were in addition also in violation of the unwritten customary rules of land warfare and could lead to the death penalty. The US Navy JAG mirrored that opinion one week later, and also added that “the atrocious conduct of which some US personnel were guilty could lead to retaliation by the Japanese which would be justified under international law”.

It has been claimed that some US soldiers raped Okinawan women during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. While the number of rapes committed by US troops is not known, historian Peter Schrijvers states that an Okinawan historian has estimated that the number may have exceeded 10,000. There were 1,336 reported rapes during the first 10 days of the occupation of the Kanagawa prefecture.

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War crimes trials

War crimes trials are trials of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law. The practice began after World War I, when some German leaders were tried by a German court in Leipzig for crimes committed during that war. After World War II the phrase referred usually to the trials of German and Japanese leaders in courts established by the victorious Allied nations.

The most important of these trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, under the authority of two legal instruments. One, the so-called London Agreement, was signed by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR in London on August 8, 1945; the other, Law No. 10, was promulgated by the Allied Control Council in Berlin on December 20, 1945.

The London Agreement provided for the establishment of the International Military Tribunal, composed of one judge and one alternate judge from each of the signatory nations, to try war criminals. Under the London Agreement, the crimes charged against defendants fell into three categories: crimes against peace, that is, crimes involving the planning, initiating and waging of aggressive war; war crimes, that is, violations of the laws and customs of war as embodied in the Hague Conventions and generally recognized by the military forces of civilized nations; and crimes against humanity, such as the extermination of racial, ethnic, and religious groups and other such atrocities against civilians.

On October 18, 1945, the chief prosecutors lodged an indictment with the tribunal charging 24 individuals with a variety of crimes and atrocities, including the deliberate instigation of aggressive wars, extermination of racial and religious groups, murder and mistreatment of prisoners of war, and the murder, mistreatment, and deportation of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of countries occupied by Germany during the war.

Among the accused were the Nationalist Socialist leaders Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, the diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, the munitions maker Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder and 18 other military leaders and civilian officials. Seven organizations that formed part of the basic structure of the Nazi government were also charged as criminal. These organizations included the SS (Schutzstaffel, Defense Corps), the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police), and the SA (Sturmabteilung, Storm Troops), as well as the General Staff and High Command of the German armed forces.

The trial began on November 20, 1945. Much of the evidence submitted by the prosecution consisted of original military, diplomatic, and other government documents that fell into the hands of the Allied forces after the collapse of the German government.

With respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the tribunal found overwhelming evidence of a systematic rule of violence, brutality, and terrorism by the German government in the territories occupied by its forces. Millions of persons were destroyed in concentration camps, many of which were equipped with gas chambers for the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and members of other ethnic or religious groups. Under the slave-labor policy of the German government, at least 5 million persons had been forcibly deported from their homes to Germany. Many of them died because of inhumane treatment. The tribunal also found that atrocities had been committed on a large scale and as a matter of official policy.

Of the seven indicted organizations, the tribunal declared criminal the Leadership Corps of the National Socialist Party, the SS, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service), and the Gestapo.

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War crimes in Manchukuo

War crimes in Manchukuo were committed during the rule of the Empire of Japan in northeast China, either directly, or through its puppet state of Manchukuo, from 1931 to 1945. Various war crimes have been alleged, but have received comparatively little historical attention.

Although the Empire of Japan did not sign the Geneva Conventions, which have provided the standard definition of war crimes since 1864, the crimes committed fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law. For example, many of the alleged crimes committed by Japanese personnel broke Japanese military law, and were not subject to court martial, as required by that law. Japan also violated signed international agreements, including provisions of the Treaty of Versailles such as a ban on the use of chemical weapons, and the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), which protect prisoners of war (POWs). The Japanese government also signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1929), thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45 liable to charges of crimes against peace, a charge that was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to prosecute "Class A" war criminals. "Class B" war criminals were those found guilty of war crimes per se, and "Class C" war criminals were those guilty of crimes against humanity. The Japanese government also accepted the terms set by the Potsdam Declaration (1945) after the end of the war. The declaration alluded, in Article 10, to two kinds of war crime: one was the violation of international laws, such as the abuse of prisoners of war; the other was obstructing "democratic tendencies among the Japanese people" and civil liberties within Japan.

