Please select what you would like included for printing: Copy the text below and then paste that into your favorite email application Add to Calendar Add to Calendar This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors Home » Defence Today » Front Lines » Atrocious acts: Muddying the bloody waters of war Darley depicts Sherman’s March to the Sea an early example of total war in which the Union general led his 62,000-man army across Georgia to Savannah looted homes and tore up more than 300 kilometres of rail lines.[Felix O.C Rules governing wartime conduct on the battlefield and beyond became a focus of discussion with the onset of the industrialized warfare of 1914-1918 and its mass killing capabilities—primarily the machine gun Armies no longer lined up in open fields and commenced firing muskets and cannons at a mutually agreed-upon hour The First World War was marked by unprecedented death and destruction believed to be the first in which more civilians were killed than combatants—as many as 13 million to 9.7 million The International Encyclopedia of the First World War defines “atrocity” as an act of violence condemned by contemporaries as a breach of morality or the laws of war “’Atrocities’ are culturally constructed,” it says an international discourse on ‘civilized’ war had defined ‘atrocities’ as acts perpetrated by an enemy that was ‘uncivilized,’ or ‘barbarian.’” The sinking of the RMS Lusitania in May 1915 is a Great War example of an atrocity that became an Allied propaganda tool and rallying cry But it was far from the first atrocity of the conflict the German army is known to have executed 5,521 civilians in Belgium and 906 in France Ten or more were killed in 129 of the incidents “Most reports published by the official commissions of investigation set up by the Allied governments gave a correct picture of the nature and approximate extent of the violence,” says the encyclopedia “The majority of the victims were men of military age but a substantial minority were women and children “Civilians were used as human shields; and there were instances of wanton cruelty and widespread incendiarism although the frequency of the crime is hard to assess.” More damaging for Germany’s reputation as a cultured nation were the “cultural atrocities”—the shelling of the world-famous Reims Cathedral and the deliberate burning of the Louvain University Library Regimes like Hitler’s and Stalin’s often make the fatal mistake of keeping exhaustive records of their crimes This is a mugshot taken by The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam taken in 1938 after his second arrest He was sentenced to five years in a corrective-labour camp in the Soviet Far East and died at a transit camp near Vladivostok at age 47.[Wikimedia] One assumes we are all well aware of enemy atrocities in both world wars But atrocities are not the sole domain of evil empires While the scale of the Nazi-engineered Holocaust in 20th-century Europe and Japan’s brutal occupations of China Korea and other parts of the Far East and South Pacific in the 1930s and ’40s are marked by unparalleled cruelty and death Allied nations and their armies—including Canadian British and American—have not always followed the conventions of the times The history of genocide in the Americas by so-called civilized nations is well-documented including the abominations of slavery and the eradication of the continents’ Indigenous Peoples India and elsewhere were particularly egregious are notorious for their ethnically based wars and atrocities—pogroms genocide and attempted genocide among the practices staining the histories of an inordinate number of eastern European regions Public opinion in the West condemned the atrocities committed by virtually all sides in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 which were seen as barbaric deeds by backward peoples Poison gas was used liberally by all sides in the First World War but it was an Ally—the French—who used it first Chemical weapons only accounted for one per cent This despite the fact the use of “poison” in warfare had been banned by the Hague Convention of 1907 The treatment of civilians and prisoners of war has been at the core of the laws of war since they were first formalized under the Lieber Code authored by Prussian-American philosopher Franz Lieber and issued by U.S It set out the rules of conduct for Union soldiers through the Civil War and it remains the basis of most regulations of the laws of war for the United States The document inspired other countries to adopt similar rules and was used as a template for international efforts in the late-19th century to codify the laws and customs of war today does not subscribe to international law on many matters affecting the conduct of war a signatory to the Ottawa Convention on Cluster Munitions The Americans are estimated to retain about a billion submunitions has even supplied Ukraine with the weapons up to 40 per cent of whose munitions lie unexploded after delivery and pose a lethal danger to civilians—especially curious children—and property for years Seventh Army summarily execute SS prisoners in a coal yard at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp on April 29 Holocaust Memorial Museum/National Archives and Records Administration and considered a dead German was the best.” around the time they took the French village of Courcelette from the Germans in September 1916 Canadian soldiers stopped taking prisoners Surrendering Germans relegated to the rear of the Allied formations had developed a habit of picking up downed weapons and shooting their captors in the back so the Canadians played it safe and killed them outright instead Jones wrote that during the offensive some enemy “offered to surrender but in most cases these men were bayoneted by our advancing [Canadian] troops.” and considered a dead German was the best,” Major-General Richard Turner wrote