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This article lists and summarizes war crimes committed since the Hague Convention of 1907. In addition, those incidents which have been judged in a court of justice to be Crimes Against Peace that have been committed since these crimes were first defined are also included.1
Since many war crimes are not ultimately prosecuted (due to lack of political will, lack of effective procedures, or other practical and political reasons2), historians and lawyers will often make a serious case that war crimes occurred, even if there was no formal investigations or prosecution of the alleged crimes or an investigation cleared the alleged perpetrators.
War crimes under international law were firmly established by international trials such as the 1945 Nuremberg Major War Crimes Trials and the Tokyo trial of 1946, in which German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted for war crimes committed during World War II. For purpose of selectivity, only war crimes since the customary laws of war were clarified in the Hague Conventions of 1907 are included, because in the judgment at the Major War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg in 1945, it was stated that "by 1939 these rules laid down in the Hague Convention of 1907 were recognised by all civilised nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war".3
1914-1918: World War I
World War I was the first major international conflict to take place following the codification of the majority of the laws, customs, usages, rules and articles of war by the Hague Regulations of 1907 (though the laws and customs of war have been in force amongst the civilized nations since time immemorial; their codification is a recent phenomenon). As the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the United Nations Charter had not yet been conceived, never mind signed--and the Nuremberg Trial had not yet taken place--crimes against peace (waging a war of aggression for territorial conquest) was not considered to be a violation of the customary law of nations, or the laws of war. Therefore, this section shall confine itself to the consideration of war crimes, including derived war crimes, such as the use of poisons as weapons, as well as crimes against humanity, and derivative crimes against humanity, such as torture, and genocide.
| Armed conflict | Perpetrator | ||
| World War I | All belligerents | ||
| Incident | Type of crime | Persons responsible | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invention and employment of poison gas | Use of poisons as weapons (All major belligerents used poisonous gasses against enemy personnel in combat.) | No prosecutions | Poison gas was invented by the Germans and subsequently used by all major belligerents in the war against enemy soldiers, in violation of the customary law of war, adhered to by all civilized nations and armed groups, thereby constituting the Use of poisons as weapons. |
| World War I | Ottoman Empire | ||
| Incident | Type of crime | Persons responsible | Notes |
| Armenian Genocide | War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide (Extermination of Armenians in Anatolia) | Unknown; trials were planned, but not carried out in full. | The Sublime Porte ordered the wholesale extermination of Armenians living within Anatolia. This was carried out by certain elements of their military forces, who either massacred Armenians outright, or deported them to Syria and then massacred them. Nearly one million Armenians perished. |
1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War
This section includes war crimes up to and through December 6, 1941 when the Second Sino-Japanese War became the Asian Theater of World War II, due to certain events of December 7, 1941. For war crimes after this date see the section called World War II: Japan perpetrated crimes.
| Armed conflict | Perpetrator | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Second Sino-Japanese War | Japan | ||
| Incident | Type of crime | Persons responsible | Notes |
| Attack on China in 1937 | Crimes against peace (Waging unprovoked war against China (count 27 at the Tokyo Trials)4) | Sadao Araki, Kenji Doihara, Kingoro Hashimoto, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Jiro Minami, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Hiroshi Oshima, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Toshio Shiratori, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu | |
| Nanking Massacre,4 China, 1937-38 | Crimes against humanity; War crimes (Mass murder of civilian population & POWs, rape, looting) | General Asaka Yasuhiko, commander, Japanese Shanghai Expeditionary Force, Imperial Japanese Army. General Iwane Matsui, Commanding general of Japanese forces in China, Imperial Japanese Army. Chief of staff of the Army Kotohito Kan'in, Minister of War Hajime Sugiyama. Debate still is ongoing as to the culpability of Emperor Hirohito in the events. | After the Battle of Nanking, on 13 December 1937, Japanese entered the city virtually resistance free. From then for a period of about 6 weeks after, until early February 1938, widespread war crimes were committed including mass rape, looting, arson, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war. Most estimates put deaths at between 150,000 and 300,000 with newly declassified US government documents estimating an additional 500,000 outside Nanking before its fall. |
| Hankow massacre,China, 1938 | War crimes (Mass execution of POWs) | General Shunroku Hata, commander, China Expeditionary Army , Imperial Japanese Army. | War crimes were committed including the killing of civilians and prisoners of war5. |
1939-1945 World War II
Axis powers (listed by country)
The Axis Powers (particularly Germany and Japan) were perhaps the most systematic perpetrators of war crimes in human history. Contributing factors included Nazi race theory, a desire for "living space" that justified the eradication of native populations, and militaristic indoctrination that encouraged the terrorization of conquered peoples and prisoners of war. The Holocaust, the German attack on Russia and occupation of Western Europe, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and attack on China contributed to well over half of the civilian deaths in World War II and the conflicts that led up to the war.
