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#1
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The Germans also murdered after torture, @ six of the "Cockelshell"
crews that wrecked several merchant ships by using Limpet mines. They were all in uniform and engaged on legitimate military operations. British Commandos themseves did not take prisoners and were found with orders not to do so as this presumably might imperil their mission. This was the basis of Hitlers commando Order. So you are excusing Hitler? Depite being in a uniform I do not think that men who themselves never take prisoners and kill those trying to surrender to them have an automatic right to protection under the convention I do not know of the Cockshell crews opperated as Commandos but this may the the basis of the executions. I have been unable to find any details of the raids on the internet. Only something about a novell/movie called the Cockellshell heroes. It took me about ten seconds to find this: "Marine Bill Sparks, who has died aged 80, was the last of the two surviving “Cockleshell Heroes” responsible for paddling a canoe 85 miles through enemy defences to cripple German merchant ships at Bordeaux. During the night of December 11 1942, 10 Royal Marines set out in five craft; but eight of them were shot or drowned. Sparks and Major “Blondie” Hasler found themselves pursued through France and Spain by vengeful Germans for three months before they reached safety. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/799434/posts If British commandos did not take prisoners, that would be in accord with their typical mission. I would not have expected the Cockelshell crews to take prisoners either. But the Germans who captured these Royal Marines certainly had the facilities to take prisoners. They were clearly in uniform and carrying clandestine, but clear military operations. On the whole the Germans stuck to the conventions and prosecuted those German officers who broke them. The same can not always be said for the Americans. Details? The commander of 12th SS PzDiv had 20 Canadian prisoners murdered in cold blood also. Then he was a war criminal and would have been court martialed. Here's some detail on that: "The atrocities continued. Other Canadians were captured and taken to the Abbaye d'Ardenne, the headquarters of the German division where Meyer had watched the battle unfold. In the abbey garden eleven Canadians were interrogated and then killed on 7 June, each Canadian prisoner shaking hands with his comrades before being executed. At noon the next day seven more Canadians were shot at the Abbaye; their murders coincided with the execution of Canadian POWs on the Caen-Fountenay Road. The following evening Canadian prisoners were taken to the 12th SS's 2nd Battalion headquarters to meet their death. On the now tranquil grounds of the Chateau d'Audrieu, Canadian POWs were interrogated and duly executed, first in threes and later in more efficient larger numbers. These large-scale incidents represent 120 of 156 murders committed by the Hitlerjugend during the first ten days of the Normandy Campaign. Other murders took place on a smaller scale at locations like Bretteville d'Orgueuise, Norrey and le Mesnil-Patry. News of the murders began to filter back to the Canadian ranks in Normandy, but there was little immediate proof of the atrocities.[8] " http://grad.usask.ca/gateway/archive9.html I presume he had expedient reasons such as no facilities such as no abillity to transport them. No. You don't seem very qualifed to comment, as these murders of the Canadian POW's is fairly well known. I am somewhat cynical of these claims, initialy, as they may be a beat up like the Malmedy massacre and so many other crimes that turn out to be mainly either escape attemps, accidents and mistakes. If you can show that Americans did anything like the above, get back to me. snip The Germans did not -strictly- go by the GC, although they generally did against the Western Allies. As I said, the Germans did not -strictly- go by the GC although they generally did against the Western Allies. Walt |
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From: "Eunometic"
British Commandos themseves did not take prisoners and were found with orders not to do so as this presumably might imperil their mission. This was the basis of Hitlers commando Order. OK, we have another revisionist here. I snipped the rest of his garbage. The British commandos were found with orders on their persons? That is an out and out lie. This fool even blames the Brits for Hitler's Commando Order. Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired |
#3
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"JDupre5762" wrote in message ... Let's compare and contrast here, shall we? FDR allowed the Germans and Japanese to murder and torture American POWs at will from 1941 to 1945 and the American Press never called him on it. No proof of that for the Germans at all: they complied strictly with the Geneva Convention. Over 95% of American POWs of the Germans survived the war. John Dupre' They did? Not towards the Soviets or occupied territories nor towards the 12 million murdered in the camps. Want to keep it just to POWS? Ever heard of The Great Escape? 50 escapees were murdered in groups of 2 or 3 AFTER being captured. Ok, let's keep discussing POWS. Ever heard of the "Commando Order" issued by Hitler? How many allied air crews were murdered before becoming POWs? I'm talking here about murders by military people not civilians as in Hamburg where British aircrewen who parachuted into the city were bound and thrown alive into the burning buildings. On the other hand FDR didn't "allow" Axis atrocities. He just couldn't stop them. Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired |
