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Crimes Against The Peace Of The World

Since 1864 wounded soldiers and prisoners of war have been protected by the Geneva Convention. This international agreement aims to safeguard men who fall into enemy hands but has been broken numerous times. It is impossible to dwell on the Second World War without considering some of the appalling abuses of the Geneva Convention. The killing of hundreds of Polish men at Katyn Wood, near Smolensk in what was then the Soviet Union, became a notorious example.

Invading Germans discovered the bodies in February 1943, after being tipped off by local peasants. In radio bulletins the Nazi regime pointed the finger at Stalin and his Bolsheviks. The Soviets hit back, claiming "The Hitlerite murders will not escape a just and bloody retribution for their bloody crimes." It was only in 1990 that Russia's President Gorbachev released documents from the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, that proved Stalin's elite were behind the atrocity.

The Poles had been captured when Soviet forces spilled over the Polish border. A short-lived agreement between Hitler and Stalin drawn up in 1939 permitted the division of Poland between the two powers. Approximately 230,000 Polish fighters fell into Soviet hands. Presumably on the grounds that they were class enemies, Stalin ordered the deaths of the 4,143 men killed at Karyn Wood in 1941. Others were slaughtered at different sites in the Soviet Union.

Nazis Kill 491st BG Crewman The Liberator was named "Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am." It was from the 491st Bomb Group. On 24 August 1944, 8th Air Force Bomber Command attacked many targets in Germany. As " Wham! Bam!" dropped its bombs on an airfield north of Hanover, the aircraft was hit by flak and dropped out of formation. This was the beginning of what was to be one of the most gruesome, nightmarelike incidents to befall a bomber crew in WWII, as reported in a 20-page lead article in After the Battle, published in England. As the crippled B-24, #42-110107, neared the ground near Greven, some ninety miles southwest of Hanover, the pilot, 2nd Lt. Norman J. Rogers, Jr. gave the order to bail out. First to jump was Sgt. William A. Dumont, ball turret gunner, who injured his ankle on landing. Next was Sgt. Thomas D. Williams, radioman; followed by William M. Adams, nose gunner, who was wounded in the arm; Sgt. Sidney E. Brown, tail gunner; Flight Officer Haigus Tufenkjian, navigator; Sgt. Wilmore J. Austin, waist gunner; and Staff Sgt. Forrest M. Brininstool, engineer, who had a flak wound to his stomach. Last out were 2nd Lt. John N. Sekul, copilot, and Lt. Rogers. All the crew were taken from Greven to a railway station where they traveled to a Luftwaffe airfield where they were interrogated by German officers. "They treated us decently and asked about, our wounds," a crewnran related. Adams and the engineer were taken to a field hospital where Brininstool was operated on to remove a piece of shrapnel from his stomach, after which he was taken to a hospital in Munster. Adams returned to the others. Next morning the crew was taken by train to Dulag Luft aircrew interrogation center at Oberursel, north of Frankfort. On the 26th, the train arrived at Russelsheim, fifteen miles southwest of Frankfort. Here the RAF had hit the town with over 400 Lancasters to knock out the Opel factory, which killed 179 of the residents. The deaths "did not auger well for the American crewmen who arrived in the atflermath of the attack. The mood in Russelsheim that morning was ugly, and tempers against the ‘terror-fliers' were running high, " the article relates. The article describes what followed: As the railway line was blocked, the eight Americans, escorted by their three Luftwaffe guards, dismounted from the train ... For a while it seems that the guards were unsure of what to do next ... for the senior man left the group and they never saw him again ... The other two guards ... then started to move the group off the station and across the Bahnhofplatz on the northern side of the tracks. Sgt. Dumont with his injured ankle was having difficulty in walking and was being helped along by the other crewmen. ... The American airmen soon attracted a hostile audience which very quickly grew to a crowd of ‘between 250 and 300 people.' It still appeared that, the two Luftwaffe guards had no idea of where they were supposed to be going, and when people began throwing stones, they made no attempt to intervene or to try to take the party back to the station. Reaching Frankfurter Strasse, someone in the crowd threw a piece of iron, hitting Lt. Rogers on the head. This appeared to be the sign for a free-for-all to begin, and a hail of missiles began to bombard the men. As they proceeded east, along the road, they passed the Park Hotel where three women came out of their shop shouting to those in the crowd to kill the airmen. The women joined in the general tumult and, and as the Americans stumbled along, they were subjected to a continual rain of blows from bricks, broomsticks, shovels, or whatever came easily to hand. ... Sgt. Brown later described how "we were attempting to help Dumont, who had a broken ankle, along as best we could in the crowd, but as we moved on he soon fell to the ground; he was the first to fall, and the people pounced on him and beat him to death right there in the street." The article goes on to describe the vicious, continual beating the crew received. After they were beaten to the ground they received additional poundings, then the crowd began to disperse. A wagon was then used to pick up the bodies of the crew, with Brown and copilot Sekul still alive but, pretending to be dead. Brown testified later, "I saw some person, whom I can't describe, with a club in his hand, come over to the wagon - apparently to finish us off. Sekul's hand was on my shoulder and I could feel him wince as this person beat him on the head. l felt his hand slide from my shoulder as he died. Thomas Williams was also next to me, and I heard him make a sound as he was finished off. I thought that all of the crew had been killed by this time. I could see that the flight officer had his brains beaten out and the pilot, Rogers, had his head beaten in on one side ..." The so-called "death march at Russelsheim" became one of the first war crimes to be investigated after the war. Those townspeople who could be identified with the incident were either hung or jailed.