Croatian perpetrated crimes
- See also: Ustaša
Numerous concentration camps were built in Croatia, most notably Jasenovac (in Croatian: Logor Jasenovac in Serbian: Логор Јасеновац / Logor Jasenovac), the largest, where hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies (Roma), Jews and Croatian dissidents died. It was established by the Ustaša regime of the Independent State of Croatia in August 1941 and not dismantled until April 1945, shortly before the end of the war. Other concentration camps were in Gospić, Pag, Đakovo, Jastrebarsko and Lepoglava.
According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust), "Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Roman Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies."6
Jasenovac was a complex of five subcamps and three smaller camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (93 square miles), in relatively close proximity to each other, on the bank of the Sava river. Most of the camp was at Jasenovac, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Zagreb. The complex also included large grounds at Donja Gradina directly across the Sava River, a camp for children in Sisak to the northwest, and a women's camp in Stara Gradiška to the southeast.
Ante Pavelić, leader of the Ustasha, fled to Argentina and Spain which gave him protection, and was never extradited to stand trial for his war crimes.
German perpetrated crimes
According to the Nuremberg Trials, there were four major war crimes that were alleged against German military (and Waffen-SS and NSDAP) men and officers, each with individual events that made up the major charges.
1. Participation in a common plan of conspiracy for the accomplishment of crimes against peace
2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace
- Planning and executing a campaign of invasion of its European neighbors, as well as the conspiracy to violate the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain through the remilitarization of the Rhineland, and the annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
3. War Crimes These were limited to atrocities against combatants or conventional crimes committed by military units (see War crimes of the Wehrmacht), and include:
- Invasion of Poland, in the period of 1 September - 25 October 1939 German Wehrmacht during its military actions engaged in executions of Polish POWs, bombed hospitals, murdered civilians, shot refugees, executed wounded soldiers. The cautious estimates give a number of at least 16,000 murdered victims[4]
- Pacification Operations in German occupied Poland, during the occupation of Poland by German Reich, Wehrmacht forces took part in several pacification actions in rural areas, that resulted in murder of at least 20,000 Polish villagers
- Le Paradis massacre, May 1940, British soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. Fritz Knoechlein tried, found guilty and hanged.
- Wormhoudt massacre, May 1940, British and French soldiers captured by the SS and subsequently murdered. No one found guilty of the crime.
- d'Ardenne Massacres, June 1944 Canadian soldiers captured by the SS and murdered by 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. SS General Kurt Meyer (Panzermeyer) sentenced to be shot 1946; sentence commuted; released 1954
- Malmedy massacre, December 1944, United States POWs captured by Kampfgruppe Peiper were murdered outside of Malmedy, Belgium.
- Gardelegen (war crime)
- Marzabotto massacre
- Sant'Anna di Stazzema
- Cefalonia Massacre
- Oradour-sur-Glane
- The annihilation of the Czech city of Lidice
- Massacre of Kalavryta
- Distomo massacre
- The suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and subsequent leveling of the whole city
- The treatment of Soviet POWs throughout the war, who were not given the protections and guarantees of the Geneva Convention
- Unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant shipping
- Vinkt Massacre
- Heusden; town hall massacre (November 1944).
