The Most Shocking ALLIED War Crimes
Discover the hidden truths of World War II in this eye-opening video. Dive into the complexities of the war's morality as we explore five shocking war crimes committed by the Allies. From American concentration camps for Japanese-Americans to the controversial bombing of Dresden, this video exposes the uncomfortable realities of war often seen in black and white. Join us on this journey through history and be prepared to question your perspective on World War II.
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All of these are taught in UK schools... Or they used to be. "A warcrime is only a warcrime if you lose."
Yep might is right. However unfortunate that is.
@@JamesChenisKing Well it might not BE 'Right" but the winners certainly get to make the judgements.
I learned all of this in school in America. But then, I was in a decent school in a decent town full of decent people. War is hell. We can learnto do it better the next time, or we can equivocate all day.
Japanese schools don’t teach about their war crimes, My history teacher actually touched on the subject, I’ve asked someone from Japan about it and apparently they prevent them from being taught because teaching about them would mean they’re admitting to do the wrongs. It’s really messed up, they lost and still claim they committed no war crimes
Curtis LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." A comment he made during the Nuremburg trials. And for those who don't recognise the name. He was the USAF Chief of Staff during the Bay of Pigs crisis and was responsible for dropping/overseeing the B29 attacks on Japan, including x2 nuclear strikes.
I am reminded of a line from the movie Breaker Morant: "The barbarities of war are not committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is the acts , when calmly viewed afterwards, are committed by normal men in abnormal circumstances. "
I feel that quote was grabbed from someone else in some way but I have covid so my brain isn’t good lol
I'd hardly consider men dehumanized and traumatized by war as 'normal'.
Rule number 303.
Brilliant film.
@@kiwi_comanche Indeed it is.
I worked at a retirement home a few years ago. A Japanese american lady and her husband both had been in the Japanese internment camp when they were little kids. She had pretty advanced dementia and sometimes she would think she was a little girl in the camp. Honestly, heartbreaking to see her reliving that time 75 years later.
I'm not American but that first one is understandable. Can't risk having people from the enemy country wondering about and ending up as spies and blowing up cities.
KZheadrs and their constant "heartbreaks " 🙄
@MelvinJ64 have you never seen something upsetting before? Must be blessed to be you.
I worked in Montreal in the Royal Victoria Hospital and I had a European Jewish lady as a patient. She had too much of a certain medication which caused a mental fog and she was certain she was in an internment camp. Once the medication left her system she became more coherent but her terror when confused horrified me, it spoke very loudly of what she had been through.
@MelvinJ64 she ain't no you tuber. She's a human with emotions. It's a good thing.
I am actually SHOCKED that an english speaking youtuber would talk about this subject. For what its worth, thank you for doing this. Even in Germany when WWII is discussed in school, teachers act like the allies were angles and committed no war crimes, at all.
We have to look at history without bias to not repeat the mistakes. No one is purely evil, no one is all good.
I mean to be fair compared to Germany and Japan aside from maybe Russia the rest kinda were in a way. Definitely goes to show the corrupt thought process a government and its military can have reminds me of the US false flag operation to basically start Vietnam.
I've often wondered if at 22- 23 years old I'd have had the moral fortitude to go against the orders of my superiors and everyone I knew and say no. A good reference is the Milgram experiment carried out by the US in the 50's I think, a real eye opener
It's because ONLY the Germans are wrong,can do wrong etc. The moment anybody says something that differs,they get crucified,so to speak.
@@cjvrsa history is written by the winners
It should be noted that roughly 11,000 German Americans and 3,000 Italian Americans were also interned around the same time as their Japanese American counterparts.
I can only imagine (understanding the origin of police).
I lost a German great uncle to that. He disappeared once he went in never to be seen again. Somewhere in Georgia..
If I'm remembering my history correctly (from books, not personal experience), similar internment camps were set up in Canada as well.
I've never heard that looks like I got some digging to do. It's sad what fear can lead good people to do to other good people😢
ALL major powers of WW2... ALL OF THEM, interred non-enemy peoples of certain cultures and races... ALL. OF. THEM. The U.K. folks bristle at this truth, but it's true for them, too. They just emptied their camps into US camps and then wiped their hands and said 'we don't do that!' No, you offload it onto another country. Edit: For the record, I am not talking about POW camps. Internment camps just like the US did to the Japanese... look it up yourself.
Mers-el-Kebir WAS NOT a surprise attack. The British fleet (Force H) arrived and parlayed with French admiral for several hours. An ultimatum was given: either sail out and join the British, sail to neutral ports in the Caribbean, or be destroyed. The French admiral refused both latter options and Somerville (commanding Force H) opened fire on the port with the big guns of his fleet. There was no surprise air attack, although aircraft were in use after the expiration of the British ultimatum. 4:39
Yeah I don't know what he's on about here
THIS! They were given options. The French decided not to join the British Fleet and the Allies couldnt afford for the Germans to get a hold of those ships.
Thank you for your notes. As presented in Whistler's video the action was questionable but certainly defensible. With your information it is clear that there was no war crime. There was an action of stupidity by the French admiral. Not the first in the history of the World Wars. [Yes I am aware of the question regarding the naming of the wars.]
Why in hell [gods name?] did the French refuse to sail to neutral ports in the Caribbean? That would have given them the best of all options. If the British sank them on the way; se la vie. But possibly not all the ships lost. If the German U-boats sank them; same. If the Americans sank them; same. If they reached a Caribbean port. Great, the French may have a fleet after the war. Or they might be able to sneak out of the port and harass American interest if they wanted to stay “Vichy” and Axis oriented.
@@randallruble7941 wtf are talking about, the French Admiral receive those proposition that were give your navy to Britain or go starve to Death in the Carabbean, France had signed a truce for there navy to not aggravate germain action in France and saying they stay neutral, Britain only ask the French navy to surrender and then firing without an Ultimatum on a former allies and a neutreul cuntrie. That call a war crime
It is important to remind warcrimes of both sides. My wife's great-grandmother remembered how the Soviets came to liberate her village in Moravia. They ran their tanks through the vineyards, looted the village, culturally enriched a few women at gunpoint, shot anyone who resisted, and left.
So orks being orks as usual...
Russians being Russian, not the West's fault.
When they took Berlin they boasted that therre would be no girl or woman between 8 and 80 that went unraped.
@@personc6122 that is BS. There was a lot of rape going on in the Soviet occupation of Berlin but it's widely exaggerated.
A bit like Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane then.
For me the worst has to be the The Laconia incident. Refers to an event during World War II in September 1942 when a German U-boat, U-156, torpedoed the British troopship RMS Laconia. Unusually, the U-boat's crew then began rescue operations for the survivors, including the ship's passengers and prisoners of war. However, when the German submarine was spotted by American aircraft, it was attacked. The incident led to changes in the German U-boat rescue policy. The most fkd up thing about this is the fact that the americans blatantly ignored a huge Red Cross flag on the foredeck on the sub, 4 lifeboats full of people being towed and started a bombing run. All they destroyed were 2 lifeboats of around 100 people from the RMS Laconia. The Captain of the sub wanted to start evacuations after torpedoing, because it was "the right thing to do and we are their only hope". There was also a second German sub, one Italian sub and 2 French warships on their way to aid. The bombing runs left the U-156 moderately damaged, but still managing to submerge. To the remaining RMS Laconia's survivors, the U-156 re-emerged after the americans left, leaving them in awe. The Germans at this point had had enough and considered the now 4-day rescue mission over and left. The German U-boat rescue policy was changed so that no rescue effort shall be made unless there is a full guarantee of the sub and it's crew's safety. One of the remaining lifeboats that weren't picked up again by the same German subs and transferred to the French warship, drifted around for 27 days until they found land in the Liberian coast. 16 out of the 68 souls in that boat survived. The Laconia incident was also used in the Nuremberg trials, where the German Admiral Karl Döniz only got a 10-year sentence because of what the U-156 and the U-507 had done to rescue survivors. I may have not remembered every detail correctly as i mostly wrote this from memory. Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong
I suppose it's about perspective, a German u boat torpedoes a ship then attempts rescuing survivors. From an alternate perspective, The U boat will continue operations, sinking and killing how many other people and ships? Destroying the Submarine at the cost of civilian lives may have been viewed as a worthwhile trade off
@@JJKillerElite No, that's not how it works! There is no "perspective" to an obvious warcrime like that.
