{"id":81120,"date":"2018-09-17T16:27:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T23:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=81120"},"modified":"2018-09-17T16:27:07","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T23:27:07","slug":"war-crimes-of-the-liberators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/09\/17\/war-crimes-of-the-liberators\/","title":{"rendered":"War Crimes of the Liberators |"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 4.5pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><a class=\"yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string\" style=\"color: #0000ff;\" spellcheck=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC5WE_bClugxSVG1ENir8qzg\">hazards and catastrophes<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"margin: 4.5pt 0cm 4.5pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #1d2129;\">US soldiers fought for democracy and the freedom of other nations. Yet in the course of military operations, they too committed war crimes. Most of them never followed up on, let alone punished.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 4.5pt 0cm 4.5pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: 'Helvetica',sans-serif; color: #1d2129;\">In the wake of the Allies\u2019 advance against Hitler\u2019s tyranny, there were numerous atrocities committed by the victors, not only in the East. Apart from their medals, some American soldiers also kept a dark secret. GIs killed German prisoners of war and ra<\/span><span class=\"gmail-textexposedshow\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: 'inherit',serif; color: #1d2129;\">ped thousands of German women.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0cm 0cm 4.5pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: 'inherit',serif; color: #1d2129;\">Estimates of the number of German victims vary widely, and are highly disputed among experts. Not least because they touch on a taboo, since for decades in Germany the subject had been considered as a potential strain on the relation between the Federal Republic of Germany and its Western Allies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 4.5pt 0cm 4.5pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: 'inherit',serif; color: #1d2129;\">According to some historians there were several thousand sexual assaults by American soldiers in Bavaria alone when US forces liberated the region in April 1945. At some invasion beaches in Normandy, only every second Germnn POW survived. Often, the liberators \u2013 shocked by the sight of German atrocities \u2013 would fall into a spiral of violence. Very few of these crimes came under investigation by US military courts. Studies by the US War Department hinting at a comparatively high number of transgressions were classified secret.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 4.5pt 0cm 4.5pt 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: 'inherit',serif; color: #1d2129;\">WAR CRIMES OF THE LIBERATORS follows the deficiencies of discipline and military justice in the US Army using unpublished documents and moving statements by US soldiers as well as their victims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"War Crimes of the Liberators | Safe &amp; abridged Version | G\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iNCZ881Ku2w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>hazards and catastrophes US soldiers fought for democracy and the freedom of other nations. Yet in the course of military operations, they too committed war crimes. Most of them never followed up on, let alone punished. In the wake of the Allies\u2019 advance against Hitler\u2019s tyranny, there were numerous atrocities committed by the victors, not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}