[Jim O]

Excellent post Klaus.

The victors get to write the history. I have been reminded of that many times, especially by my German friends, including a current member of the German Navy stationed here in Virginia until just recently. Many of those events are "footnotes".

We humans all have animal instincts whether American, German, Russian, or whatever, and combat can and often necessarily does bring that out in the worst of ways. Just witness what US soldiers have done in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq. And the stories do not end at the battlefield either. In some cases, US soldiers have come home from battle and could not "turn it off" and have wound up killing wives and/or other family members. This is not meant to excuse such behavior, but merely to explain it. People need to be held accountable for their actions, and if poor training and/or "looking the other way" was involved then their superiors need also to account.

Victors should hold themselves to at least the same standards as those to which they hold those whom they have vanquished. Patton was not officially held responsible for Biscari or Canicattì while General Sepp Dietrich and SS Colonel Joachim Peiper were found guilty of war crimes for their roles as commanders of the troops involved in the Malmedy massacre.

Now when atrocities become a matter of official policy, that is where political leaders bear the responsibility of "war crimes". Even Churchill admitted after the war that Dresden was a terrible thing. But compare that with the bombing of Rotterdam while surrender negotiations were ongoing, or with the destrucution of Warsaw after the uprising had been put down.

As to the situation of Russian and German POW's, well that is a tragedy, and both sides committed unspeakable atrocities. Of course the Russians only treated their own countrymen who had been in liberated German POW camps slightly better.