#4
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"B2431" wrote in message ... "JDupre5762" wrote in message ... Let's compare and contrast here, shall we? FDR allowed the Germans and Japanese to murder and torture American POWs at will from 1941 to 1945 and the American Press never called him on it. No proof of that for the Germans at all: they complied strictly with the Geneva Convention. Over 95% of American POWs of the Germans survived the war. John Dupre' They did? Not towards the Soviets or occupied territories Halve those figures: the Communist took the opportunity to attribute their own genocides to the Germans. nor towards the 12 million murdered in the camps. I doubt the size of those figures. I'd say the Bull**** factor in them is just under 50%. If revisionist weren't jailed and harassed and were free to carry out their investigations we could get to the truth sooner. Want to keep it just to POWS? Ever heard of The Great Escape? 50 escapees were murdered in groups of 2 or 3 AFTER being captured. These men were not in uniform I believe and were thus treated as illegal combatents. If they had on a uniform then this was clearly a violation of the convention. Violations of the convention in terms of illgeal executions, over work, inadaquete food were however still rare. Should Otto Skorneys Commandos that opperated in American uniform with German ones beneath have been spared execution? The US incidently has a habbit of of declaring prisoners illegal combatents and non POWs Ok, let's keep discussing POWS. Ever heard of the "Commando Order" issued by Hitler? Seems to have started when German prisoners with bound hands were shot. Collectively extending the punishment is of course also a violation of the convention. It wasn't always applied. The legendary paratrooper Oberstleutnant Walter Koch for instance refused to be iexecute the order and ofcourse many of the paratroops were Nazi party members as well. (It was not abnormal most of the parties affairs were quite pedestrian) http://www.eagle19.freeserve.co.uk/koch.htm How many allied air crews were murdered before becoming POWs? You tell me. I'd say very very few. Perhaps they were upset at the strafing of civilians and children walking along country roads? There were plenty of pilots engaged in this evil act and children and old people walking the roads between villages had a terrible fear of tieffliger. Or the shooting down of the Parachutes of downed pilots that was particularly common towards then end of the war. I'm not saying this was the norm, most airmen were decent, Art Kramer for instance says he stopped strafing when a woman ran in front of his gun. I'm talking here about murders by military people not civilians as in Hamburg where British aircrewen who parachuted into the city were bound and thrown alive into the burning buildings. That was a problem in Japan as well where aircrew had to avoid civilians in order to surrender to the IJN becuase the civilians were likely to avenge themselves upon them. If you had seen your children, niece nephews or grandchildren die in repeated and apparently indiscriminant bombings on suburb you might in the rage of the momment do the same. I can totaly understand that. You should read "On the Natural History of Destruction" by W.G. Sebald. One of the things the allies did is destroy the extensive documentation the Germans had of the effects of fire bombing and the wounds and deathes it created. I've spoken to people that had to clean out flats with the body of a mother scorched to death by fire huddled over he baby. When touched these bodies often just crumpled into a pile of dust leaving nothing but a wedding ring or other jewelery. On the other hand FDR didn't "allow" Axis atrocities. He just couldn't stop them. FDR was sick and a sham. His toast was a salute to shooting them, "as fast as we can, all of them." Churchill was horrified. Quick as a flash, he was on his feet; his face and neck were red, says Elliott Roosevelt, who was present. He announced that British conceptions of law and justice would never tolerate such butchery. Into this breach stepped President Roosevelt. He had a compromise to suggest. Instead of executing fifty thousand, perhaps "we should settle on a smaller number. Shall we say 49,500?" All the Russians at the table roared with laughter. So did the Americans, who were obliged to show proper appreciation for their chief's "humor." Churchill left the table." (1) Undoubtedly, the President's little grim "joke" was a source of great amusement for the Soviets, who were still laughing over the 14,000 Polish officers they had slain at Katyn, Miedjoye, and Kharkov Forest. Later, one of President Roosevelt's interpreters said of his emaciated, crippled chief: "He looked sick, he acted sick, and he talked sick." (2) Lest anyone think that the President's remark was made in jest, consider that less than one year later he was willing to ratify the notorious "Morgenthau Plan" , had it not been for the adamant objections of his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. In order to fully appreciate the attitude of the allies in regard to the treatment meted out to the defeated Germans, a brief review of events would be in order. To those who might object that the allies were too "civilized" to employ third degree methods on captured German officers to extract damning "confessions", I believe that certain criteria should first be investigated , presented, and addressed, namely: 1. How did the allies treat non-combatants? How were Germans treated who had nothing to do with the waging of the war? What was the allies policy in regard to women, the elderly, and in particular, German children? 