@miskatonic6210 you seem to be living in a perfect world where all atrocities are equal regardless of reasoning or aim, unfortunately war is not waged according to justice and equality. No nation in history could win such a war
@miskatonic6210 nice sentiment but ww2 had war crimes on both sides. WW2 was the last war where America was attacked. The men who fought it had grown up dirt-poor and had no sympathy for our enemies.
@@JJKillerElite No, that is a war crime. One can only act on current situations and not take into account hypothetical future situations. Morally and legally that US bomber crew was wrong and people died for nothing. If one accepts such behaviour, then one can expect the same in return, a never ending escalation of barbarity.
I'm always surprised how much this surprises people. "No, my people wouldn't have done this!" Chances are, they already have.
Yeah...it's War. Frankly, if you aren't prepared for some truly dark shlt, then whatever you're fighting for isn't worth fighting for. War is he'll.
and probably will again
I’m surprised your surprised that people are surprised. Intelligent people know the facts.
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*But, No German EVER Rapped a WoMan!!!! NOT EVER!!!!!*
I once had an Eastern German textbook for English that was used in schools. They used the phrase "the English bombed Dresden heavily" as an example to explain the difference between adjectives and adverbs. They also had many texts that extolled the achievements of the British communist party and the protest against the Vietnam war and its violent suppressions by American police forces. Interestingly the textbooks for Russian never used examples like "the red army raped many women in Germany" to teach the Russian language.
Now text books tell kids about how ukrainians are suffering almost as if government issued learning materials for children were always full of outright propaganda.
We did similar things to West Germany. ALL Media came under the control of the "Allied Control Commission". We all know that the Nazis band some 8.5k books but we don't hear that the Americans band 35k books. All political Parties had to be approved by the Control Commission, school curriculums are a product of the Allied Control Commission. This is just a little bit of what went on and some of it is now an integral part of the BRD today. The bottom line is that a completely sovereign Germany disappered from world history in 1945. If you look and read you can find all of this and more about the postwar era.
I note that they forgot to mention that someone fire-bombed Coventry (very heavily) before that event. I hope the British use rather more mundane examples in most of their language text books.
Because the USSR made sure that any mention of soviet crimes would bring you in a lot of trouble. As a teenager my mother learned it the hard way. But everyone in the former Warsaw Pact know how Russians are. The horrors of their occupation are well remembered.
@@petegarnett7731 The Germans did not "fire-bomb" Coventry, AFAIK. They BOMBED Coventry, and the British had alreay bombed German cities at that point, but they didn't use incendiaries, they used high-explosive bombs. Words have actual meanings.
My friend’s grandfather told us, “The Captain said anyone that brings a prisoner on board that prisoner will sleep in their bunk and get 1/2 their rations until the prisoners can be gotten off the ship. We didn’t take many prisoners.”
*THIS TrumpLIAR, Never even said, Wut Nation !!!*
@@Justin.Martyr ...And those are words!😂😂😂
Simple actions can have massive effects. When that happens more players start coming. We get locked up, shot instantly and people start dying.
The author Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden at the time of the bombing. His story best illustrates the absurdity of wat. When his Allies and fellow countrymen bombed the city the Germans took hi to an air raid shelter. Later his allies the Russians approached and started shelling the remnants of the city. The Germans then moved him westward. As he pointed out his countrymen and his allies tried to kill him, it was his enemies who saved his life.
You basically have it, but not quite. Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners, used for slave labor (itself a war crime), were housed at night in an underground meat locker, Schlachthof-fünf - Slaughterhouse 5. So while the city burned above in February 1945, he survived below ground.
@@carrite It is still true what dominic has said. The actions of Vonnegut's enemies kept him alive and the actions of his allies would have killed him.
@@ItsLunaRegina The Israelis call it The Hannibal Option'
The city was shelled just because by the Soviets. Rumble actually makes for good defensive cover. They would have used artillery to hit the defenders not just to destroy rubble.
@@OTDMilitaryHistory could been more killed if bombing not happen as russia could hav been more deadly with attacks and kiled more Dresden volk.
Mers-el-Kebir is somewhat misrepresented here as the British did try to avoid a fight. The ultimatum that they presented was more than surrender the ships or be sunk, they included options like sail to the US (which was neutral, this happened before Pearl Harbor) and be interned for the rest of the war, or sail to French colonies in the Caribbean IIRC - basically a place where they would be completely out of reach for the Germans; both of these would have been much more acceptable to France as they weren't eager to risk losing their ships to the Germans or the British for that matter. But the commander of the port at Mers-el-Kebir somehow forgot to mention these options when he asked his superiors for orders - perhaps intentionally - so the whole thing ended in a naval battle. For reference, the same operation at Alexandria ended without bloodshed because the French had a much more reasonable person in command there. kzhead.info/sun/ZMWomZdrjXN3gmw/bejne.html
Couldn't have been said better.
I seem to recall this information as well. It is rarely presented with “all” options on the table. Typically? It’s “surrender or die”. Which wasn’t the case at all. Not from everything I’ve seen/heard/read.
Simon is quite often full of crap.
I'm not saying that it wasn't a terrible international incident, but Admiral Gensour and his commander/envoy who's name I can't remember didn't do their fleet any favors. Having an adequate translator on site would have saved everyone a lot of grief. Also I'm glad that's a Drach video because anything else would just not have done.
@@ImpmanPDX"Drach?" May I ask what that means? I thought it meant "dragon."
Bloody hell. We all know these things happened, but are not told about them. Thank you Simon. A part 2 would be appreciated.
Read any first person perspective of war and you’ll find account of war crimes, from loot to murder to sometimes much worse. The famous example would Lt. Spears in Band of Brothers* but might I recommend Charles B. McDonald’s Company Commander, a fantastic book, but watch out for how casually it dismisses rape. *I know there a massive amount of doubt about if it actually happened but in way the truth isn’t important, only what the people at the time believed was true.
I was taught all these things in high school. Did you just not pay attention?
@@THEFUTUREMARINE2016you know, the subjects that are told in history classes varies from school to school, even more so on a county by county basis and on top of that, it varies between different countries
@THEFUTUREMARINE2016 Yes because what you were taught in school is exactly what everyone else in the world has been taught and will continue to be taught. Mug.
@@THEFUTUREMARINE2016probably a propaganda bot
The connection between war and inhumane actions is absolutely undeniable.
That's meaningless. War is inherently inhumane, but many "inhumane actions" are completely unrelated to war.
War is synonymous with inhumane actions methinks.
@@philipliethen519 Again, NO. Reread what I wrote.
@dem4christ04 Duh, of course. Also undeniable is that the only way to confront evil is by force,
I've been told so many stories of war crimes by the veterans who were actually there when they happened, I've lost count. Committed by the so called Good Guys, on the "right" side of the war, they refute much of the school text books and historical novels. Murder, torture, theft, rape - often done to unarmed civilians and some times children. As one old dogface told me, "It wasn't like a John Wayne movie". Some knew they were the Bad Guys, too. As the heroic and famous Chuck Yeager said to his wing man in 1945, when they were ordered to shoot EVERY THING that moved on the ground in Germany (non-combatants, children, etc.), "It's a good thing we're on the winning side, because from now on, we're War Criminals."
The Germans were still the bad guys. Need I remind you of the Holocaust.
@DrippyTheRaindrop You need to retake 2nd grade math. Some 95 percent of the civilians killed in World War II were killed by the Axis. Killing civilians was a high priority NAZI war goal. In contrast, America saved tens of millions of civilians in relief operations during and after both world wars. Not to mention the millions saved because the NAZIs were defeated.
You navigate the universe incased in an armored capsule. As a new player you can focus on one area to develop. You can always change roles if desired. If you want to fight, combat can evolve.
beauty. The gathering and refinement of resources. The building of ships and equipment and even space stations. Players can ban together and form corporations. Other corporations can merge to form alliances.
The sinking of the Willhelm Gustloff would have been a good one to include. An estimated 9,000 passengers died when it was hit by a soviet torpedo. There were German military personnel on-board, but most were civilian refugees fleeing the soviets.
Why is sinking a transport a war crime? Did the Soviet submariner captain have the manifest to tell that most of the passengers were civilians rather than redeploying troops? (IIRC the US sank a transport carrying US, etc., POWs away from Wake Island. Was THAT a war crime too?)
