When you think of war crimes committed during World War Two, you probably think
of the Germans and Japanese. While it’s true German and Japanese soldiers committed some
truly heinous acts that violated international laws, they were far from the only ones who did.
From Europe to the Pacific, Allied troops participated in all sorts of war crimes,
including shooting unarmed POWs, and widespread looting and raping. Most of these atrocities
happened off the record and only came to light years later, with many details still unknown.
In this video, however, we look at three Allied commanders who openly committed
atrocities that – had the Axis won – would have been considered war crimes.
Sir Arthur Harris was the commander of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command from
February 1942 through to the end of the war. Deemed “Bomber” Harris by the media
and known as “Butch” Harris among his men, he is largely remembered for his controversial
and ethically questionable “saturation bombing” of Germany. This was when the
RAF would relentless bomb a civilian area to crush both German morale and industry.
At the onset of the war, aerial bombings like this weren’t strictly prohibited by the Hague
Conventions. However in 1939, an appeal by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to
keep bombings to military targets only was agreed upon by Britain and France.
While Britain held to this agreement for a time, by 1942, its strategy shifted. Prime Minister
Winston Churchill presented a paper in Parliament, arguing for the strategic bombing of German cities
as a way to “de-house” the German workforce and destroy the morale of German civilians.
Charged with carrying out this new directive, Harris put his saturation bombing method to
the test. He justified this action, saying: "The Nazis entered this war under the rather
childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory
into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
Despite the increasing cruelty of the war, saturation was still controversial.
Churchill said, “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?” And
while Churchill’s view on the strategy wavered, Harris never hesitated. To him,
it was the only way to win their total war against Germany.
The most well documented incidents of Harris’s method were the firebombings of Hamburg and
Dresden, which killed an estimated 62,000 civilians and turned both cities to ash.
His attack on Dresden is viewed particularly unfavorably,
as it accomplished little in a strategic sense; Germany was close to surrender anyway.
Overall, Harris’s saturation bombings were estimated to have killed between 250,000
and 400,000 civilians and obliterated 60 German cities.
Harris also claimed it weakened German industrial power, but in truth,
German war production was barely affected. While the bombing impacted oil production,
German weapon and aircraft production continued to increase.
Harris remains a controversial figure in British history. While some justified his actions as the
necessities of total war, many think his complete lack of regard for civilian lives was untenable.
During the Second World War, Lavrentiy Beria was one of the most influential members of Stalin’s
inner circle. He was often likened to Heinrich Himmler in respect to his influence and cruelty.
While not officially a Marshal of the Red Army until 1945, as the head of Stalin’s
secret police – the NKVD – he had a lot of control over domestic and foreign matters.
This included the mass execution and forced relocation of thousands of people.
— Accounts vary, but it is generally thought that Beria joined the Communist Party in 1917
and participated in revolutionary actions in Azerbaijan and Georgia between 1917 and 1920.
In 1926, Beria met Joseph Stalin and became an adamant supporter in his rise to power.
By 1935, he was one of Stalin’s most trusted followers, and between 1934 and 1937,
he oversaw Stalin’s purge of the Communist Party in the Transcaucasian region.
In 1938, with war looming over Europe, Beria was appointed as the deputy head of the NKVD.
While the NKVD mainly worked separately from the Red Army, Beria oversaw some aspects of military
policy as part of state security, especially following the invasion of Poland in 1939.
In March 1940, Beria recommended that Polish POWs in Soviet occupied territory should be executed,
deemed them an enemy of the State. These POWs, of which there were some
22,000, were mostly military officers, but there were some civilians as well.
On Beria’s orders, the POWs were executed over the course of several weeks.
They were told to kneel, and then they were shot in the back of the head. They were then
buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest, and the atrocity became known as the Katyn massacre.
The Germans discovered the mass graves in 1943, and the Soviets tried to blame
them for it. While the international courts discredited this accusation,
the USSR didn’t fully accept responsibility for the Katyn massacre until 1992. Many
details of the order remain classified within Soviet archives to this day.