2. How were German prisoners of war treated? Specifically, members of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, etc. against whom no criminal charges had been preferred? If the allies treated the defeated Germans with justice and equity, and can be proven so by documentation and the actual historical record, then the allegation that German POW's were tortured and mistreated falls flat on it's face. Let us now examine the record: Germany's civilian population received a foretaste of allied policy in 1940, when British pilots bombed a Berlin schoolhouse, killing a number of children. The air strikes increased in severity over the course of the war, culminating in the destruction of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, and other cities at a loss of probably half a million lives. It was a common occurrence for allied pilots to bomb and strafe columns of refugees and the homeless. For this reason, American and British pilots earned the infamous sobriquet "terror-pilots" and were often treated as such when caught by German civilians. Parachuting pilots were often killed upon capture by German civilians who had often lost beloved family members to the attacks of terror-bombers. The allies made it a point to trace down the civilians responsible for these acts of righteous retribution and summarily hanged them all, whenever and wherever they were found. The allies were particularly sensitive concerning the shooting of 50 allied fliers who had escaped from the Sagan POW camp in 1944. From the German point of view, many of these fliers were warned that should they attempt any more escapes, they would be shot. Aside from that, many of the escapees were caught in civilian clothes or else in German uniforms, thus leading the German authorities to conclude that they were spies. When one reflects on the fact that members of Otto Skorzeny's commando group, which infiltrated American lines during the battle of the Bulge, were also shot upon capture even though they were wearing German uniforms under the American gear, then the shooting of the 50 terror fliers loses some of it's punch. Nevertheless, German officers were executed for this "crime" while the allied crime of shooting the German "spies" went unpunished. The shooting of Americans at Malmedy was given the widest publicity, and those German units which participated in this battle were all brought before the allied inquisition, notwithstanding the fact that the allies had, in one incident shot down members of the Waffen SS in France in cold blood, and not one of the responsible parties was ever brought to justice. At Dachau, American soldiers lined German guards up against a wall and shot them down without mercy. The Americans also allowed crazed inmates of the camp to savagely murder other guards who were stationed there. Often these victims were simply Wehrmacht officers who were left to guard the camp after the SS personnel absconded. When the allied armies first entered German territory, did the victorious "champions of democracy" comport themselves with dignity and honor? Let the reader be the judge. What follows is just an excerpt from volumes of documents relating to the rampaging allied troops as they plundered, raped, and stole from the defenseless German population. The one crime most often committed by allied forces against German civilians in all sectors was forcible, violent rape, which is evidenced by a selection of the following reports. Few of the offenders were ever punished for this crime against women and children. According to the publication "The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany": "Of all the crimes committed by U.S. troops, the best....documented was rape, and it showed a "spiral increase" in the closing months of the war. Between July 1942 and October 1945, 904 rape cases were charged in the European theater, 552 of them in Germany. All told, 487 soldiers were tried for rapes committed in the months of March and April, 1945.(!)....By no means all the incidents were reported or, of those reported, brought to trial, and the conviction rate was relatively low."(3) "Reports of rape and robbery by U.S. troops piled up on the public safety officer's desk.."(4) "The tension was greatest in areas where Negro troops were stationed, since they....frequently interpreted efforts to curb prostitution as another form of discrimination. In Kuenzelsau, Wuerttemberg, Negro soldiers of the 350th Field Artillery Battalion beat up the local jailer when he refused to release prostitutes being held for venereal disease treatment. Later the whole police in Kuenzelsau tried to resign after being threatened that they would be killed if they interfered with the prostitutes."