@@gandydancer9710the Willem Gustloff was shadowed by the sub for some time. The Gustloff had no escorts. So it was obvious it was not a warship. And this was at the end of the war when there was no reason to massacre anyone. Like bombing Dresden
@@mikebellis5713 Gustloff was armed (with machine guns acting as AA guns), didn't put lights on and didn't figure as hospital ship (even as simply painting red cross on the side). By all means it was military vessel, escort or not. If anything, civilians shouldn't be allowed there at all.
@@mikebellis5713 No, the lack of an escort did not mark the Gustloff as a non-military transport. Ocean liners used as military transports, by both sides, routinely relied on speed rather than escorts/convoys for self-protection. Actually the Gustloff had three escorts, but two dropped out with mechanical problems.
Gustloff was fully legitimate target, carried U-boat crews and hilfsmarines, sailed painted in kriegsmarine grey, flying kriegsmarine colours. Nothing unclear about that status, even though it was a huge tragedy and loss of life. (Gustloff was a kriegsmarine floating barrack and transport from 1940 november on. Before that it was briefly a hospital ship. )
Remember, it's not a War Crime if you win the War.
It is still a war crime, you just won't be punished over it,
Or if the term isn't invented, or if you are allied to the USA...
Don’t try to take over Europe or the Pacific Rim and you won’t have to worry about it.
@@briansanchez9899 considering the first draft of the Geneva convention was mostly what the Canadians did in ww1
Truer words hav never been spoken.
My grandma told me, that when she her sisters and her mothers were waiting on a train station while already being occupied by the Soviets they used to hide her teenage sister under the luggage, she and her youngest were pretty save and they hoped that her mom could fight off any advances, which apparently worked, at least she never told me otherwise.
I vividly remember when I was a sophomore in highschool (1999) when it came time to cover the events that led to WW2 in Europe and the Pacific. There came a point when my history teacher, informed us that what he was about to discuss was about the less than stellar behavior/crimes performed by The Allies (i.e. Japanese Internment Camps and much more). He also made it known that these topics were not part of the lesson plan approved by the school board. But he said that he wouldn't be able to call himself an educator if he didn't teach us everything and not gloss over or outright skip certain issues.
@ShaneWreck83 Did he explain how different internment camps were to NAZI and Japanese concentration camps? Did he explain how 95 percent of the civilians and POWs killed in the War were killed by the Axis and Soviets? If he did, he was an educator If he did not he was a propagandist.
I was born (in the UK) towards the end of WW2. I had a lot of extended family who had been involved in the conflict. Those who survived it were in a minority. One uncle who survived told me of a single war crime he witnessed. Committed not by a German but by an American officer who forced German prisoners to dig a hole, then 'grease-gunned' them into it. Reporting this to his own officers, he was ordered to shut his mouth or face the consequences. Another great-uncle, serving in submarines, twice witnessed German survivors being machine-gunned in the water. No idea if it was anything to do with events depicted here. Complaining to senior officers, he found himself fast-tracked to misfortune in his (volunteer) naval career. Yet another relative, serving in the far east, served alongside Malayan resistance forces against the Japanese. Only to find, months after the War's end, that former comrades were now 'commie terrorists' because they had the affrontery to expect independence from both Japan and Britain. He was actually given charge of re-armed Japanese POWs under British officers tasked with 'maintaining order' among an increasingly hostile local population. If truth is the first casuality of war, then surely moral high ground quickly becomes the second.
"Fast-tracked to misfortune" -- such a lethal euphemism. Thanks for your comment.
So these Innocent solders were passing out bibles door to door when this happened I knew a lovely Jewish ( Krimheld as a little girl ) had the tattooed numbers on the inside of her wrist she lived the nightmare then & haunted her thoughts her entire life but she explained German soldiers cruel but the German civilian's could be even worse their were no innocent people fighting in hell hole but a 500,000 Americans gave their lives saving Europe's ass Hero she said the UK soldiers notorious barn yard animal molestation in the country sde
The British army reportably rearmed Japanese prisoners of war in Vietnam too …French Indo- China….in the fight against communists
@@johnjones4129 True enough. Mark Felton posted a 9-minute video essay "Britain's Vietnam War" to KZhead (August 2019) which recounts Operation Masterdom and the re-arming of Japanese Imperial troops in September 1945 to fight alongside British forces. Cheers.
There's a book, Mountbatten's Samurai, (which I am yet to read) on Japanese Surrendered Persons (not PoWs, it preserves honour and sidesteps the Geneva Checklist) being used as colonial police in Indochina. It's also supposed to be the last time that American and British soldiers have shot at each other.
This needs to be spoken about more. We're sold this grand story of WW2 as a black and white good versus evil conflict. But as is the case in every war. Everyday regular people get caught in the middle of it all and their stories are often forgotten. Thanks for not forgetting them Simon
I disagree, I don’t think it should be talked about. It’s a teeny minority of wrong-doings (some still debatable) that’s a common casualty of war. Talking about these anomalies out of proportion to the necessary sacrifices that good men had to give, makes it seem like it wasn’t good vs evil when it clearly was. I’ll always be thankful of the sacrifices that men made for us so we can be free today.
@@CosmicBrain21GTFO with your "It's okay when we do it" rubbish
That isn’t what he is saying. To flagellate ourselves over acts committed nearly eighty years ago proves nothing; not a damn thing will be changed by it. To compare the relatively few incidents of war crimes committed by U.S. and British troops to the gross atrocities committed by the Axis powers is lunacy at best; revisionist at worst.
@@CosmicBrain21 🍻
@@CosmicBrain21good men don’t rape lol
I believe the duality of war is best expressed in the Mark Twain story of "The War Prayer". Its a good short read and i highly recomend it to anyone watching. There are no war crimes, only failed leadership of our side or theirs. I would even go so far as to say war itself is the crime. The folks who begin it should be held accountable and on the front lines.
Yes! Let them fight their own wars
Very cool I will check that out. Thanks for sharing!
The French admiral had several honorable options. He was also provided with a specific timetable. He chose to call the Poms bluff and threw away the ships and his sailors.
You mean he didn't betray is countries in fear of retaliation of the Germain and that the British messenger forgot to told him they would attack, I have a hard time believing those who sank hospital ship on a regular basis?
Yes, I've heard this too.
Thank you for mentioning the last one, Dresden. I am from there. My ancestors barely survived that bombing, my great grandmother hid under a table and was buried out later. It was total destruction, like after a heavy earthquake, but with added inferno of the white phosphorous bombs that were used, fires you cannot put out which killed so many. That was the human tragedy. The cultural one was that this city of immense beauty that kept immeasurable historical treasures was destroyed, luckily much could be rebuilt meanwhile. The people of the past creating that beauty had nothing to do with the crimes of the Nazi regime. But this terror bombing happened to many cities on both sides of the war, we must not forget this and hopefully never repeat history and do it again or it won't make us better than the ones in our past comitting these kind of atrocities on civilians.
European nations are inviting hostile forces from Middle East and Africa who will do exactly the same destruction. However, it will happen slowly and less noticeably. This time the destruction will be complete and will never be rebuilt. The same is happening in USA.
nicely said
As I was hearing about, a lot of American funds have been distributed to rebuild Dresdens destroyed monuments, such as the Frauenkirche
It wasn’t a war crime it was a military target, asked for by the Russians.
Kinda like remembering not to eliminate all the Jews? Like that kind of advice?
When I was a teenager my mom worked with w gentleman that was a pilot of a B-17 during WWII. He was telling them ine day that every set of mission orders they received had at the bottom the addition instructions that if thier bomber was damaged, they were runnung low on fuel, or any reason they could not reach their intended target they were to pick out the closest enemy town or city, bomb it, then retutn to base.
Horrific
In fairness, even during ideal conditions it was considered a major success if they landed 5% of the bombs within 2 miles of the intended target. Finding the correct city when all you've got is a compass bearing and a stopwatch was hard enough (less than 1/3rd who reported a successful mission actually reached the designated target) let alone dropping bombs with any degree of accuracy from 10000ft. Bomber command was rarely far from controversy throughout the entire war though, they wasted a lot of their own men, millions of tons of expensive ordinance and aircraft and caused massive civilian casualties while having a highly questionable success rate
Check out the history of the B17, then ask yourself, who were the US future planning carpet bombing (the only real use for heavy bombers) in 1935. Mexico? Canada?
