Why did Nazi Germany honour the Generva Convention?

[GePap]

No, this thread is why the Germans treated the Western Allies so fundamentally different from the people east of the Oder River. Meaning the German behavior towards the peoples on the eats was barbaric.

Oh, and per your claim- was Poland a signatory to the Geneva Convention? And if so, how do you explain the German's brutal treatment of the Polish people?

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap
No, this thread is why the Germans treated the Western Allies so fundamentally different from the people east of the Oder River. Meaning the German behavior towards the peoples on the eats was barbaric.

Oh, and per your claim- was Poland a signatory to the Geneva Convention? And if so, how do you explain the German's brutal treatment of the Polish people?

Poles? Or Jews?

As to the uprising in '44, what did you expect the SS to do? Play nice?

[Ned]

GePap, I don't doubt that race had something to do with the disparate treatment. However, did the Nazi's mistreat American Jews or Blacks who were captured?

No.

Or at least, not that I know of.

And what about Indians? Were they treated different from Brits?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ned
GePap, I don't doubt that race had something to do with the disparate treatment. However, did the Nazi's mistreat American Jews or Blacks who were captured?

No.

Or at least, not that I know of.

And what about Indians? Were they treated different from Brits?

http://www.axpow.org/markwilliam.htm

I was slightly wounded from fragmentation bursts and the parachute harness nearly slipped off over my head during the descent but I managed to pull the rip cord and float down safely into a snowy farm field. Shortly after, the enemy home guard had surrounded me and eventually I became a POW for 15 months at Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany.
"The last days of my interment were especially terrifying", stated Mr. Mark. Hitler had ordered that Jewish American POWs be segregated and made part of his 'Final Solution'. It was a race between fate and the Russian advance. I am happy enough to be here to tell you of my story. A short time after the Russians freed us and fed us, General Eisenhower had B-17s fly us out from a captured air field and to Paris, France.

[GePap]

Also, a mutual "buddy" would like to remind you Ned of how the Nazi's sometimes treated allied prisoners:



At Dunkirk:

http://www.wartours.com/blitz.html

Klissura/Distomo:

http://home.t-online.de/home/Dieter...nn/distoeng.htm

Oradour sur Glane:

http://www.aulton.demon.co.uk/html/...-sur-glane.html

Deliberate targetting of civilian refugees by German warplanes:

http://www.prole.demon.co.uk/middlesex/1_7.html

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/meyer.htm

[Ned]

I understand the Jew issue with Hitler. Still, how did he treat Black and Indian POWs?

[Patroklos]

German high command issued orders that told soldiers that it was acceptable to murder Russian POWs and that Russian POWs were not "to be treated as a genuine soldier according to the Geneva Convention.

Find me proof of this, because the Nurembourg prosecutors couldn't. The only order they found to deliberatly kill POWs was the imfamous Commissar Order, which directed the on sight killing of Soviet Political Officers. This is actually the reason Keitel and Jodel (sp?) were hanged.

And while I do not condone the starving of Russian POWs, it is a fact that the Germans had not anticipated the needs of caring for several million Russian POWs accumulated in only a few months. I doubt even the modern nations of today could do so. Perhaps the Russians should have done a little more fighting and a little less surrendering.

There is a treaty that requires raiding vessels to stop, search, and rescue survivors. In WWI it was indeed the British that drove the Germans to unrestricted sub warfare because whenever they tried to abide by the treaty the brits used the already mentioned tricks.

Besides the point the technology advances of U-boats ere not available during the original treaty, as submarines in general do not have the capacity to rescue survivors. Not to mentiont he fact that if a merchant has escorts how the hell do you search it before sinking it?

Or should we level the same claims against aircraft that sink ships too?

As for auxillery merchant raiders, this was a WWI invention and for the most part, while disguised as civilians, they did identify, search, and take surviors off. The civilian look was just to get close. Alot of good books about that.

[Mr. Harley]

Patroklos, I think we are getting into the issue that has so many Americans confused (i.e. when Reagan as US President went to the cemetary with Waffen SS troops buried there). The German Army had no such orders. However, the remainder of the SS did engage in war crimes (and mistreatment of civilian population in conquered areas that were signatories of the Geneva accords), and their administration of conquered areas very often was totally in disregard of those Geneva Accords. Look at the Special Units, whose name I cannot spell without looking it up (I have enough problem with English, let alone German ) and what they did across the Eastern portions of the Nazi Empire - were none of those countries signatories to the 3rd Geneva convention? Please note the Waffen SS is a hybrid case, with neither the overall good record of the German army nor the blatant disregard that characterized the remainder of the SS (all reference the Geneva Accords). Of course they were elite units picked for a certain level of loyalty that could easily be argued as fanaticism, and given the ideology they were fanatic about, war crimes were inevitable in those units. The question is whether they were systemtic about it in the Waffen SS?