in his diary Private Lance Cattermole of the 21st Battalion (Eastern Ontario) claimed that he and his comrades had been given strict instructions to take no prisoners until Canadian objectives had been achieved at Courcelette The battalion’s third wave was mopping up enemy positions when Cattermole observed a young German dodging in and out amongst us to avoid being shot “He pulled out from his breast pocket a handful of photographs and tried to show them to us (I suppose they were of his wife and children) in an effort to gain our sympathy As the bullets smacked into him he fell to the ground motionless the pathetic little photographs fluttering down to the earth around him.” The Canadians thus developed a reputation as brutally effective soldiers and projected an aura that inspired fear and respect in the enemy Their image as ruthless fighters only grew during their time as shock troops after the 1917 victory at Vimy and through the Hundred Days Campaign to the end of the war The reputation persisted into the Second World War The Canadians were good fighters—and remain so to this day—but there were occasions when rules took a backseat whether it was the spirit of getting the job done or simply retribution Members of The Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) pose with a Hitler Youth flag after the razing of Friesoythe Soldiers threw petrol cans into buildings along side streets and ignited them with phosphorus grenades the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division attacked the German town of Friesoythe The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada Under the mistaken belief that he had met his demise at the hands of a civilian ordered that the town be razed in retaliation for whom I had a special regard and affection and in whom I had a particular professional interest because of his talent for command was killed,” Vokes wrote in his autobiography “I summoned my [head of the operations staff] Tell ’em we’re going to level the fucking place Get the people the hell out of their houses first.’” obeyed but persuaded Vokes not put the order in writing or issue a proclamation to the local civilians The Argylls had already begun burning Friesoythe in reprisal for their commander’s death the town was systematically set on fire with flamethrowers mounted on armoured vehicles “The raging Highlanders cleared the remainder of that town as no town has been cleared for centuries we venture to say,” wrote the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion The war diary of the 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade records: “When darkness fell Friesoythe was a reasonable facsimile of Dante’s Inferno.” Twenty German civilians died in the town and surrounding area It would not be the only Allied atrocity in the closing days of the war Some 60 German cities were destroyed and more than a million civilians … were killed Allied bombers first hit Second World War Germany in 1940 after Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe began raiding British airfields in preparation for an invasion of the British Isles after Göring had declared that ‘no enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr You can call me Meyer,” a reference to a common German name whose effect was more psychological than physical provoked the Nazi leadership into hitting London—not once What became the London Blitz proved a costly mistake that shifted the tide of the Battle of Britain by giving the RAF time and space to reconstitute Both sides all but ignored the plight of civilians Americans began daylight raids in August 1942 convinced that with the aid of the sun and Norden bombsights they could administer precision strikes on high-value targets and avoid excessive civilian casualties architect of RAF Bomber Command’s nighttime campaign which included Canadian and other Commonwealth crews He opted instead to prioritize his crews’ lives above all and essentially saturate their target areas with bombs Frustrated in their daylight efforts and losing planes and men at an alarming rate the Americans would ultimately follow Harris’s lead and abandon any notion of precision strikes they turned Japanese cities into mass infernos using napalm—a sticky gasoline-based substance—for the first time The May 1943 Dambusters Raid by Lancasters of 617 Bomber Command Squadron breached two hydroelectric dams and caused catastrophic flooding in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley at a cost of eight aircraft and 53 crewmen’s lives (14 Canadian) all to minimum advantage: German production was back on track by September thousands of Allied bombers in streams hundreds of kilometres long and dozens wide dropped incendiaries for three days and nights igniting and feeding firestorms that consumed the city and incinerated between 35,000 and 135,000 of Dresden’s occupants The onslaught over German cities that followed Göring’s boast inspired Germans to start calling air raid sirens “Meyer’s trumpets.” Some 60 German cities were destroyed and more than a million civilians—the bulk of whom did the Nazi regime—were killed by Allied bombs Japanese deaths in the American raids on the Pacific home islands which ramped up after B-29s began staging out of the captured Marianas in November 1944 have been estimated at between 241,000 and 900,000 The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed made possible by uranium first refined by Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited at Port Hope Berlin’s two main hospitals estimated the number of rape victims in the German capital alone at 95,000 to 130,000 during and for some time after the conflict Truman—looked the other way while Josef Stalin had a million of his own people executed and sent millions more into forced labor The Soviet leader’s Red Army soldiers were notorious for brutality during their push westward into Germany in 1945 driven by a deep-seated