In Japan, the term "Japanese war crimes" generally only refers to cases tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Trials, following the end of the Pacific War. However, the tribunal did not prosecute war crimes allegations involving mid-ranking officers or more junior personnel. Those were dealt with separately in trials held in China and in the Soviet Union after the surrender of Japan.

Revisionist historians have contested that such crimes occurred. Right-wing nationalist groups in Japan dismiss some of the alleged war crimes as lies, or anti-Japanese propaganda, made or being made by the People's Republic of China to justify its occupation of Manchuria, and to place modern Japan in a negative light for modern political and foreign policy purposes.

Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in Manchukuo. One of the most infamous was Unit 731. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths.

According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito authorized the use of chemical weapons in China. Furthermore, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many 200,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases...", resulting from the use of biological warfare. Although there is no record of chemical or biological weapons in Manchukuo itself, these weapons of mass destruction were partly researched, produced, and stockpiled in Manchukuo by the Kwangtung Army.

The Japanese military's use of forced labor also caused many deaths. According to a joint study of historians Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyochi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized for forced labor in Manchukuo under the supervision of the Kōa-in.

Forced laborers were often assigned work in dangerous conditions without adequate safety precautions. The world's most serious mine disaster, at Benxihu Colliery, occurred in Manchukuo.

In late 1949, numerous members of the former Kwantung Army who had been captured in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria were convicted in connection with the activities of Unit 731, and related units for their connections with crimes against humanity and the use of chemical and biological weapons.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convicted a number of high Japanese officials in connection with the invasion of Manchuria, establishment of Manchukuo and with conspiracy to wage aggressive war against China. Those convicted to death with strong connections to Manchukuo included senior officers in the Kwantung Army Hideki Tōjō, Akira Muto, Seishirō Itagaki and Kenji Doihara.

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Soviet war crimes

Soviet war crimes refer to war crimes perpertrated by armed forces of the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1991. This includes war crimes by the 'regular' army — the Red Army (later called the Soviet Army), the NKVD, and the Internal Troops. In some cases these crimes were committed on express orders — as part of the Soviet Government's policy of communist terrorism, in other instances they were committed by regular army troops as part of a Soviet culture of retribution against civilians of countries involved in previous conflict or resistance movements.

Many of these incidents occurred in Eastern Europe before and during World War II, and involved mass murder of prisoners of war and widespread murder and rape of civilians in Soviet occupied territories. Although there are documented cases of these incidents, no international Criminal Court or Soviet or Russian tribunal has ever charged any member of the Soviet armed forces with war crimes.

The Red Army was ideologically oriented and indoctrinated from its first founding in 1918 to defend the new communist Soviet regime during the Russian Civil War. Leon Trotsky, creater of the Red Army, used propaganda, indoctrination and terror as a weapon to fight the White Army.

Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky … let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie – more blood, as much as possible…

The Soviet Union did not recognize Imperial Russia's signing of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) as binding and refused to agree to it until 1955. This situation exacerbated the existing culture of terror and human rights abuse by Soviet armed forces.

As well as committing war crimes itself, the Red Army often gave support to the NKVD, which had as one of its functions the application of state terrorism. The main function of the NKVD was to protect the state security of the Soviet Union, but this was largely accomplished through massive political repression. As an internal security and prisons guard force, Internal Troops played immediate roles in political repressions and war crimes through all the Soviet history. Particularly, they were responsible for maintaining the regime in the GULAG labor camps and for conducting the mass deportations and forced resettlement of several ethnic groups.