Sorry you feel this way but it is called total war for a reason. Breaking the will of the Germans to support their great leader meant sometimes hitting hole cities. It is easy to look back now and say "Oh the allies were going to win", but many times during the war it may not have happened. Bad things happen in war and sadly for people who haven't been there you will never understand. Sit back with your judgements but if you were not in the trenches your opinion matters less. (25 year US Army Officer still serving with 46 months between Iraq and Afghanistan whose grandfathers fought in Bastone and in the Navy Pacific fight).
@@jeremyw6246 so from the perspective of a huge part of the global population, suffering under British, American and French rule, it was absolutely acceptable, that crimes would be committed against the civilian population of these nations? That’s what you’re saying as well, right?
Thank you for going through this side of the war as well. We all know the horrors the axis wrought and i think we all would spend the rest of our lives crying in the night had we seen even a percent of all the horrors and felt even half of the pain that horror brought. However we also owe it to every single dead and massacred innocent soul to tell the whole story, not just the glorious victories but also the darkest moments of all of the involved parties. I have read about and talked to survivors of several wars and the absolute horrors they have been through still affects me deeply. Its enough for me to not be able to sleep some nights and i wasnt the person this happened to. Its a small miracle that beauty still manages to light its flame after the torrents of pain that has flooded the streets of humanity.
@zipp4everyone263 Unfortunately, we all do not know the immensity of Axis war crimes. The vast majority of the killing of civilians and POWs was done by the Axis.
The 3rd story is even more sad because a German U-Boat Commander, Werner Hartenstein did the total opposite. He risked his crew's life to save survivors of a ship they just sank, called the Allies and gave their location asking for help.
I wonder if the fact that they were Italian PoWs might have influenced him?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 The Laconia was carrying 463 officers and crew, 87 civilians, 286 British soldiers, 1,793 Italian prisoners and 103 Polish soldiers. I'm not aware that Hartenstein restricted himself to attempting to save Italians. Did you pull that from your butt?
@@gandydancer9710 Oh dear. The usual resort to insult by an ignoramus. How tedious. Please show me where in my single sentence comment I made such a statement. I simply asked a question. Buy a dictionary and look up what 'question' means.
@@dovetonsturdee7033U-boats stopping for survivors was pretty standard, especially for merchant ships. Well, until this incident happened then it became prohibited to attempt rescues.
@@Clippidyclappidy Absolute nonsense. Have you seen inside a WW2 Type VII u-boat? Even had a commander considered picking up a few survivors, there was barely enough space inside one for the crew. Your ignorance is showing.
I was wondering if this video was going to cover any of Canada's war crimes, but then I realized "Yeah no.. if there was going to be a video covering Canadian war crimes it would likely be it's own long episode on Into The Shadows" (Canada is largely why many sections of the Geneva Convention was even created...)
Can you cite any sources for your claim Canada was the reason for the Geneva Convention?
@@ToddSauveKZhead unfortunately flags any comments with links automatically as spam and deletes them. However, the Canadian armed forces throughout both world wars had been sadistically ruthless towards their foes, including prisoners of war (which were often tortured then killed, or just killed) The Third Geneva Convention itself when reading through it certain sections appear to fit very specifically with certain things the Canadian army committed towards Germans during WW1.
@@remmistein If you can provide concrete sources it would be helpful. Until then, well ... I read extensively on WW2 and am aware of certain crimes committed by the Canadian army. One town in Germany was ordered to be obliterated by General Chris Vokes toward the end of the war. Wars are very ugly affairs I suppose is all anyone can say. God will judge everyone on that day.
@@ToddSauvei wouldnt be surprised if there was some truth to it..... not screwing with Canada is kind of its own trope and not the 1st time ive heard the sentiment.
As a Canadian, all I'm gonna say is. They fucking started it ! Both times ! We've apologized for our actions during the wars, and have been pretty fucking chill ever since. "If I had American technology. British Officer's, and Canadian soldiers, I'd rule the world" Winston Churchill.
Per the Japanese American Internment - you forgot the US vs Korematsu (which disputed the constitutionality of the internment in the first place) but was initiated because the USA was DRAFTING young men out of the prison camps to fight for the US war effort. Now most Japanese Americans (tens of thousands of them) volunteered but around 60 men refused, saying that you couldn't strip all constitutional rights from a people BUT then demand that they do their civic duty to join the military and fight. This was the biggest abomination to me, to draft men from the camps to fight after taking everything away from them. Of course, this was just an abomination to the American ideal of justice and constitutionality. Our prison camps were a far cry from the camps in Europe, which were 'correctly labeled' Death camps because they served a completely different purpose.
Not to mention, how ironic that they served with distinction, exceptional bravery, and were very effective in the European theater. This isn't an opinion, it's fact backed by the results. But the extra slap in the face was how they faced unchecked and blatant racism after released from the camps.
I'm more shocked at the cuckolds volunteering to fight for the government abusing them so
Always the spineless ones who lament about something they enjoy the fruits of.
In no way was imprisoning Japanese Americans right. But there is no way I would compare it to concentration camps. At least children weren't separated and all gassed when they arrived. Shame on you Simon for that comparison.
@@mikehinnekamp Concentration camps are a British invention from their African wars to gain better control over the population, or certain elements thereof. While death of the intaken was not a goal by any means, the resulting death tolls weren't exactly lamented either.
Execute order 9066. In regards to the Royal Navy. There were more incidents, even one where a British ship engaged the enemy flying a foreign nations flag and shooting shipwreck survivors. However every commander was open about it, even boasting their reasons... quoting that is is for "Such and such", listing previous attacks on civilian ships and other previous crimes, as far back as the start of WW1. They saw it as a "Eye for an eye"... it was also why the Kriegsmarine started targeting merchant vessels... because they started "Eye for an eye" too. Even Dresdon... Churchill openly stated that after the Blitz... towns are now legitimate targets should they have any link to the enemy military. Bismarck... the list goes on. "An eye for an eye leaves the world blind"
"No one in this war has been killed with a bayonet who didn't have his hands up first." First World War soldier.
The single largest civilian casualty event should be explored by you. That being the fire bombing of Tokyo. It killed more than the 2 atomic bombs combined
Yes, it was very effective.
@@Leo_Pard_A4Some would say, alongside the nukes, that it convinced the Japanese to surrender and saved many more lives from needless combat and also preserved japan’s sovereignty in the following concords and agreements.
News flash Simon Whistler has talked about the Toyko fire bombings on one of his various channels.
@@YamaXI - Which does not lessen the fact that it was a war crime.
True, Tokyo fire bombing was the deadliest, but the nuclear bombs had more lasting effects, as there are still babies born with DNA abnormalities because of the radiation almost 80 years later, so I get why people see them as "worse".
Once you add the soviets and Chinese to the Allied roster, well, war crimes become a norm. Surprised Katynin wasn't mentioned. Too well known, perhaps.
My favorite part is that Soviets tried to blame Nazis in Nurnberg for Katyn, but eventually shutted the fuck up because literally NOBODY in the West believed them or their sham "evidences" even despite years of pro-Soviet propaganda
This is about the shocking ones. The Soviets' war crimes weren't exactly shocking. Terrible, but expected with the Soviet way of doing things.
The US puts warcrime whistleblowers in jail. Does not persecute the perpetrators in most cases. Trump even pardoned convicted war criminals.
@@Flight_of_IcarusI'd say expected, as most of the soldiers saw what German had done to USSR territories and it's people. I'm not saying that it's ok, but i kinda understand why.
Bro, Katyn was proven to be german propaganda a million times
Dresden was far from the only city targeted, Würzburg was bombed on march 16th 1945. There were no military targets, the only reason it was targeted was that it had over 300000 inhabitants and they wanted to kill as many germans as possible before the war ended. The city was 97% destroyed and it was even contemplated to leave it like that as a memorial. Even today you can still see traces of the bombing as the house I grew up in still had burn marks on the stairs.
@personc6122 Nonsnce. there was not a single city in Germany including Dresden that was not involved in the NAZI war economy.
Governed by 4 great Empires. You navigate the universe. You have complete neural control. So be adventurous. If if you want to fight, you can fly solo missions. While for some it can be the thrill of fleeting up. You can look into uncharted space. You can also engage in prosperity. These can be done alone or with others.