(5) "Nearly all incidents involved liquor or women, often both. The population of vagrant women-which the Army inadvertently increased after November when it released penicillin for treating venereal diseases in German women, thereby shortening for some the "turn around time" from jail or hospital and attracting others who had been deterred by the fear of infection-was often at the root of soldier attacks on German officials and police....In one instance an American officer took an Austrian girl from Linz to Stuttgart, raped her three times, and then transported her to Ulm, where he turned her over to the military police on a charge of having improper papers." (6) "...the Negroes, believing they were not getting an equal share of the women, nursed grudges against both the Germans and the white Americans." (7) Take note that these are cases which have been confirmed by the Allied Occupation Authorities. Other reports may be offered to substantiate the above in greater detail: "From the east came the Bolshevized Mongolian and Slavic hordes, repeatedly raping every captured woman and girl, contaminating them with venereal diseases and impregnating them with a future race of Russo-German *******s. In the west the British used colonial troops, the French Sengalese and Moroccans, the Americans an excessively high percentage of Negroes. Our own method was not so direct as the Russian: ....we compelled women to yield their virtue in order to live-to get food to eat, beds to sleep in, soap to bathe with, roofs to shelter them." (8) The following was related by a catholic priest concerning a letter which was smuggled out of Breslau, Germany, September 3, 1945: "In unending succession were girls, women and nuns violated....Not merely in secret, in hidden corners, but in the sight of everybody, even in churches, in the streets and in public places were nuns, women and even eight year old girls attacked again and again. Mothers were violated before the eyes of their children; girls in the presence of their brothers; nuns in the sight of pupils, were outraged again and again to their very death even as corpses." (9) Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired If anyone was to become a war criminal I suspect you would be the most likely. You are so utterly without doubt convinced of the villany of the enemy. I've often wandered how many Iraqi's were shown no mercy because they were accused of removing babies from baby incubators. |
#5
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There were plenty of pilots engaged in this evil act and children and old people walking the roads between villages had a terrible fear of tieffliger. A policy made famous by the German air force in Poland, Holland, Belgium, France. One of the harder things about war is that you tend to turn into the people you are fighting. all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org |
#6
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That was a problem in Japan as well where aircrew had to avoid civilians in order to surrender to the IJN becuase the civilians were likely to avenge themselves upon them. Well, clearly you know nothing of what you are saying. Aircrew avoided civilians in order to surrender to the NAVY? And how exactly did they avoid civilians? U.S. aircrews knew very well that if they had to bail out over the Empire, they would be tortured, starved, generally maltreated, and very possibly have their heads chopped off, regardless of who performed the formalities of arrest. all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org |
#8
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On 20 Jun 2004 04:38:58 GMT, (JDupre5762) wrote:
FDR had an almost unaminous support in the Congress. That would have come as a great surprise to FDR! all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com Viva Bush! weblog www.vivabush.org |
#9
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From: jdupre5762@
Let's continue the comparison. Roosevelt also threw Japanese residents into detention camps by the tens of thousands. Imagine if Bush 43 tried to do that with Muslims. Chris Mark |
#10
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Chris Mark wrote:
From: jdupre5762@ Let's continue the comparison. Roosevelt also threw Japanese residents into detention camps by the tens of thousands. Imagine if Bush 43 tried to do that with Muslims. Roosevelt was wrong in his day, and our Congress not too long ago acknowledged precisely that. If 43 gets reelected, we may not have to do very much imagining. We presently have an undisclosed number of Muslims in detention who have not yet been charged with any crimes against the state, nor have they been allowed access to legal counsel and they've been subjected to a lot of other things made possible by the Patriot's Act. The numbers may burgeon in time. I don't know where we're going with this comparison. Throwing people into concentration camps because you fear something they might possibly do some day in the future without a shred of evidence is no more conscionable (sp?) today than it was when Roosevelt did it in 1942. George Z. |
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