The Poles had been told they were heading home. Before being hauled from the train that transported them from prison camps, they were filled with apprehension. "Optimistic as I was before, I am now coming to the conclusion that this journey does not bode well," wrote Waclaw Kruk in a diary found near his body. At Karyn Wood each man was bound by a rope before being dispatched with a shot to the back of the head. The stacks of corpses were covered with lime and sand was bulldozed on top.

In France the cruelty of the Nazis is epitomized by the fate of Oradour-sur-Glane. In one summer's afternoon in 1944 the population was eliminated by a vengeful German SS. Men were herded into a barn and shot. Women were locked into the village church, which was then set alight. Children were sent to concentration camps. Explosives reduced the village's 250 buildings to rubble. Before the day was over 642 residents of Oradour were dead.The few survivors were badly injured and psychologically scarred.

The reason for the massacre can only be guessed. At first it seemed the villagers were victims of a savage reprisal for French Resistance activity. Later it was claimed that German commanders were looking for a stash of loot that they had amassed but lost to a Resistance ambush.

The German SS was also guilty of excesses against Allied troops. On December 17, 1944 one hundred American troops were killed near the Belgian town of Malmedy during the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last gasp of the war. The Americans were trapped by a surprise German attack led by Major Joachim Peiper.

After a brief spat the GIs surrendered. They were disarmed and placed in a field under armed guard, forced to watch the enemy surge ahead, until someone barked an order - "Machen alle kaput" (kill them all). The firing continued for three minutes. Those that survived slid under the prone bodies of their comrades and feigned death. They heard the SS walk among the Americans, finishing off the wounded with shots to the head.

When Hitler was at the height of his power, Nuremberg was a magnificent medieval city that bore testimony to his appeal with a series of stunning rallies. With a sense of dignified irony, the Allies held the momentous trial of the most significant Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice in 1945.

By war's end Nuremburg was no longer the picturesque heartland of the Third Reich - Allied bombing had reduced its prestigious facades to rubble. The trial was not a triumphal showpiece, rather a way of closing a miserable chapter and turning the page for a fresh beginning.

In the dock at the International Military Tribunal were 20 men from the upper echelons of the Nazi regime, among them Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering and the Fuhrer's deputy Rudolf Hess. Martin Bormann was accused in his absence. Robert Ley Director of the Labour Front, hanged himself in his cell before the trial opened.

They faced four charges: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes (including shooting prisoners of war), and crimes against humanity (including the Holocaust). The USA, Britain, France, and Russia had prosecution teams at this unique courtroom occasion. Eight judges heard the evidence.

Chief prosecutor Robert Jackson began proceedings on November 20, 1945 with the words: "The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated." The Allies, he said, had stayed "the hand of vengeance" and submitted to law.

It took nearly a year to complete the hearing. It was largely a formal, ordered affair, with the defendant sitting impassively listening to each case through headphones. By October 1, 1946 a dozen men who a few short years before were at the peak of glittering, although tarnished, careers were told they were to hang. Six others got jail terms of between ten years and life, including Hess, who died in Spandau Prison, West Berlin, in 1987. A further three were acquitted.

On the morning of the hangings - October 16, 1946 - Goering's body was discovered in his cell. Anxious not to be hung, a fate he considered shameful, the corpulent bon viveuv had swallowed a cyanide pill. One by one the accused filed to a gallows in the prison gymnasium in Nuremberg. Each man mounted 13 steps to meet the noose, but each had a different response. Streicher shrieked "Heil Hitler" with his last breath. A smile played on the lips of Hans Frank, a convert to Catholicism. Keitel's last thoughts were with Germany's war dead: "More than two million German soldiers went to their death for their fatherland. I follow now, my sons - all for Germany." Both Ribbentrop and Seyss-Inquart, the first and last to be executed, expressed hopes for future peace.

It was by no means the only trial of war criminals, but it was the most significant and cathartic. Other trials took place consecutively and in the following years, throughout Germany and also in Japan, China, and the Soviet Union. At Nuremberg, the Subsequent Proceedings lasted until the end of 1948 and dealt with a further 182 war criminals. Of those, 26 faced the death penalty.

Jean Kellaway. . The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut. 2003.

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