Thank you for talking about this, Simon. Assuming you ignore the Soviets, people love to act like allies were bastions of good and the axis were 100% evil to the core when the truth of the matter is there were good and bad people on all sides. And any time you bring up war crimes of the allied powers, idiots like to be like "But the axis was worse!" like it justifies the allies own dark moments.
Yeah I am Canadian and it was certainly framed like that in our history classes and so forth. Of course the Red Scare after the war I imagine certainly factored into the Soviets not looking like angels.
Im slightly surprised you mentioned the firebombing of Dreanden but not Tokyo. That particular conflagration killed as many people as did the nukes, iirc.
There's a difference between the Tokyo and Dresden fire bombing. The Japanese really, really, really wanted to continue the war. Dresden is in a weird spot at which a lot of Germany was somewhere between going through the motions, or barely able to contain the white flags if they were in West Germany. Japan had no such slack of external signs of resistance. This isn't to justify burning down most Japanese urban centers, that's a different discussion, but it makes it less controversial as it may have been unequal blows, but Japan was still trying to stay in the fight. Also,vTokyo is a major industrial hub and center of government. Dresden was a regional city of minimal importance...until it became a key hub for troop movements. It's an easier pitch to accept bombing someone's most relevant industrial governmental hub.
@@jrmckimThe Japanese didn't want to continue to war, you're literally lying right now and the Tokyo bombing killed over 100k civilians...fcking disgusting.
The bombing of Dresden is highly politicized by Neofascists to this day, sadly.
@@jrmckim Non of this is relevant arguments to fire bomb civilians.
War is Hell
You should do one on Canada, cause they did some absolute horrid things in WWII. Lots of which became part of the Geneva Convention
Shush people don't need to know that Canada ain't as friendly as we pretend
I agree!!!!
what are you talking aboot
Also they had horrific things done to em as well
@@Blox117I don't think this one's part of violating the Geneva Convention but Canada also interred Japanese citizens of their country at least 22k Japanese Canadians
A rarely mentioned war crime was New Zealand troops in the Western Desert killing wounded and defenceless German soldiers in a military hospital. The New Zealand general apologised to Rommel saying he was unable to control some of his Māori troops.
I mean, he should respect their heritage, the Maori didn't really do the whole "taking prisoners" thing historically.
Did they eat them, too?
In the 1980s I did a hiking trip in NZ together with a Dutch guy - typical North European appearance, over 6 feet tall, blond hair, blue eyes. When we finished (in a remote country settlement) we went to the pub for a beer or three. We met an elderly Maori who asked if my friend was German, saying that he looked just like some Germans he had met during the war. His unit had captured some Germans in Italy - teenagers and clearly terrified. The NZ soldiers tried to reassure them that they were safe. Then an officer came over and ordered them to shoot the prisoners. They did, but this man still felt bad about it nearly 40 years later.
@robertmchugh9024 A little context is needed here. How many Germans were killed inn such circumstances? The actual number can not be very many. Most German POWs in Allied hands not only survived the War but actually gained weight. Some 5.7 million Soviet military personnel fell into German hands during World War II. By the end of the War, only about 930,000 Soviet POWs had survived.
As a former soldier I can safely say that war is the crime. As a realist, I can also sadly but safely say that the crime of war will always exist.
@danielroncaioli6882 Without war we would still have slavery and the world would be run by a NAZI state.
Farewell to Manzanar was my first introduction to the Japanese internment camps. My teacher wanted to show that the U.S had always made knee jerk reactions to threats (patriot act). It made for some really great discussion on what war and fear can drive us to.
My first introduction was having a teacher who was born in one that wasn't too far a drive away. Hell of a gut punch, that's for sure. And he didn't speak a word of Japanese, and neither did his family. They'd been in the US for generations.
They promised that the Patriot Act was going to be temporary. Yet it still exists. You ask me why I don't trust the federal government. There's your answer.
If you ever get a chance to visit Manzanar, I recommend it. There's hardly anything left, but the foundations for most of the buildings still exist as well as the roads and various other parts of the camp. There are memorials setup at the entrance.
Great teacher
Ya, the Patriot Act. Legalize all sorts of illegal government activity. And let’s create the Dept. Of “Homeland” Security. Why didn’t they just call it the Dept. of Fatherland Security? Goebbels would be proud.
9:37 I can only imagine the letter reading something like "We hope this does not cause you any great inconvenience good sir, but have to ask if you could you please stop killing enemy survivors?"
Inter arma enim silent leges is a Latin phrase that literally means "For among arms, the laws are silent" but is more popularly rendered as "In times of war, the law falls silent."
I read a book long time ago. It was basically about the "vagaries of war" and the author's point of the book was that war makes "good versus evil" very blurred. One passage I still remember is about what happened in a camp for japanese POWs in present day Indonesia with British guards after the surrender of japan in 1945. The japanese military had, as usual, committed mass atrocities against the Indonesian civilians with the usual mass sex crimes against Indonesian women and forcing huge numbers of Indonesian civilians into brutal slave labor....... SOOOOOOO...... What happened at the POW camp with the disarmed japanese soldiers were that the Indonesians were freely entering the POW camp and basically hacking the japanese POWs to death with machetes, axes, farm tools, etc........... *the British guards were fully aware of what was happening and didn't intervene or stop the butchering by the Indonesians.*
A letter to a Submarine captain asking him politely to not kill civilians is as British as it gets. Back in the glory days anyway.
Those glory days include colonization and the starvation of thousands of Indian men children and women... I think peoples nostalgia often clouds the facts the glory days were fucked up everywhere
@@hillre14 You think death for thousands of Indian men children and women only started when the British showed up? I'm anyway not recognizing this "letter to a Submarine captain asking him politely to not kill civilians" incident.
@@gandydancer9710 get off the "soapbox" I was advocating for a people who's pain is largely ignored. What I won't tolerate is you lecturing because I didn't say something in a way you felt I should've said.
You should make a video about all the war crimes committed by Canada in both world wars, it's actually insane how violent they often were. Or maybe do one on those committed by lesser known nations during the wars.
It's too contrary to the narrative, to be aware of these things but anyone objectively studying history comprehends.
I'm Canadian... it's war, innit. What my countrymen did in War 1 and 2 was win. No such thing as a fair fight... if you're going to fight fair then you will lose! But isn't it all nice and cozy to sit back 80 or 100 years later and judge them.
@@haggis525so youre saying mass rape is fine, because it happened during war? When it served no purpose in winning or losong a war, but was instead a way for men in uniform to assert power of vulnerable women and children? And war crimes happen during the wars youve been alive for. If Canada has been in a war, you can bet they have committed war crimes - maybe not as an entire military force, but there will be many soldiers who have done things. You cant think they havent given the number of soldiers Canada has.
@haggis525 genuinely disgusting opinion and it's worrying that there's people out there who think this is an OK think to believe.
@@heyysimone That's not what I wrote. You are the one fixated on rape... not me. I wrote regarding the well known propensity in War 1 and lesser but still relatively common in War 2 for Canadian combat soldiers to kill enemy soldiers who were attempting to surrender. Maybe pull your head out of your ass and read what is actually written rather than imprint your fixation on rape onto it. 🤔 War is hell... or haven't you heard?
The thing about the Japanese internment camps are that there was Americans of Japanese descent that aided a downed Japanese bomber pilot. The pilot told them about the attack and they worked to help the pilot escape and to destory his plane. look it up the niihau incident. But it seems to be reasonable to assume in the post attack paranoia there was more sympathizers in the population i mean on the 1st attack there were random Americans helping the enemy. Crazy
While this was technically after world war II, operation keelhaul deserves recognition as one of the worst crimes in history. One which involved all of the allied powers. On the subject of bombing cities during world war II, some estimate that the Nazis killed approximately 60,000 civilians in their bombings of Britain throughout the war. Contrast that to approximately 800,000 civilians killed in Germany from all the allied bombings. One detail that is often overlooked is that Britain bombed Berlin eight times before Hitler ordered retaliatory attacks on London and ultimately other civilian targets in England. Yet so many sources throw in subtle comments about the brutal, evil nature of the German bombings. And Hitler is often depicted as a madman obsessed with bombing London. In a strange twist of fate, my Opa can probably claim that he survived the war because his mom was killed in an American bombing of a German train evacuating civilians. Because of this he was on leave when his unit was surrounded in the siege of Leningrad. He was eventually captured by the Americans whom he says treated him reasonably well. One thing I've heard from a few people who survived WWII in Eastern Europe, Is that the Nazi occupation was far more tolerable than Soviet occupation. Under the Nazis, if you minded your own business and did not oppose them, you were generally safe. Usually people only talk about the exception to this rule. Under the Soviets there was widespread oppression and starvation; religion was a crime; if you had land that they wanted, they just killed you; and sometimes entire villages were killed to deal with isolated resistance in the region. One Slovenian man told me that the Soviets put hundreds of refugees on a train supposedly going to Italy. He was one of them, but had a gut instinct that something bad was going to happen so he escaped from the train. He later found out that everyone on the train had been gunned down before they reached the border. Another Slovenian man told me about how the many caves in Slovenia were sometimes used to inter hundreds of civilians. In other cases civilians were killed in large numbers by being shoved off cliffs and buried.