During World War II, units of the NKVD Internal Troops were engaged alongside Red Army forces in combat and NKVD units were used for rear area security, including stopping desertion. In territory that was liberated or occupied the NKVD carried out mass arrests, deportations, and executions. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and non-Communist resistance movements such as the Polish Armia Krajowa. The NKVD also executed tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners in 1939–1941.

After the repulse of the German attack on the Soviet Union and Soviet troops entering Germany and Hungary in late 1944, there was significant eyewitness testimony of war crimes by Soviet armed forces — plunder, murder of civilians, and especially rape. In both Soviet and current Russian history books on the "Great Patriotic War" these war crimes are rarely mentioned. However, evidence of such crimes was found and published by Western historians after Soviet archives were opened to the public following the end of the Cold War.

Crimes by Soviet armed forces against civilians and prisoners of war in the territories it occupied between 1939 and 1941 — (Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia) — and the follow-up atrocities of 1944–1949 have been present in the historical consciousness of these countries ever since. Nevertheless, a systematic, publicly controlled discussion only began after the fall of the Soviet Union.. This is also true of the territories occupied by Soviet forces in Manchuria and the Kuril Islands after the Soviet Union breached its neutrality pact with Japan in September 1945.

Estonia was formally annexed into the Soviet Union on August 6 and renamed the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1941 some 34,000 Estonians were forcibly drafted into the Red Army of which less than 30% of them survived the war. Political prisoners who could not be evacuated were executed by the NKVD. More than 300.000 citizens of Estonia, almost a third of its then population, were affected by arrests, mass murder, deportation and other acts of repression. As a result of Communist occupation, Estonia permanently lost at least 200,000 people or 20% of its population to repressions, exodus and war. On 12 January 1949 the Soviet Council of Ministers issued a decree "on the expulsion and deportation" from Baltic states of "all kulaks and their families, the families of bandits and nationalists", and others.

The various repressive activities of Soviet forces sparked a guerrilla war against the Soviet authorities in Estonia which was waged into the late 1970s by "forest brothers" (metsavennad) consisting mostly of Estonian veterans of both the German and Finnish armies as well as some civilians. In addition to the human and material losses suffered due to war, thousands of civilians were killed and tens of thousands of people deported along with hundreds of political prisoners till the late 1980s. By 1989, russification and colonization had reduced the percentage of Estonians in the population to 61%.

In 1939, Latvia fell victim to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, leading to occupation and its incorporation into the Soviet Union on 5 August 1940. Establishment of a brutal Communist regime, a puppet-state Latvian SSR, resulted in mass terror, the extinction of civil society and civil liberties, termination of the existing way of life and economic model and a strong pressure upon Latvian culture. In all, over 200,000 people suffered from Communist repressions in Latvia of which some 60% were deported to the Soviet death-camps in Siberia and Far-East. The Soviet terror regime forced more than 260,000 Latvians to flee from the country. Although explicit terror subsided after Stalin’s death, the regime persisted and brought Latvia to the verge of disaster with the systematic russification policy which reduced the share of ethnic Latvians in the population to 52% by 1989.

In 1939, Lithuania, as the other Baltic States, fell victim to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, leading to occupation and its incorporation into the Soviet Union on 15 June 1940. The Communist occupation launched brutal measures to destroy civil society, civil liberties, the habitual way of life and economic order. Between 1940 to 1941 thousands of Lithuanians were arrested and hundreds of political prisoners were arbitrarily executed. More than 17,000 people were deported to Siberia in June. In 1944 and Lithuania fell back under Soviet occupation. During the suppression of the Lithuanian armed resistance, the Soviet authorities murdered thousands of resistance fighters and civilians accused of aiding them. Some 300,000 Lithuanians were deported or sentenced to prison camps on political grounds. It is estimated that Lithuania lost almost 780,000 citizens as a result of Communist occupation, of which around 440,000 were war refuges.

