Only the Germans were held accountable for violations of the Geneva Convention during World War II

When World War II ended in May 1945, German war criminals were put on trial by the Allies at the Nuremberg IMT and also in separate trials held by the American military, the British, the French and the Soviets.  There were no trials for any violations of the Geneva Convention committed by any of the Allied troops.

At the trials held by the American Military Tribunal on the grounds of the former Dachau concentration camp, the American lawyers for the defense and the American lawyers for the prosecution could not agree on the laws of the Geneva Convention of 1929.  The defense attorneys argued that the Germans were not responsible for any crimes committed against soldiers of the Soviet Union because the Soviets had not signed the convention and were not following it with regard to the Germans.  

The former Dachau concentration camp was a strange choice as the location for the American Military Tribunal proceedings against German war criminals, who had allegedly violated the Geneva Convention, because Dachau was the site of the bloody massacre of the Waffen-SS soldiers who surrendered the camp, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention.

The first trial by the American Military Tribunal was the case of acting Commandant Martin Weiss and 39 others who had positions of authority in the camp, including four Kapos who were prisoners themselves.

According to the prosecution’s case, one of the main crimes committed in the Dachau camp was the execution of Soviet Prisoners of War, or specifically, the 90 Russian military officers who were executed at Dachau on Hitler’s orders in September 1944. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Hitler had issued an order that all captured Russian soldiers who were Communist Commissars were to be taken to the nearest concentration camp and executed. According to the prosecution, any man among the Dachau accused, who had merely witnessed this execution, was guilty of a violation of the Laws and Usages of War because he should have acted to stop these executions which were a violation of the Geneva Convention.

The defense pointed out that the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva convention of 1929 and that the Soviets were not following the Convention with regard to captured German soldiers. The prosecution responded that this didn’t matter since Germany had signed the convention and thus should be held to the rules regarding all Prisoners of War.

While the Dachau trials were in progress, captured German soldiers in American POW camps in Germany, called Eisenhower’s “death camps,” were being denied their rights under the Geneva Convention. At the same time that German concentration camp staff members were on trial for violating the Geneva Convention with regard to Soviet POWs, the Soviet Union was violating the Geneva Convention by working German POWs to death in their gulags in Siberia. Only the Germans were held accountable for violations of the Geneva Convention during World War II.

Article 82 of the Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 27 July 1929 stipulates the following:

The provisions of the present Convention shall be respected by the High Contracting Parties in all circumstances.

In time of war if one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall, nevertheless, remain binding as between the belligerents who are parties thereto.

I am not a lawyer but I am a native English speaker and I interpret the last sentence in the quote above to read that the belligerents in a war, who are parties to the Geneva Convention, shall be bound by the rules of the Geneva Convention with respect to the belligerents who are parties thereto, even if one of the belligerents is not a party to the convention.  The rules of the convention do not say that belligerents who are parties thereto shall be bound by the rules of the convention with respect to the belligerants who are NOT parties thereto.

Apparently this was how the American attorneys who defended the German war criminals at Dachau interpreted the rules of the Geneva Convention.

In all of the proceedings of the American Military Tribunal, the charges against the German war criminals were participating in a “common plan” to violate the Laws and Usages of War under the Geneva Convention of 1929 and the Hague Convention of 1907. Under this charge, one of the main crimes committed at Buchenwald was the shooting of Soviet Prisoners of War.

The prosecution in the main Buchenwald case was of the opinion that the defeated Germans should be held to the rules of the Convention with regard to Soviet POWs, even though the victorious Army of the Soviet Union, which had not signed the Geneva Convention, had committed some of the most horrendous atrocities against captured German soldiers, including sodomy and cannibalism, not to mention the unspeakable actions of the Russian soldiers against innocent German civilians.

At the time that the Buchenwald proceedings were taking place, millions of German POWs were working as slave laborers in the Russian gulags in Siberia. Only a few of them survived this ordeal and finally returned home after 10 years of working as slave laborers.

America had signed the 1929 Geneva Convention and was responsible for treating German POWs according to the rules of the Convention. However, in March 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had designated all captured German soldiers as Disarmed Enemy Forces who were not entitled to be treated according to the Geneva Convention. At the time that the Buchenwald trial was taking place, the former Dachau concentration camp had been turned into War Crimes Enclosure No. 1 where German soldiers were being denied their rights under the Geneva Convention.

Defense attorney Captain Emanuel Lewis argued at the Buchenwald trial that “We think the language of the Convention is simple and binding. It binds only those nations who sign it as between themselves. It is not binding as between a signatory and a nation that has refused to join the family of nations.”

The argument over whether Germany should have been held to the rules of the Geneva convention with respect to the Russians who had not signed the Convention and were not following it, was never resolved in the Dachau courtroom. Another argument by the prosecution at the American Military Tribunal was that the execution of the Russian Commissars was murder because they had not been given a trial.

Hermann Pister, Commandant at Buchenwald, pointed out in his testimony that many of his comrades had been executed by the Allies without a trial. He claimed that Waffen-SS Lt. Gen. Schmidt was summarily executed without a trial because he was considered to be responsible for the horrible conditions found in the Mauthausen concentration camp when it was liberated by American troops, even though he was not in charge of the camp. The Commandant of Mauthausen, Franz Ziereis, did not get a trial; he was shot “while attempting to escape” which was a euphemism for executing him without a trial.