This is what leftists don't want you to know. This is what the media and schools will never talk about. If someone brings this up you will see people come out of the wood work to justify it by saying "they were nazis and deserved it", and what is being a nazi? It's believing in an ideology that opposes capitalism, democracy, communism, and doesn't want Jews in your country because of all their financial and political manipulation. So basically people who believe the official narrative of WW1 and WW2 think that the Germans deserved it for commiting wrong think. Wrong think is a leftist coined phrase and it means thinking anything that isn't ideologically approved (by leftists).
Of about 195 Japanese Prisoners of War taken by the United States between January 1, 1942 and June 30, 1942, only 19 made it back to long term holding. 90% died in transit. When as a child I heard of this, I asked several adults I knew who had been in WW2. I was told "It was not US policy to kill Japanese POWs, it just was not policy to not kill Japanese POWs." The wording was consistent enough I found it strange to come from so many sources when I was twelve. I did get one different response from a former US Marine. He told a story of how ground combat units felt about the transport echelon killing POWs. It involved three Guadalcanal veterans explaining things to seven Airmen. Five of the Airmen were hospitalized. The Marines were punished. Confined to quarters for three days, Docked three days pay, bread and water for three days. They were escorted to their tents by the Sgt at Arms. When they got there, they found an ice chest with ice cream and beer plus chocolate bars and local delicacies in their tents. The Regimental Sergent passed the hat for a collection to make up for the lost pay. They each got almost a months pay. It took a while for the transport echelon to get the message.
They actually convicted an American for killing a few dozen Italian and German POWs on Sicily, but he was pardoned and returned to duty after about a year when the heat had died down.
My father fought in Northern Europe in 1944 and 1945. He didnt doubt that the Germans and his fellow Brits both commited war crimes, but the only ones he saw first hand were committed by the American Army, mainly being the murder of prisoners of war.
Got to do what you got to do to win. You want to win and feel bad about how you did it or loose with the moral high ground? By the way loosing usually means the death of you and your culture
I'm fascinated that this is your response to a video on war crimes from multiple countries, including your own.
@@THEFUTUREMARINE2016yeah it's bizarre 😂. Like saying, I know my own people and the British committed war crimes but let's not forget Americans did it to! What the hell is the difference?!
My grand grandfather who fought in all fronts during the war survived all war. But he never returned from giving up his weapons to the Americans and so did his squad. It never came to surface what happened but I think it's quite obvious!
@@johnirby8847 He told you what the difference was. What part of "the only ones he saw first hand" bit used words you didn't understand?
For your Operation Catapault section, us Americans also killed shipwreck survivors in the Pacific against the Japanese. A few US ships including a submarine, sunk a few Japanese troop carriers that were loaded with soldiers. The ship commanders deemed that since the ships were sunk with some men floating, that the Japanese soldiers could simply swim to shore to become combatants again. They at first went thru machine gunning the Japanese surviving soldiers/sailors, then determined it was taking too long. They then went thru the men spreading barrels of oil in them only to light the oil on fire.
I dont know.. its seems to me that once the axis powers threw out international law, treaties and rules.. it was carte blanche for the allies to follow suit. It may not be moral but atleast it keeps you alive.
1:10 - Chapter 1 - America concentration camps 4:25 - Chapter 2 - Sinking the french fleet 7:25 - Chapter 3 - Killing shipwreck survivors 12:25 - Chapter 4 - Rype 15:30 - Chapter 5 - The bombing of dresden
One excuse for the Internment camps was the Niʻihau incident, but it was also a classic real estate grab.
The French Fleet of Mers el Khébir . Two Battleships and two Battlecruisers , five destroyers . Not really , the most impressive event of the war
Internment isn't a concentration camp. Quit building it up to more than it was
@@mikeyost3672 Probably true, but conflating the internment camps to Axis concentration camps is dishonest.
My grandfather a bridge officer on a British destroyer in the Mediterranean, after sinking a German frigate the captain ordered the destroyer to turn around and run down the few hundred German sailors in the water. Made him tear up telling the story, war is hell.
Bullshit
@@TheAliking14 all true man.
@@TheAliking14 You'd know, wouldn't you, because after all, you have been fed lies and propaganda from the moment you were born.
A sheriff in a small town far out west received word that the United States had been attacked and that the nation was at war. He later called back and stated that he had arrested 4 Englishmen, 3 Canadians, 4 Mexicans, 1 Dane, 1 Argentinian, 2 Chinese, 1 Japanese and now he wanted to know "who are we at war with?". The French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir was given several opportunities to surrender; but the French admiral in command considered it an insult to have to negotiate/surrender to a captain. With the exception of Mers-el-Kebir, I fully agree that the examples brought to light are indeed war crimes. Incidentally, an underexposed topic. Well done👍👍👍
Killing non combatants is a war crime though, no matter how the negotiations went and why
@@duhni4551You are not right about that, read the Geneva Convention before you make such a confident statement about who is combatant or not. Tell me when and which of the French soldiers/sailors were not non combatent? Is a fighter pilot, for example, combatent if he/she jumps out in a white parachute? Are soldiers jumping out in green parachutes combatent? is a soldier who throws down his weapon and runs away from the front still combatent? is a civilian helping to dig trenches combatent?
@@janlindtner305 They were not fighting, they had no intention of fighting and they were in middle of negotiations on top of that. You are not combatant when you have put your gun down, that is how it works.
@@duhni4551 You are a combatant as long as you do not clearly indicate that you surrender!!! Basta. Just read the lesson
@@duhni4551That's why you also have no answer to my previous questions, you don't know the laws of the Geneva Convention for the rules of warfare!
Bout the rest - thank you a lot for this awesome summary!!!))
Thanks for not blocking out the word "rape" all these channels nowadays block out triggering words for sensitive ears and it lessons the seriousness of the topics
IMHO the blocking of that word is done not to offend those who think it is acceptable under certain circumstances than the people who are victims of it.
@@Alverant everyone has an opinion
There could be legitimate survivors watching this and getting triggered. While I do think trigger words got out of control, censoring THIS specific word is reasonable to me.
@klocugh12 yeah but people like you are assuming survivors are either children or idiots because whether censored or not....the context is still there. And if they were paying even a remote bit of attention to the video they'd pick up on the subject matter regardless of censorship and still possibly be triggered.
I think many channels do it to avoid being demonetized
I'm sure it's been said, War Crimes are defined/prosecuted by the victors. We can only hope to limit them, on either side.
War crimes are defined by international treaty’s such as The Hague and Geneva conventions and not only the victors have signed these.
@@j.a.weishaupt1748 Oh please try to enforce these on the USA. They committed countless of them in Vietnam and Iraq. Are still committing them. The whistleblowers get prosecuted though and not the perpetrators.
A military attack against a military target can never be a war crime. The fact that one side believed they were protected as Allies, is just a strategy - Sun Tzu would agree.
Ummmm we DID actually warn the French fleet, so yeah, it's not a war crime. Also the alliance with France stipulated "no independent surrender treaties" so when France surrendered they nullified the terms of the alliance. It was unfortunate, even ABC (the admiral) agreed it was horrible but had to be done.
Cunningham managed to come to an agreement with Godfroy, the commander of the French squadron in Alexandria. Godfroy was not as bloody-minded and hidebound as Gensoul, it seems.
This, particularly at this time in history, points out the need to avoid war in the first place.
This time is no different than any other time in modern history. Things may feel tense now, but they were also tense in the 80s, 70s etc…
War is what people do.