In addition to ordering the mass execution of POWs, Beria directly orchestrated the forced
upheaval of ethnic minorities in annexed territories, such as the Baltic states,
during the war. Around 10% of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor
camps after the Soviet annexation. It’s estimated that of the six million who were resettled, nearly
400,000 perished. Historians have classified these resettlements as crimes against humanity.
Beria was a cruel man who contributed to the deaths and forced relocations of millions of
people during the war. While the Soviets released some information on these war crimes after the
fall of the USSR in the 1990s, the true extent of the suffering Beria inflicted may never be known.
Curtis LeMay was an American Air Force General who served in the Pacific Theater during World
War Two. Similar to Bomber Harris, LeMay implemented a saturation bombing campaign
against the Japanese in the latter part of the war. This resulted in the deaths of millions
of Japanese civilians, and paved the way for the atomic attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
LeMay joined the US Army Air Corps Reserve in 1929 and became a full US Army Air Corps
member a year later. By 1941, he rose to the rank of Major within the Air Force,
and in October 1942, he was placed in charge of the 305th Bombardment Group.
Operating in Europe during the 1942 and 1943, LeMay led several dangerous yet
successful missions in Germany, including the August 1943 bombing of Regensburg.
LeMay was responsible for slashing the abort rate among bombers during the war with a intense,
relentless leadership style. Robert McNamara, LeMay’s lieutenant colonel
and the future US Secretary of Defense, said of LeMay, “He was the finest combat commander
of any service I came across in War. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal.”
In 1944, he was promoted to major general and transferred to the China-Burma-India theater,
where he directed the XX Bomber Command in China and then the XXI Bomber Command in the Pacific.
With experience in both theaters of war, LeMay believed the precise
bombing tactics used against the Luftwaffe would be ineffective against the Japanese.
Instead of using high altitude precision targeting – which was hindered by cloudy conditions,
robust daytime Japanese defenses, and mechanical issues with the B-29s – LeMay
ordered low altitude night-time incendiary attacks. This was a less refined bombing
technique that barely distinguished between military and civilian targets.
The first of these attacks took place on the 10th of March 1945, when 300 B-29s sustained a bombing
attack for several hours. The attack killed nearly 100,000 people. To LeMay and many high
ranking military officers, this was a success. He ordered similar attacks on 63 Japanese cities.
One of such attacks was the infamous firebombing of Tokyo, which ended more than
80,000 lives. By the time the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
civilian deaths at the hands of US bombers were commonplace.
Estimates from the US Strategic Bombing Survey put the death toll at around 220,000.
Some scholars believe the bombing campaign killed more than 500,000
Japanese civilians and left millions more without homes.
LeMay stood by his decisions during and after the war, arguing that the total war
strategy was necessary to shorten the war and prevent further loss of life.
While many defended his position, others despised LeMay’s extreme disregard for
civilian lives. After the war, he said, “If I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a
war criminal… but all war is immoral [so] if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier”
LeMay’s attitude towards extreme force wasn’t limited to World War Two. After the Japanese
surrender, he continued to advocate for mass bombing and atomic weapons,
even when others considered it unnecessary. While serving as Chief of Staff of the US
Air Force during the 1960s, he advocated to dump nuclear warheads on Cuba during
the Cuban Missile Crisis, Korea during the Korean War, and Russia during the Cold War.
Whether his actions were justified or not,
LeMay’s callousness followed him for the rest of his military and government career.
Because of the Allied victory, LeMay’s destruction is often seen as a necessary
evil, instead of a war crime, but the mass destruction and loss of life suggest otherwise.
Harris, Beria, and LeMay were by no means the only Allied leaders who actively participated in war
crimes during World War II, but they spearheaded some of the war’s most destructive acts.
While many argued that the mass casualties these men caused were
necessary in the climate of total war, had the Allies lost the war, Harris,
Beria, and LeMay would no doubt be remembered as war criminals.
But what do you think? Do you agree with our assessment? Were they war criminals, or were
they just doing what they had to? Did the ends justify the means? Let us know in the comments.