hatred for fascists and payback for the merciless toll the Wehrmacht took on the Soviet citizenry after Hitler ordered the invasion of the USSR in 1941 which served only to deepen the Reich’s resolve and stiffen its resistance in the east “Red Army soldiers don’t believe in ‘individual liaisons’ with German women,” the playwright Zakhar Agranenko wrote in his diary while serving as an officer in East Prussia 12 men at a time—they rape them on a collective basis.” a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov observed the Red Army in action in 1945 as a Soviet war correspondent “The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to 80,” she recounted later Historian Antony Beevor reports that Berlin’s two main hospitals estimated the number of rape victims in the German capital alone at 95,000 to 130,000 “One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city some 10,000 died as a result,” mostly of suicide he wrote in his 2002 book Berlin: The Downfall 1945 German troops who surrendered on the eastern front—three million of them—were summarily shot or marched off to remote Soviet labour camps many never to see their homes or families again according to German historian Rüdiger Overmans it was only after the Cold War took root in 1947 that Western democracies began citing the evils of Communist rule in earnest who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling.” More recent wars have had their own atrocities American and allied aircraft dropped more than 6.8 million tonnes of bombs on Vietnam Laos and Cambodia—twice that dropped on Europe and Asia combined in the Second World War it remains history’s largest aerial bombardment Army Second Lieutenant William Calley led his platoon into the South Vietnamese village and ordered his men to kill all its residents; 22 unarmed civilians died Calley was convicted of 22 counts of premeditated murder and was released to house arrest three days after his conviction In the Francis Ford Coppola movie Apocalypse Now and lauds the will of such men who “fought with their hearts who are filled with love…that they had the strength then our troubles here would be over very quickly,” he said who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led the March to the Sea through Georgia and the Carolinas which sounded the death knell to the Confederacy’s bid for independence—and slavery his armies laid waste not only to military stockpiles farms and livestock—civilian infrastructure—in a calculated campaign to break Southerners’ will to fight In a Christmas Eve 1864 letter to his chief of staff Sherman wrote that the Union was “not only fighting hostile armies Sherman accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas His tactics would come to form the core of the philosophy known as “total war.” The phrase “total war” is believed to have been coined in 1935 by German general Erich Ludendorff in his memoir It deems any and all civilian resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets mobilizes all of a society’s resources to fight Air Force General Curtis LeMay adapted the concept in 1949 when he proposed that a total war in the nuclear age would consist of delivering the entire nuclear arsenal in a single overwhelming blow the concept of mutual assured destruction—or MAD—has so far kept the nuclear genie in the bottle Get the latest stories on military history veterans issues and Canadian Armed Forces delivered to your inbox An informative primer on Canada’s crucial role in the Normandy landing The integration of kiwi AG marks an important milestone for Hy2gen as it means the internationally active company is now entering into the production of renewable hydrogen and its derivatives such as renewable natural gas (RNG) and renewable liquefied natural gas (LNG) This also gives Hy2gen access to a pipeline of further projects with a total capacity of 300 MW for electrolysis and methanation Hy2gen now has the opportunity to utilise kiwi AG’s already established industry connections and expand them further in order to maintain its position at the forefront of the renewable hydrogen market “Today is an important day for Hy2gen AG as we are now starting to produce hydrogen molecules” said Hy2gen CEO Cyril Dufau-Sansot ““kiwi AG can look back on ten years of experience in the hydrogen market in which time they have built and operated a truly pioneering plant The integration of kiwi AG into Hy2gen AG allows us to benefit from their technical expertise and brings us a lot closer to our goal of becoming an independent market leader in the production of renewable hydrogen and its derivatives.” is located not far from another Hy2gen project in Friesoythe It is expected that the production of renewable hydrogen and renewable methanol which is mainly used to decarbonise shipping will begin in Friesoythe in the fourth quarter of 2027 under the project name NAUTILUS Both sites in the north-west of Lower Saxony are strategically very important given their proximity to various North Sea ports This ensures rapid product sales to international customers operations were transferred to what is now kiwi AG The plant is still considered the world's largest operating power-to-eMethane plant today Power-to-gas describes an energy concept in which hydrogen is produced using electrolysis “The acquisition of the plant also enables us to expand our product portfolio from renewable hydrogen e-methane and e-kerosene to include renewable natural gas and liquefied natural gas” added Matthias Lisson Hy2gen’s Country Manager for the DACH region “I am delighted that the first plant which we are using for production in Germany is currently the world's largest operating power-to-eMethane plant. We have already received a commitment from our renowned partner It is important for me to mention that production processes will be maintained and that we will continue to rely on the expertise of all our employees.” Hy2gen