Germany committed war crimes in both World War I and World War II. The most notable of these is the Holocaust in which millions of people were murdered or died from abuse and neglect, 43% of them (6 million out of 14 million[citation needed]) Jews. However, millions also died as a result of other German actions in those two conflicts.
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According to the Schlieffen plan, the German Army needed a quick victory against France in the West (as in 1870, and again in 1940), before engaging the Russian Empire in the East. The price for this was an attack on neutral Belgium. Due to fears of Belgian Francs-tireurs, over 6,000 Belgian civilians were shot, sometimes in large groups by machine gun, in a brief ten-day period during the second half of August 1914 that came to be known as the "Rape of Belgium". In some cases, whole villages were destroyed, such as Louvain, which was burned and 248 of its citizens were killed by German soldiers.
The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby, which took place on December 16, 1914, was an attack by the German navy on the British seaport towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, West Hartlepool, and Whitby. The attack resulted in 137 fatalities and 592 casualties. The raid was as a violation of the 1907 Hague Convention provisions that prohibited naval bombardments of undefended towns without warning, because only Hartlepool was protected by shore batteries.[1] Germany was a signatory of the Hague Convention. [2] Another attack followed on 26 April 1916 on the coastal towns of Yarmouth and Lowestoft but both were important naval bases and defended by shore batteries.[citation needed].
Unrestricted submarine warfare was instituted in 1915 in response to the British blockade of Germany in the North Sea. Prize rules, which were codified under the 1907 Hague Convention—such as those that required commerce raiders to warn their targets and allow time for the crew to board lifeboats—were disregarded and commercial vessels were sunk regardless of nationality, cargo, or destination. Following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 and subsequent public outcry in various neutral countries, including the United States, the practice was withdrawn.
Following the indecisive Battle of Jutland, Admiral Reinhard Scheer—the commander in chief of the German High Seas Fleet pressured Kaiser Wilhelm II to reinstitute unrestricted submarine warfare in an attempt to break the will of the British people to continue the war. This had the unintended consequence of bringing the United States into the conflict.
RMS Lusitania was a British luxury ocean liner owned by the Cunard Line and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland, torpedoed without warning in violation of prize rules by a German U-boat in May 1915. The ship sank in just 18 minutes, eight miles (15 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, and was probably a major factor in the eventual decision of the United States to join the war in 1917.
it should be noted that, as far as wartime actions against enemy nationals are concerned, the [1948] Genocide Convention added virtually nothing to what was already covered (and had been since the Hague Convention of 1899) by the internationally accepted laws of land warfare, which require an occupying power to respect "family honors and rights, individual lives and private property, as well as religious convictions and liberty" of the enemy nationals. But the laws of war do not cover, in time of either war or peace, a government's actions against its own nationals (such as Nazi Germany's persecution of German Jews). And at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the tribunals rebuffed several efforts by the prosecution to bring such "domestic" atrocities within the scope of international law as "crimes against humanity."—Telford Taylor [3]
This list of murders of children by Nazi Germany is a list of child murders or infanticide by Nazi German military units (for example the Wehrmacht, the SS etc.), organizations, Nazi collaborators, their units, or organizations.