During the Lithuanian restoration of independence in 1990, the Soviet army killed 13 demonstrators in Vilnius.

The Peace of Riga which ended the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–21 left a sizeable Polish minority (almost 1 million people) under Soviet control, especially around Słuck and Żytomierz. This allowed the Soviets to carry out harsh reprisals against Poles — beginning with the confiscation of property (land, forests), religious persecution and eventually full scale deportation of Poles to Kazakhstan between 1931–1934. Under NKVD Order № 00485 the Soviet government launched the "Polish operation", the second in a series of national operations of the NKVD, targeting "the liquidation of the Polish diversionist and espionage groups and POW units". Between 1937–1938 (according to the archives of the NKVD, the Soviet Security Forces) 111,091 Poles, and people accused of ties with Poland, were sentenced to death and 28,744 were sentenced to labor camps — 139,835 in total.

In September 1939, the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied it in accordance with the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Later, the Soviets forcefully occupied the Baltic States and parts of Bessarabia as well.

Soviet policy in all these areas was harsh towards the people under its control, showing strong elements of ethnic cleansing. NKVD task forces followed the Red Army to remove the conquered territories of "Soviet-hostile elements." Polish historian Tomasz Strzembosz has noted parallels between the Nazi Einsatzgruppen and these Soviet units. Many tried to escape from the Soviet NKVD; those who failed were taken into custody by the Red Army and afterwards deported to Siberia and vanished into the "Gulags".

During the years 1939 through to 1941, nearly 1.5 million inhabitants of the Soviet-controlled areas of former eastern Poland were deported, of whom 63.1% were Poles or other nationalities and 7.4% were Jews. Only a small number of these deportees survived the war. According to American professor Carroll Quigley, at least one third of the 320,000 Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army in 1939 were murdered.

In Poland, Nazi atrocities ended by late 1944, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Soviet forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in plunder, rape and banditry against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the Soviet regime.

Units of the Red Army carried out campaigns by the the NKVD against Polish partisans and civilians. During the Augustów chase 1945, more than 2000 Poles were captured, and about 600 of them were killed. For more about this subject, see Cursed soldiers.

Polish sources claim that there are cases of mass rapes in Polish cities taken by Red Army, that in Kraków Soviet entry brought mass rapes on Polish women and girls, as well as plunder of all private property by Soviet soldiers. According to them, this behaviour reached such scale that even communists installed by Soviets were preparing a letter of protest to Joseph Stalin himself, while masses in churches were held in expectation of Soviet withdrawal..

The Continuation War was fought between Finland and the Soviet Union between 1941 and 1944. During the war, Soviet partisan units conducted raids into Finnish territory and attacked civilian targets, such as villages. In November 2006, photographs showing atrocities were declassified by the Finnish authorities. These include images of slain women and children.

Deportations, executions and torture, as well as hostage taking, and burning of villages took place when the Red Army retreated before the advancing Wehrmacht in 1941. In the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine, and Bessarabia, the NKVD and attached units of the Red Army massacred prisoners and political opponents, before fleeing from the advancing German army. A particularly infamous example was the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn.

These actions increased the hatred by the local population of those who had collaborated with the Soviets, or who were suspected of being sympathetic toward the Soviet cause. The Jews, especially were unfairly blamed by the local population in this regard. As a result, the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, or special annihalation forces who came to German occupied areas could rely heavily on willing volunteers from the local population in the rounding up of Jews for the "Final Solution".

After the turning point in the war of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army steadly regained lost territory on the Eastern Front. This resulted in revenge actions against any accused of being collaborators during the German occupation. While in France this part of its history is well documented, debated and is the subject of many scientific reviews, very little is known about what happened in the path of the Red Army.

Many thousands of Russians, cossacks and other nationalities were executed by the NKVD after having been forcefully repatriated by British and American troops. Some of these fought alongside the Axis forces, although there is evidence that some of these, like the cossacks, included woman and children, and in some cases, were not previously Soviet citizens. These people were deemed by the Soviets to be traitors and Nazi collaborators, and in many cases were shot immediately on being handed over by the British and American troops under Operation Keelhaul.