What i could never get was that england and france declared war on germany for invading poland yet two week later the soviets invaded poland and they did nothing, the soviets went on to invade the baltic states and finland. the british invaded lebanon, syria Iraq and iran the faroe island and iceland. Under the nurnberg protocals germany where prosecuted for making war, a crime whisch did not exist until after the war and has been since been broken by all the allies.
Victor's bias, plain and simple. Poland got "compensated" with German territory and the privilege to be under the Soviets yoke and the Soviets got to control most of Eastern Europe. And that the British and French were a plague to the Middle East is a time honoured tradition.
Perfidious Albinon
No?
Dude stop it, you are making too much sense right now!
@@Gaphalor He’s really not
my grandmother told me that the only time she was truly afraid during WW2 was after the liberation when Soviet troops patrolled the streets
There's a really good video out in KZhead land that explains why the heat from the fire bombing was so intense. It baffles most people's minds when they look at the parts and don't understand how wood and brick buildings could possibly create such heat because alone the materials can't. That's where this video comes in, I wish I could remember the title, but it is classified as educational and also engineering so hopefully those help anyone trying to find the video. Also, I watched it about 5 years ago so it's older
Thank you! In light of everything going on today people need to see that in war there are no good guys. War crime perpetration was not and is not limited to the “bad guys”.
War makes monsters of all men. When taking lives becomes a normal, everyday activity that is encouraged or even applauded and your life could be over in a heartbeat then all the rest of the rules of society carry significantly less weight.
@DjDolHaus86 War does not make monsters of all men. The people in the countries liberated by the Allies would have seen that as an obscene comment.
My grandmother, a German Jew who fled with her family in 38. She was not sympathetic towards what happened to Germans, she even refused to have the language spoken in her house.
I’ll never understand why people always feel the need to point out how the good guys aren’t really that. And even act like they’re just as bad. Can you imagine the US troops committing their own “rape of Nanking” or the terrible things the Red Army did to women during their fight into German territory? You think the internment camps were completely unnecessary? And you think they were anywhere near as bad as concentration camps or the gulags??
Simon face talking about the rape is so expressive. What a horrendous crime.
Those who lived and acted in fear, will be judged who have never witnessed the annihilation of a single individual.
My Uncle and Godfather served with the American 36th infantry division under General Clark in Italy and Alsace. He witnessed the murder by shooting of German (SS) POWs by troops in his unit. Later he was captured by the SS and and was afraid he would be shot but instead was sent (marched) to Stalag 5A near Stuttgart until the end of the war. It was no picnic and at the end neither the prisoners nor the guards had enough to eat. The Russian prisoners, separated only by barbed wire, were treated badly.
So what all the historians that says the allied didn't commit war crimes are really saying is "it's ok when we do it"
“Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!” General William T. Sherman
Yet another rapacious psychopath given medals for murdering women and children
The Lippisch massacre… I’ve been a student of the Second World War my whole life. (I’m almost 60 y/o) I’ve Never, Ever heard mention of this…anywhere. I grab my historical sources from every where I can, regardless of “side” or “affiliation”. Stunning… Absolutely stunning. 😢😢
Writer Kurt Vonnegut was a POW bear Dresden at the time and witnessed the aftermath of the bombing. His POW train was also mistakenly attacked by the RAF resulting in 150 POW deaths. He has some interesting quotes from the experience.
thank you for doing a video on this, its far too easy for people to ignore the allied war crimes in favour of the axis ones as a way of supporting a black and white view of ww2, as a history student/future historian and it is always valuable to look at things not as black and white but as a muddy middle ground otherwise you get caught up in bias
"in war, no one is good. No one is right"
If you’re defending your home against invaders you definitely are not being a bad guy.
@@huemann7637It depends how you defend it.
In war the poor are sent while the rich grow richer. The warfighter lives in the mud while the people we've given power to relish in their mansions.
There is good and evil on both sides. They believe what they are fighting for is as honorable as what you're defending. Some of the things mention in this video I agree and understand, the rest I can't agree with. In any action be honorable, be fair, but remember you're there to win.
@@JamesFromTexasTell that to some southerners during the civil war; J bet they wouldn't agree with you while they watched their mansions burn.
An ex-girlfriend's grandparents left Prussia under siege of the Soviet Army only to seek refuge in Dresden. They were both very close to becoming a statistic.
Sounds a bit hypocritical and self absorbed by Quetel when he stated that Operation Catapult was an act of "treachery and betrayal" given that it was France and not Britain that broke their alliance when it made a separate peace with Germany.
In regards to the internment camps, let's remember what General Eisenhower said: "Successful people get that way because they rarely second guess themselves". We won the war. There may have been sabotage events if we had not interned. Hard to say. But, we won the war and defeated a nasty enemy!
I expected the Katyn Massacre to make the list, but it has been talked about in-depth a bunch (and probably already on this channel!)
Luckily soviet was ally in name only and didnt have any actual operation with us or uk
and that was before USSR was in the war.
@@rb239rtr The extinction and partition of Poland wasn't part of WW2???
@@gandydancer9710 "The most shocking allied war crimes", Simon somehow new that USSR had a peace treaty with Germany at the time, and that USSR was not an ally of UK and France also.
@@rb239rtr What YOU wrote was "that was before USSR was in the war", not "that was before the USSR changed sides". The USSR was definitely "in the war" in 1939.
The Minidoka internment camp in Idaho is now a national historic monument. It's very interesting to visit. I highly recommend it. It's a hell of a thing to walk through the very site where thousands of innocent people were imprisoned out of fear and racism.
Most Japanese North Americans were likely loyal citizens of the US and Canada. But some were not. One Japanese Canadian called the "Kamloops Kid" went back to Japan and took up a position as a POW guard at a prison in Hong Kong filled with Canadian prisoners. He was noted for his extreme brutality and was executed post war as a war criminal. Another Japanese Canadian went back and served in the Imperial Japanese Army until their surrender, IIRC. He then came back to Canada and founded Japan Camera in 1959, with many stores across Canada and the US. The famous "Tokyo Rose" was a Japanese American woman who happily worked for the Imperial Japanese government all through WW2.
@ToddSauve yup, and despite that it's never acceptable to suspend the civil liberties of innocent people. There will always be individuals who choose to harm others. That doesn't make it ok to imprison everyone who fits some arbitrary demographic. If that were the case we should preemptively lock up all middle age white men because that demographic is most likely to be a serial killer.
@@ToddSauvenot to mention the Niihau incident
@@jacaredosvudu1638 Yes, you are correct. Oh how I wish everyone could get along peacefully but that is not our nature. We humans so often want some advantage over others to exploit them, and from that comes wars. Sigh.
Curtis LeMay said about the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, "If we had lost the war, we would have been prosecuted as war criminals." It is estimated that over 100,000 civilians were killed in Tokyo.
16:08 BIAS alert: my own great grandfather who was taken into Dresden in 1940 as forced labor survived that incident. - Dresden was not though by the Germans to be "worthy" of allied level bombers, because it just wasnt an industrial center. Also, all the scarce industry that was located in Dresden was built on the outskirts of the city, a solid few miles from the city center. On the other hand, this caused the government to start piling up refugees from Eastern Prussia that fled the Soviet human wave inside the city center. The absolute majority of those refugees were never officially listed and this lead and still leads to the amount of casualties being not just slightly, but massively underreported. While the official numbers based on the counted deaths and missing persons may be around 30-50k, the more realistic estimation is more like 100-120k, thus killing more people in a single day than the Germans did throughout the whole Blitz bombing campaign. The whole operation was a heinous crime based on the general allied philosophy personified by the character of Arthur T Harris, and can be summed up as an escalation from "eye for an eye" into an "eye for a whole head if not more".
My father was crew of the USS George Clymer, at the time flag ship for Adm. Perry. War in the Pacific. Sailors were ordered to take the bodies of dead sailors and Marines and weigh their bodies down with debris and drag them into the ocean to sink them in order to distort the body and casualty count. After the pacific, his next duty station was going to be the Bikini Atols. We all know what happened there.... He got out, but was dragged back in for Korea.
That is how you bury men at sea, from the the times of Nelson to now. If you do not have refrigerator space, you cant keep bodies aboard. For the dead sailors, their families would be notified, I am not sure whether these would ever get into a WW2 paper, unlike the Vietnam war years.
"...in order to distort the body and casualty count." Didn't happen.