4. Crimes against Humanity These were crimes that were committed well away from the lines of battle and were unconnected in any way to military activity.
- The major crime was the Holocaust, including:
- The construction and use of Vernichtungslagern, most prominently at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, and Chełmno
- The employment of other camps across Europe, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen which served unofficially as death camps to a degree
- Death marches of prisoners, particularly in the last months of the war when the aforementioned camps were being overrun by the Allies
- The widespread use of slave labor and forced/unfree labor by the Nazi regime, including the use of concentration camp and extermination camp prisoners as slaves
- The establishment of Jewish Ghettos in Eastern Europe
- The use of SS Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination squads
- Babi Yar
- Rumbula
- Dnepropetrovsk
- Ninth Fort
- Simferopol
- The massacre of 100,000 Jews and Poles at Paneriai
- The suppression of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which erupted when the SS came to clear the ghetto and send all of the occupants to extermination camps
- Izieu Massacre
- The construction and use of Vernichtungslagern, most prominently at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, and Chełmno
Other crimes against humanity included:
- The Porajmos, the Nazi pogrom against the Romany peoples of Europe
- The Łapanka or "Catching Game," – Nazi roundups of Poles in the major cities for slave labor and other purposes
- Nikolaev Massacre
- Operation Tannenberg, the AB Action and the Massacre of Lwów professors, all Nazi actions in Poland meant to mass murder the Polish intelligentsia and other potential leaders of resistance.
- The Nazi T-4 Euthanasia Program, an aborted eugenics program meant to kill German children who were mentally or physically handicapped. 200,000 people were gassed to death due to this program.
At least 10 million, and perhaps over 20 million innocent non-combatants were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime in the commission of crimes against humanity, of which the Holocaust lives on in particular infamy, since the largest amount of deaths happened among Jewish citizens of states invaded or controlled by the Nazi regime. At least 5 to 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, although a complete count may never be known. Though much of Continental Europe suffered from the Nazi murders, in particular, Poland and Russia were the states most devastated by these crimes, with many of their Jewish and a good number of their Christian citizens slaughtered by the Nazi aggressor. After the war, the Nazi regime was put on trial in two tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany by the victorious Allied powers from 1945 to 1949. The first tribunal indicted 24 major Nazi war criminals, and resulted in 19 convictions (of which 12 led to death sentences) and 3 acquittals, 2 of the accused died before a verdict was rendered. The second tribunal indicted 185 members of the military, economic, and political leadership of Nazi Germany, of which 142 were convicted and 35 were acquitted. In subsequent decades, approximately 20 additional war criminals who escaped capture in the immediate aftermath of World War II were tried in West Germany and Israel. In Germany and many other European nations, the Nazi Party is outlawed.
Italian perpetrated crimes
- War crimes in the Balkans, in France, Italy and on the Eastern Front
- No one has been brought to trial for war crimes, although in 1950 the former Italian defense minister was convicted for collaboration with Nazi Germany.
Japanese perpetrated crimes
This section includes war crimes from 8 December 1941 when the United States declared war on Japan so entering World War II. For war crimes before this date which took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War please see the section above called 1937-1945: Second Sino-Japanese War.