The Germans have been punished in Oppeln, in Königsberg and in Breslau. They have been punished, but yet not enough! Some have been punished, but not yet all of them. ...

There are cases where the orders of Soviet generals encouraged their soldiers to commit war crimes. On January 12, 1945, Red Army General Cherniakhovsky told his troops: There shall be no mercy — for anyone, as there was no mercy for us... The land of the fascists must become a desert.

For the Germans, the organized evacuation of civilians before the advancing Red Army was delayed by the Nazi government, so as not to demoralize the troops, who were by now defending their own country. However, German civilians were well aware that the Red Army was conducting violence against non-combatants from reports by their friends and relatives who had served on the Eastern front. Furthermore, Nazi propaganda — originally meant to stiffen civil resistance by describing in graphic detail Red Army atrocities such as the Nemmersdorf massacre — often backfired and created panic.

Whenever possible, as soon as Nazi officials left, civilians began to flee westward on their own initiative.

Fleeing before the advancing Red Army, more than two million inhabitants of the German provinces of East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania died, some from cold and starvation, during the expulsion and post-war ethnic cleansing, and some when they were killed during combat operations. The main death toll, however, occurred when the refugee columns were encountered by units of the Red Army. The civilians were overrun by tanks, shot or otherwise murdered. Women and young girls were raped and left to die (as is explored firsthand in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Prussian Nights). In addition, fighter bombers of the Soviet air force penetrated far behind the front lines and often attacked columns of refugees.

Those who did not flee suffered the Red Army's occupying policies: murder, rape, robbery, and finally expulsion. For example, in Königsberg, the East Prussian capital city, approximately 100,000 German civilians still lived there in August 1945. By the time they were finally expelled from the city in 1948, only about 20,000 of the Germans were still alive (see also expulsion of Germans after World War II).

The Red Army's violence against the local German population during the occupation of eastern Germany often led to incidents like Demmin, a small city conquered by the Soviets in the spring of 1945. Despite its unconditional surrender and without any prior fighting near the city, nearly 900 civilians people committed suicide after Soviet commanders had declared Demmin "open" for looting, pillaging and rape — which lasted for three consecutive days.

Although mass executions of civilians by the Red Army were seldom publicly reported, there is a known incident in Treuenbrietzen, where at least 88 male inhabitants were rounded up and shot on May 1, 1945. The incident took place after a Soviet victory celebration at which numerous girls from Treuenbrietzen were raped and a Red Army lieutenant-colonel was shot by an unknown assailant. Some sources claim as many as 1,000 civilians may have been executed during the incident.

Following the Red Army's capture of Berlin in 1945, one of the largest incidents of mass rape took place. Soviet troops reportedly raped German women and girls as young as 8 years old. Estimates of the total number of victims range from tens of thousands to two million. After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught raping civilians were usually punished to some degree, ranging from arrest to execution. The rapes continued, however, until the winter of 1947-48, when Soviet occupation authorities finally confined Soviet troops to strictly guarded posts and camps,“ completely separating them from the residential population of the Soviet zone of Germany.

During the occupation of Budapest, (Hungary), it is estimated that 50,000 women and girls were raped.

Hungarian girls in general were taken to the Red Army quarters, where they were incarcerated, raped and sometimes murdered. These atrocities were committed even against embassy staff from neutral countries, when Soviet soldiers attacked the Swedish legation in Germany.

Soviet tanks fired indiscriminately at every building from which they believed themselves to be under fire.

The UN commission received numerous reports of Soviet mortar and artillery fire into inhabited quarters in the Buda section of the city despite no return fire and of "haphazard shooting at defenseless passers-by." According to many witnesses Soviet troops fired upon people queuing outside stores. Most of the victims were said to be women and children. Many cases of Soviet fire upon ambulances and red cross vehicles were reported.