[Tingkai]

The Germany army issued orders to murder specific types of POWs and to treat POWs ruthlessly. The orders amounted to the German High Command telling ALL German soldiers that it was acceptable to murder POWs. It is no surprise that the German soldiers did exactly that.

"The directives issued by the High Command of the German Armed Forces (Oberkommando der deutschen Wehrmacht, OKW) for the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war intentionally violated international laws, including the Geneva and Hague Conventions regarding war on land."

"Among Hitler's orders in this vein was one dated May 13, 1941, stipulating that war crimes committed by German soldiers in the Soviet Union were not to be prosecuted. According to the "commissar order" of June 6, 1941, political commissars of the Red Army were to be "immediately dispatched using weapons". " [murdered]

" The "Instructions for Guarding Soviet Prisoners of War" (“Merkblatt für die Bewachung sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener") of September 8, 1941, called for "ruthless enforcement at the least sign of resistance and disobedience! Weapons are to be used mercilessly in breaking resistance. Escaping POWs must be fired upon immediately (without) warning, with intent to kill. Nor is softness called for against the industrious and obedient POW. He interprets it as weakness and draws his own conclusions….” Such orders often paved the way for the arbitrary and excessive use of force that characterized the guards' treatment of the prisoners."

http://www.stsg.de/main/zeithain/geschichte/sowjpow/index_en.php

[Ned]

Tingkai, as we have already seen, the Geneva conventions did not protect powers who did not sign. Thus, the Germans could be guilty of no violations of the Geneva conventions concerning the USSR.

The Japanese were also not parties to the Geneva conventions, and yet several of their leaders were prosecuted for violations thereof by US military tribunals. While what the Japanese did was harsh, it was not "illegal" and convicting them of violation of the Geneva conventions was, IMO, unlawful.

Ditto what the Germans did to the Soviets. It may have been barbaric, but not illegal.

The net result of the war crimes trials after WWII is to make the Geneva conventions "law" even if a nation was not a party.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Ned
Ditto what the Germans did to the Soviets. It may have been barbaric, but not illegal.

Do you think that the Geneva Conventions were the only laws that applied?

What the Germans did, on a routine basis, was illegal. It was murder, plain and simple. It violated existing German laws. That's why the German High Command specifically said that German soldiers would not be prosecuted for committing crimes in Russia.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Russia did sign the 2nd Geneva convention (1906), but this was not USSR

All other discussions aside, that does not matter. Under international law of state succession, the USSR was bound by all the treaties that Russia signed.

The way to read above sentence is IMO:

Although one of the Powers [USSR] in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers [Germany and USA] who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.

Under the rules of statutory construction that reading is incorrect. There would be no reason to speak of powers in a conflict that may not be party to the convention if it was not binding upon those who are parties to the convention no matter who the other parties are.

Clearly, part of Hitler's treatment of the Soviet POWs was to punish the Soviets for not signing the Geneva convention. The Germans thought of themselves as a higher people in part due to their respect for law.

OMG, that must be stupidest thing I've ever read!

[Mr. Harley]

Tingkai, you make one of Ned's point for him. The only explicit order for murder to regular German troops is that for soviet commissars. You then follow up with my point, prisoners were rapidly transferred into the internal SS system which was guilty of the worst atrocities. The regular German troops were not involved, on a systematic basis, with the horrendous war crimes we associate the Nazi regime yet. Those were perpetrated primarily by the SS. Please note I am talking systematic, as in organized. Many German commanders were horrified by the activities of the SS special units in the Soviet Union, and complained that their treatment of civilians made created partisan problems where none had existed. Maybe not a noble reason to oppose them, but the motivation does not change the fact that the opposition was documented. Don't tar the regular German trooper with the same broad brush as the SS special units. Not to say that there were no atrocities perpetrated by regular German army units, but it's the sanctioned systematic ones that produce mass graves.

[Tingkai]

The POW camps were run by the Wehrmacht, not the SS. And the Wehrmacht was involved in the systematic and sanctioned atrocities.

Yes, some generals controlled their troops. Guderian refused to issue the Commissar Order, however, the majority of the generals did not object, until after the war.

The crimes committed by the Wehrmacht were covered in the West up after the war. Nato needed to rehabilitate the German army to defend Western Europe. So the crimes committed by the Wehrmacht were attributed to the SS and Russian stories about ordinary German soldiers committing atrocities were labelled propaganda.

[Mr. Harley]

Tingkai, I'll admit I have not researched this. I had always assumed the camps were run by the SS, because of the indiscriminate descriptions of labor camps and their high lethality in many works (some of which don't even differentiate between death camps and work camps). Do you have any links on that, or references, that seperate out the Wehrmacht versus SS atrocities? Note I'm looking for balanced, neither German bashing nor apologist. Your rehabilitation statement unfortunately makes some sense, look at the German scientists and the US rocket program. There was more than just a "little" rehab going on there. I also know about that happening with the reconstituted Air Forces, so it makes sense that it happened with the army, also.