| Incident | Type of crime | Persons responsible | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| World War IIcitation needed | Crimes against peace (Overall waging and/or conspiracy to wage a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement, as established by the Tokyo Trials) | General Doihara Kenji, Baron Hirota Koki, General Itagaki Seishiro, General Kimura Heitaro, General Matsui Iwane, General Muto Akira, General Hideki Tojo, General Araki Sadao, Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro, Hoshino Naoki, Kaya Okinori, Marquis Kido Kōichi, General Koiso Kuniaki, General Minami Jiro, Admiral Oka Takasumi, General Oshima Hiroshi, General Sato Kenryo, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, Shiratori Toshio, General Suzuki Teiichi, General Umezu Yoshijiro, Togo Shigenori, Shigemitsu Mamoru | Were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East |
| Attack on the United States in 19414 | Crimes against Peace (Waging aggressive war against the United States (count 29 at the Tokyo Trials))4) | Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada, Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu4 | Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet was ordered by his Militarist superiors to start the war with a bloody sneak attack on a U.S. Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. |
| War started with attacks on Hong Kong and Malaya | Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth (count 31 at the Tokyo Trials))4 | Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada,Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu4 | |
| Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands (count 32 at the Tokyo Trials))4 | Kenji Doihara, Shunroku Hata, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Naoki Hoshino, Seishiro Itagaki, Okinori Kaya, Koichi Kido, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Akira Muto, Takasumi Oka, Kenryo Sato, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigetaro Shimada,Teiichi Suzuki, Shigenori Togo, Hideki Tojo, Yoshijiro Umezu4 | ||
| Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against France in Indochina (count 33 at the Tokyo Trials))4 | Mamoru Shigemitsu, Hideki Tojo4 | ||
| Crimes against peace (Waging aggressive war against the USSR (counts 35 and 36 or both at the Tokyo Trials))4 | Kenji Doihara, Kiichiro Hiranuma, Seishiro Itagaki4 | ||
| War crimes ("ordered, authorized, and permitted" inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others (count 54 at the Tokyo Trials))4 | Kenji Doihara, Seishiro Itagaki, Heitaro Kimura, Akira Muto, Hideki Tojo4 | ||
| War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of torture ("deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty" to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities (count 55 at the Tokyo Trials))4 | Shunroku Hata, Koki Hirota, Heitaro Kimura, Kuniaki Koiso, Iwane Matsui, Akira Muto, Mamoru Shigemitsu4 | ||
| "Black Christmas", Hong Kong, December 25, 1941,7 | Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians; mass rape, looting) | no specific prosecutions, although the conviction and execution of Takashi Sakai included some activities in Hong Kong during the time frame | On the day of the British surrender of Hong Kong to the Japanese, Japanese soldiers also terrorised the local population by murdering many, raping an estimated 10,000 women, and looting. |
| Banka Island Massacre, Dutch East Indies, 1942 | Crimes against humanity (Murder of civilians) | no prosecutions | The merchant ship Vyner Brooke was sunk by Japanese aircraft. The survivors who made it to Banka Island were all shot or bayonetted, including 22 nurses ordered into the sea and machine-gunned. One nurse Vivian Bullwinkel survived the massacre and later testified at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 19478 |
| Bataan Death March, Philippines, 1942 | Crime of torture, war crimes (Torture and murder of POWs) | General Masaharu Homma was convicted by an Allied commission of war crimes, including the atrocities of the death march out of Bataan, and the atrocities at Camp O'Donnell and Cabanatuan that followed. He was executed on April 3, 1946 outside Manila. | Approximately 75,000 Filipino and US soldiers, commanded by Major General Edward P. King, Jr. formally surrendered to the Japanese, under General Masaharu Homma, on April 9, 1942, which forced Japan to accept emaciated captives outnumbering them. Captives were forced to march, beginning the next day, about 100 kilometers north to Nueva Ecija to Camp O'Donnell, a prison camp. Prisoners of war were beaten randomly and denied food and water for several days. Those who fell behind were executed through various means: shot, beheaded or bayoneted. Deaths estimated at 650-1,500 U.S. and 2,000 to over 5,000 Filipino-,[5] |
| Operation Sankō (Three Alls Policy) | Crime of genocide, Crimes against humanity (Extermination of civilians) | General Yasuji Okamura | Authorized in December 1941 to implement a scorched earth policy in North China by Imperial General Headquarters. According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, "more than 2.7 million" civilians were killed in this operation that began in May 1942.9 |
| Parit Sulong massacre, Malaysia, 1942 | War crimes (Murder of POWs) | Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura, was convicted fo |