 Asperg. Sinti and Roma people about to be deported, 22 May 1940. |
 Asperg. Sinti and Roma children about to be deported, 22 May 1940. |
 Iaşi. Jewish bodies, 29 June 1941. |
 Reichskommissariat Moskau. Jewish women and children been forced out of their homes. A soldier in Romanian uniform is marching along as a guard, 17 July 1941. |
 Members of the 21st Latvian Police Battalion assemble a group of Jewish women for execution on a beach near Liepāja, 1941. |
 Man showing corpse of an starved infant in the Warsaw ghetto, 1941. |
 Executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) near Ivangorod, Ukraine. The photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted at a Warsaw post office by a member of the Polish resistance named Jerzy Tomaszewski. The original German inscription on the back of the photograph reads, "Ukraine 1942, Jewish Action [operation], Ivangorod." 1942. |
 Warsaw ghetto, 1940/1943. |
 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – Photo from Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943. The original German caption reads: "Forcibly pulled out of dug-outs". People recognized in the picture: 1. Boy in the front was not recognized, some possible identities: Artur Dab Siemiatek, Levi Zelinwarger (next to his mother Chana Zelinwarger) and Tsvi Nussbaum. 2. Matylda Lamet Goldfinger. 3. Leo Kartuziński – far back with white bag on his shoulder. 4. Golda Stawarowski – also in the back, first women from the right, with one hand raised. 5. Josef Blösche – SS man with the gun. |
 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – Photo from Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943. The original German caption reads: "Askaris used during the operation". Two Ukrainian Askari or Trawniki guards, peer into a doorway past the bodies of Jewish children killed during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. |
 Eichmann and his officers were responsible for the murder of most of the Jewish population in the ghettos of the territory of Czechoslovakia, and for the transport of men, women and children of all nationalities to extermination camps, for example KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau, May–June 1944. |
 Polish civilians murdered by German SS forces (Oskar Dirlewanger) in Warsaw Uprising, August 1944. |
 Collecting bodies after bombing, during Warsaw Uprising. Picture of the courtyard of Tamka 23 street where Tomaszewski was taken after being wounded on 8 September 1944. |
 Minsk, 1941/1944. |
 The bodies of Belgian men, women, and children, killed by the German military during their counter-offensive into Luxembourg and Belgium, await identification before burial, 1944. |
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 Ghetto Litzmannstadt: Children rounded up for deportation to the Kulmhof extermination camp. |
 Berlin. The Goebbels children were poisoned by Magda Goebbels on 1 May 1945. |
 Memorial to the murdered children of Babi Jar. |
Memorial lidice children (2007).JPG
Memorial to the murdered children of Lidice. |
The Germans had to accept the Treaty of Versailles which outlined many clauses the main being the fact that the Germans had to take the guilt for causing the war and pay out 6,6 billion in ramifications for its damages.
Germany's response to its war crimes has been largely approved by the former Allies. The Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany until 1990) offered official apologies for Germany's role in the Holocaust. Additionally, German leaders have continuously expressed repentance, most notably when former Chancellor Willy Brandt fell on his knees in front of a Holocaust memorial in the Warsaw Ghetto, also known as the Warschauer Kniefall in 1970. Germany has also paid extensive reparations, including nearly $70 billion to the state of Israel. It has given $15 billion to Holocaust survivors and will continue to compensate them until 2015. Additionally, the government of Germany coordinated an effort to reach a settlement with German companies that had used slave labor during the war; the companies will pay $1.7 billion to victims. Germany also established a National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Berlin for looted property.[citation needed]
Germany's treatment of war criminals and war crimes has also met with approval. Germany helped track down war criminals for the Nuremberg Trials and opened its wartime archives to researchers and investigators. Additionally, Germany verified over 60,000 names of war criminals for the U.S. Department of Justice to prevent them from entering the United States and provided similar information to Canada and the United Kingdom. On the other hand numerous war criminals were never brought to justice and lived their lives as respected citizens and even state officials, despite numerous pleas for their extradition or trial, stated by countries invaded by Germany. For instance, this was the case of Heinz Reinefarth and Erich von dem Bach, each of them responsible for death of dozens of thousands of civilians in Poland and the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
The German education system focuses on teaching about the Holocaust and the Third Reich and denounces the crimes committed during World War II. Additionally, German legislation makes Holocaust denial a criminal offence. Furthermore, symbols of Nazism, like the Swastika and so-called "Hitler Salute", are illegal in Germany.
However, Germany is still criticized by some regarding its response. The German government never apologized for the invasions or took responsibility for World War II. Poland still insists that Germany must offer an apology for the suffering of its people during the war. Additionally, the emphasis for blame is often placed on individuals like Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party instead of the government itself, so no restitution has been made to any other national government by Germany. Even after German reunification in 1990, Germany rejected claims to reparations made by Britain and France, insisting that all reparations had already been resolved. Additionally, Germany has been criticized for waiting too long to seek out and return looted property, some of which is still missing and possibly hidden within Germany. Germany has also had trouble dealing with stolen property in private hands because of the need to compensate the owners.[citation needed]
   | The War Crimes of Dr Josef Mengele - BBC - h2g2 - Dr Josef Mengele - the Angel of Death |
| | d'Ardenne Massacres - Abbaye d'Ardenne - Veterans Affairs Canada |
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