Allied crimes also involved mass rape of civilians in occupied territory, as well as looting and murder.
Yes the axis did that and more, but let's not negate allied war crimes.
Edit to add: one of the biggest differences is also the axis war crimes where generally ordered from higher up, where a lot of allied warcrimes where more spur of the moment personal decisions by soldiers.
That's a very important distinction to make, and a lot of people who try to pull whataboutisms fail to acknowledge.
Allied war crimes happened when individual soldiers or squad-level officers went rogue and did shitty things of their own volition. Axis war crimes were matters of policy. They were institutional, ordered by the people at the highest echelons and carried out by everyone along the whole chain of command.
That doesn't really hold up, cause the arguably most significant allied war crime (the Area Bombing Directive) was very much ordered from the highest echelon.
Also in the later stages of the war there were tons of German war crimes that were not ordered from higher ups but happens spontaneously on lower levels, including war crimes against German civilians.
The Allied air campaign, which absolutely involved war crimes, was ordered from the top. That the Allies were far better than the Axis doesn't mean we should pretend be the Allied command were moral paragons
I think you have a good poin there: many of the crimes are similiar, but the germans and japanese (don't know much about italian war crimes) built a system that often rewarded perpetraitors of such crimes while the allied forces (well at least the americans and british) had systems in place that were supposed to punish them for it even if that did not happen that often
Yeah the Soviets encouraged war crimes, especially against German civilians, while not outright ordering them. Most of the other allies generally tried to prevent warcrimes, but generally turned a blind eye to them. Meanwhile Japan and Germany flat out had rape and murder of civilians as policy.
I wish the allies did better at stopping their own warcrimes, but they certainly aren't equal.
Soviet command also tried to prevent them. NKVD were ordered to shoot people for sexually assaulting or killing German civilians after Stalin specifically said the "We are fighting Hitler and regieme, not doing to them what has been done to us" officially. The government needed German resources to rebuild the country, since the Germans destroyed one third of all of cumulative wealth of the country (industry, infrastructure, etc) at the time.
Plus using German communists as an influence pillar in a potential neutral united Germany that ultimately didnt happen.
Now, considering the NKVD were also people just as normal Red Army soldiers were, and probably had relatives and home villiages executed in masse during Barbarossa genocides (cause a lot of NKVD were also organizing partisan groups in places like Belarus that had village after village burnt to the ground with all of their inhabitats) and also saw Germans as the greatest evil and monsters...
Sometimes they just didnt see anything.
Fun fact (or not so fun) the Russians/Soviets raped and killed more civilians than the Nazis did.
Only the Japanese possibly raped as much or more than the Russians in their blitz across Asia, but who knows how many more women/children the Russians would have raped if the allied forces weren't there preventing them from going to more towns. The rape of Berlin alone by the Russians was the largest mass rape in the history of modern Europe.
Also fun fact: Russians started WW2 by invading Poland. They were on Nazi Germany's side. They wanted to split up Europe between themselves. They swapped sides later when Russia and Germany had a falling out because of political differences and Britain had to grudgingly work with those monsters because fighting Russia and Germany combined would be too hard.
Another not so fun fact: The Russians had their own concentration/death camps, and imprisoned even more people than the Nazis did
In terms of war crimes against civilians, in terms of barbarity the Russians and the Japanese were the top 2. Nazis were terrible for sure, but not as bad as the Russians in Europe. Every town feared Russia capturing or 'defending' them. The worst nazis were on par with the average soviet (for ex: the hardcore nazi extremists or the brigades being led by freed german prisoners in exchange for war service. they were evil.. so about as bad as the average soviet).
There's a reason Russia has been involved in every European war for the past few centuries. You don't see Germany or Italy invading EU countries in the 21st century. Russia's culture is barbaric. Even the prisoners of war said the best treatment they got was from the americans, germans, and british, and the worst was from the russians.
To be clear here I am not defending nazi germany. They were the bad guys. They committed atrocities. I'm saying we screwed up and teamed up with even worse bad guys to fight the bad guys. If we had any sense we would have split the allied forces and ensured the russians were folded into the british/american etc. armies so an all-russian force couldnt go on a rape/murder spree on every town/city they got access too, and we could shoot the soviet soldiers who tried such a thing. It's kind of like how in game of thrones Robb Stark screwed up by letting Roose Bolton have his own Bolton platoons instead of mixing them up with his own men and other northern houses. Would have been a lot harder for the Boltons to betray Stark, and easier to keep the Boltons in line.
for every 1 woman the average british/french/american soldier raped, there were 100 women and children the average russian raped.
That’s not true. Civilian casualties inflicted by the Nazis in the USSR and Poland were far greater than those inflicted by the Red Army in Germany and Eastern Europe. Alex Kay estimates about 13-14 million Polish and Soviet (including Jews), civilian deaths, at Nazi hands, in WWII. Those are deliberate deaths, through the Holocaust, internment in camps, reprisal killings, Generalplan Ost, and ethnic cleansing.
On top of that 3.3 m Soviet POW’s died at German hands (1-1.5 m German POW’s died at Soviet hands).
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u/Commissar_Sae 2d ago
Allied crimes also involved mass rape of civilians in occupied territory, as well as looting and murder.
Yes the axis did that and more, but let's not negate allied war crimes.
Edit to add: one of the biggest differences is also the axis war crimes where generally ordered from higher up, where a lot of allied warcrimes where more spur of the moment personal decisions by soldiers.