My grandparents live in Hannover Germany, the town hall has a model of the city before and after ww2 and the destruction is pretty crazy. The entire city was firebombed and my grandfather was forced to flee as a toddler before his house was bombed. The Allie’s certainly commuted war crimes and it really is a shame we don’t talk about them
so alot of honoured people are soon to be disgraced?
Always remember it’s not a war crime the first time.
Evidently you forget that your grandparents were on the enemy side
But why should we play nice when you aren't? Why should we follow rules when you don't?
hes not asking for you to ignore crimes commiteed against people, BRIAN, hes asking for people to have understanding that it wasnt just the axis who commited them.@@brianmoore581
Interesting thing about Dresden, the historical area pretty much stayed a ruin until the reunification of Germany. Soviets weren't big on reconstruction... The rebuilding of Old Town is very impressive, but they still will find human remains during construction.
One crazy aspect of internemtn camps to me was that the largest political backer pushing for the camps support was the CA agricultural industry. The japanese were very well known for advancements in farming technique, and were largely owners of farmland in California. The minute the internment camps began, their land was stolen and never returned to them even when they were released. It was used as a land grab to steal hundreds of millions in assets from Japanese citizens, and has largely been overlooked when discussing their internment. Even if you argue in support of the camps. Once the prisoners were released, there is no argument for refusing them their property and land back. There was no possibility for their reintroduction into society or the economy.
We had Japanese internment camps here in Canada too. Mostly, but not entirely, in BC.
Canada also interred Ukrainian Canadians during WW1 and German and Italian Canadians during WW2. America also interred German and Italian Americans during WW2.
I actually own a pen holder/ink well set that was made by a German internee 1944. @@sirhenrymorgan1187
I once did a debate in one of my classes on ww1 and I did draw the short straw which meant I had to argue on the side of ww1 Germany and being that i am a Canadian and we did gain quite the reputation of looking at the rules of war is suggestions at the time I did end up winning that debate as my opponent talked about how Germany tried to take over others land which I am sure you can see the big flaw with that point considering that they were on the side of the British you know the empire responsible for the creation of independence days across the globe decided but although I won the battle I lost the war as people in my class still were mad at me for doing my part of assigned work and it took for my teacher to step in to remind everyone it was for educational purposes only and that’s why I love channels like this who don’t shy away from taking about the good guys warcrimes as I do find far to many people see the acts of the allies in we2 and ww1 as completely justified while the same actions committed by the other side are the viewed as war crimes and I sometimes say in a half joking manner that “it’s not a war crime if the winner did it” and am so glad we can see the wrong doings of both sides and hopefully learn from them for the future
You do realise that the British were not the only ones trying to build empires just the most successful, mainly because of the British Navy. Look it up. As for learning from the past research all the wars since the two world wars and you will see little or no change.
WWI had nothing to do with either German or British imperialism.
It’s simply NOT TRUE to say Operation Catapult was carried out ‘without warning’. As you later say, there were discussions with the French fleet carried out by the British fleet immediately beforehand. They were offered the chance to join the allies, be interned in Canada, or travel to a French colonial port in the Caribbean. Also, the argument that they couldn’t do this because of the terms of the armistice is specious. Nobody has ever described de Gaulle of being guilty of a ‘breach of the armistice’.
Well .. " political discussions " ." Mers el Khébir was clearly a political crisis betwin Vichy and Great-Britain . And churchill gave the order " sink the french fleet " and it's really clear it was aware of the bloody result .
I'm not sure how Operation Catapult can be seen as a surprise attack. Once the French refused to scuttle the ships, they knew what was going to happen.
There were too many war crimes on the allied side to begin to list them fully here (for the record and because someone will suggest I'm saying it, of course that does not excuse the Axis war crimes which were worse). I'd like to see another part to this if possible. Thank you!
My mother's school in Copenhagen, Denmark was bombed by the British RAF during WW2. Many kids were killed. My mother miraculously survived. If not I would not have been born many years later. It was a school, not a military target, and in an allied country! My father was in his teens during the war. He blew up German transport trains in Denmark. He never talked about it. And he was never rewarded for his efforts.
A the start of the war bombing was so inaccurate that getting within 8km of the target was considered good
@@abzzeus What I heard was that the pilot misidentified the school and thought it was a military building. Anyway, bombing in the center of a big city might not be very smart.
That wasn't a war crime at all though. That was just a horrible accident. The Danish resistance begged the RAF to bomb the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen. During the raid one of the first planes crashed into/near the school. Some planes from follow up waves mistakenly bombed it, thinking the smoke was the Gestapo headquarters. It was a tragic accident, but not even close to being a war crime
@@jajsjejaiajawn I know! I did not say it was a crime. However, it was a bad accident. And my mother could have been killed. Thats all.
The wording of your comment did make it sound like it was deliberate. But yeah its horrible that it happened, I can't imagine going through that. @@fredmidtgaard5487
Well done. It is not easy to avoid both oversimplified moral equivalence or over simplified moral absolutism. There is no morally pure good side but being mostly good is a lot better than being mostly bad. There are real and significant differences between flawed good and flawed evil and ignoring those flaws does no one any good.
Typical French hostorian sides with France about the sinking of the French Fleet and possibly thinks that Waterloo was a war crime too
You should really do a second part covering Allied war crimes in the Pacific theater. Some US ships machine-gunned survivors of sunken Japanese ships. The fire bombing of Tokyo was as devastating as the bombing of Dresden. At times Allied troops mutilated the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers for trophies. Soldiers attempting to surrender were often shot (of course many Japanese would feign surrender and then attack making this an understandable response.) And the Soviet attack in August 1945 also was accompanied by war crimes.
what we did in the pacific theater was awful, but I give them a little excuse for it as the manner in which the japanese committed war and war crimes themselves was so horrific that it had to have affected the marines significantly on a psychological level, far worse than those in europe. Eventually they refused to take prisoners because the assholes would suicide bomb when surrendering and the pow camps for the japanese were by far the worst. They treated any captive like they were filthy rats.
@@BakingBadOBX When I was a kid, my family knew an old guy that was held on one of the Japanese forced labor/prison ships in WW2. Until the day he passed, he wouldn't allow a Japanese car be parked on his property. Never understood this as a child, but after reaching adulthood and reading about those awful ships, I completely understand how he could've had such a lingering hostility.
@@LarsonPettyI also had a neighbor who would not allow anything Japanese up his driveway either… He was a navy guy with a real bad attitude
@@LarsonPettythat kind of thing was more common than you think I can think of 2 instances of it I remember as a kid. 1) the old bloke down the road who was a pow at sandakan 1 of 6 survivors out of 2500 pows the the Japanese either slaughtered or marched to death. He went on later to testify at a war crime commission against the Japanese. 2) a uncle who fought against the Japanese in new Guinea and later on in the islands. He found one of his men in a Japanese cooking pot after he went missing the night before when on patrol. Later on he rescued some Indian pows who had been transported over to be used as food. As you can probably imagine both of those men had no time whatsoever for anything remotely Japanese for the rest of their lives. Wasn't until I was much older that I understood the context behind their views.
How you win matters A LOT. Look at Russia. They might have won WW2, but the way in which they helped with how WW2 ended immediately made them enemy #1 after the war. It isnt in the beginning phases where your true image comes out but in the finishing phases when you're tired and fatigued where your true self is revealed to everyone. How you finish your task and duty will highlight your characteristics for the world to see.
What nonsense. The USSR =BEGAN= the war by attacking Finland and joining with Germany to partition Poland. What is it about "the way in which they helped with how WW2 ended" (an odd locution) that you imagine changed or ought to have changed anything about how the USSR ought to have been or was viewed?
Being an island, Britain's survival depended on its command of the seas so that everything from weapons to food could be resupplied by ship. Germany's surface fleet, despite Grand Admiral's Raeder's efforts, was no match for Britain. In addition, at this time, the US was not yet assisting in convoy escort. The addition of the French fleet to that of Germany would have definitely placed Britain's control of the seas in question. The fact that the French Navy had refused to assist in the liberation of their own country by not sailing their ships to English ports, made their promise to scuttle their ships, highly suspect at best. The destruction of the French fleet was nothing more than a legitimate preemptive strike. A tragic necessity, but a necessity none the less!
"If we are going to do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we are on the winning side." -Chuck Yaeger