Slovak communist leader Vlado Clementis complained to Marshal I. S. Konev about the behaviour of Soviet troops in Slovakia. Konev's response was to claim it was done mainly on Red Army deserters.

Thanks to the better discipline in Marshal Tolbukhin's army, a relative similarity in cultures, a century of friendly relations, and an open welcome of the Soviet troops, there was a relative absence of rapes in Bulgaria, especially when compared with the the occupation of Romania and Hungary.

A number of rapes committed by the Soviet soldiers were recorded. Where Soviet soldiers advanced, women and girls fled from their villages and towns, leaving only boys and men to be found by the Soviet soldiers.

During the siege of Budapest and also during the following weeks, Russian troops looted the city freely. They entered practically every habitation, the very poorest as well as the richest. They took away everything they wanted, especially food, clothing and valuables. Every apartment, shop, bank, etc. was looted several times. Furniture and larger objects of art, etc. that could not be taken away were frequently simply destroyed. In many cases, after looting, the homes were also put on fire, causing a vast total loss. Bank safes were emptied without exception — even the British and American safes — and whatever was found was taken.

Individuals, department stores, shops, apartments ... all were robbed blind.

Accordingly, all evidence — such as reports, pictures and other documents of looting, rapes, burning down of farms and villages by the Red Army — was deleted from all archives in the Soviet occupation zone, which later was to become the GDR.

On many occasions Soviet soldiers set fire to buildings, villages or parts of cities, shooting anybody trying to extinguish the flames. For example, on May 1, 1945, Soviet soldiers set fire to the city centre of Demmin and prevented the inhabitants from extinguishing the blaze. Of the historic buildings around the market place, only a steeple survived the inferno. Most Red Army atrocities took place only in what was regarded as hostile territory (see also Przyszowice massacre). Soldiers of the Red Army together with members of the NKVD frequently looted transport trains in 1944 and 1945 in Poland.

The Soviet Union did not recognise the entry of Imperial Russia to the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) as binding for itself and refused to sign it until 1955. This allowed the barbaric treatment of POWs on both the Polish and the Soviet side during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-21. Moreover, the Soviet Union did not sign the Genevan Prisoners of War convention of 1929 until 1955. Accordingly, the Red Army was able to mis-treat its prisoners of war, without any effective international pressure.

During 1941, after emergency landings, German flight crews were often shot after their capture. Torture, mutilation, and murder were frequently carried out on German aircrews. During the winter of 1941–1942 the Red Army captured approximately 10,000 German soldiers each month, but the death rate became so high that the absolute number of the prisoners decreased (or was bureaucratically reduced). The murder of the prisoners was often arranged through instructions, reports and statements of Soviet commanders. Throughout the war, 300,000 German POWs in Soviet captivity died, a loss rate of 14.9%. By contrast, some 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in German captivity, a loss rate of 65%. German prisoners were not released after the war but many were kept in captivity until as late as 1956 under terrible conditions as part of the "Gulag".

The Treuenbrietzen massacre took place during the last days of April and the first days of May 1945, after a tough battle in which the Red Army took and lost control of the village on more than one occasion. The Red Army rounded up around 1000 (mostly male) civilians and executed them in the nearby forest. These executions were made as retaliation for the death of a high-ranking Soviet officer during the battle for control of the village.

Polish sources claim that there are cases of mass rapes in Polish cities taken by Red Army, that in Kraków Soviet entry brought mass rapes on Polish women and girls, as well as plunder of all private property by Soviet soldiers. According to them, this behaviour reached such scale that even communists installed by Soviets were preparing a letter of protest to Joseph Stalin himself, while masses in churches were held in expectation of Soviet withdrawal..

A movie "Anonymous. Women in Berlin" about war rapes in Berlin was made based on A Woman in Berlin diary by Marta Hillers.

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