Charles Guggenheim Quotes

There has always been some confusion in the case of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Geneva and Hague conventions are very clear when prisoners are official members of an state’s armed force with uniforms, insignia and ranks. It is also clear with respect to civilians. But the combatants of the insurgent and terrorist forces fall in between, and international law is less clear. The George W. Bush administration at first took the position that the captured combatants were not captured soldiers and were therefore not entitled to the treatment due that status. But the military regulations made no distinction as to how prisoners in combat should be treated. It is a very gray area, except that in either case, torture is illegal under U. S. and under International law.

The problem that was facing the nation in the early 21st century was when we captured a terrorist, was he a combatant or was he accused by a personal enemy, and had he been tortured to say he was a terrorist. The issue grew more complicated when terrorist suspects were brought to American territory at Guantanamo Bay, and the Courts have always held that a foreigner on American soil had a right to have access to the Federal Courts just as Citizens do. Complicating the situation more was the fact that a few American citizens had joined the terrorists and were they entitled to a civilian trial as all other Americans were.

Germany had invaded and occupied much of Europe. These two fronts accounted for the majority of the German casualties. The Germans not only violated the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War repeatedly, but as you can see from this quotation, it was deliberate policy. Keitel was tried and hanged after the war. See {621438} .

Lawrence of Arabia. In the Middle East, Lawrence led a small Arab army against the Turks and the Germans. In a battle near Tafas, the captured 250 Turkish and German soldiers as prisoners. They them shot them all in cold blood with their Hotchkiss machine gun. What makes this quotation so significant is that one of the great British heroes of WWI was actually guilty of War Crimes. An American journalist gave Lawrence and his exploits great publicity without mentioning the atrocities. The British chain of command also ignored the transgression of one of the most fundamental rules of war even though the clear evidence was in basic battle report files. However, the British never removed the report from the files or destroyed it. The Turks and the Germans while they respected the rules of war with the English, French, and most allies, treated the Arabs much more harshly and murdered Arab prisoners on many occasions. In part this atrocity at Tafas was an act of vengeance and retaliation. But Lawrence never even tried to explain it.

Hamas had fired thousands of rockets and other missiles at Israeli population centers—war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. Israel finally retaliated against Hamas facilities in Gaza. However, in an unprecedented effort to avoid civilian casualties, the Israeli Defense Forces warned the people by indicating which targets they were going to strike. They also dropped leaflets in Arabic telling the civilians that they are not the targets but to try and avoid harm to them and their families, they should evacuate the neighborhoods that would be under attack. Hamas had placed their missile launchers and other weapons in and near schools, hospitals, mosques and civilian housing risking their civilian population—see {640841}.

There were actually very few incidents of civilian resistance to the German invaders and occupiers. However, they were exaggerated and used as a pretext for what amounted to atrocities and war crimes against the Belgian Civilians.

The German Generals talked him out of the idea, but the quotation gives an insight into the Character of the German Leader. It never occurred to him that the Russians might retaliate and murder German prisoners.

This clause applied to German POWs in America caused a problem for Blacks in the military were harshly discriminated against by a then discriminating country. The result was that Nazi POWs did not have to move to the back of a theater while the Back GIs were required to, and a host of other gross indignities.

Abu Ghraib was the prison in Iraq where prisoners were brutalized and treated illegally and immorally. Seymour Hirsh was the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who broke the story. Levy contrasted that where the Algerian War was full of such atrocities but French intellectuals and press would not publicize it. It didn’t stop for the whole war.

Funston was by modern standards a “war criminal” and “Smith” and “Waller” were two particularly brutal senior officers why had committed even worse war crimes. See {615370}. There was an investigation but the army decided to cover up the crimes lest the extent would become propaganda tools for the enemy. The irony is that Funston had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery earlier in the war. There was an active peace movement at the time (led by Mark Twain among others) and the reaction of the “hawks” to the “doves” was worse than even the Vietnam War.

The U.S. was at war with Spain and Filipino insurgents for the control of the Philippines. During this war there were a few senior U. S. Officers who in later times would have been tried and jailed for war crimes. The men under them were brutal and committed atrocities at their orders. See {615368}.

On March 9-10, 1945, over three hundred B-29 Superfortresses loaded with 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs flew over Tokyo bombing the city in waves for 6 hours. Over 250,000 buildings were destroyed and more people were killed than would be in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki which were destroyed by atomic bombs. See {615730} and {615733}. The technique called area bombing was then implemented on Japanese cities 66 more times. Stimson was seriously worried that there would be no large targets in Japan left on which the dramatic effect of the atomic bomb could be demonstrated. And without such a demonstration, there would not be a likely Japanese surrender as all the devastating conventional bombing had not persuaded the Japanese. A land invasion with perhaps millions of casualties might be required.

Turkey, under the control of the triumvirate of the 3 Young Turks had massacred almost all of the Armenian population in the area claimed by Turkey. At the end of WWI, there were many demands that those who ordered the policy of a Turkish genocide and those who carried it out by brought to justice—tried and punished. The Sultan had done little if anything to stop the slaughters although he was very weak, Turkey under the Young Turks had also picked the wrong side and allied with the Germans. The Sultan and his Grand Vizier were trying to pick up the pieces and maintain the Ottoman Empire as best they could despite they the fact that they lost control of much of their vast territory. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Grand Vizier virtually admitted the crimes and committed the Turkish government to determining the guilty and bringing them to justice. He actually had 50 of the worst offenders arrested (See {620595}.). However, there were a few tried and one governor of a province was hanged and a few others received short jail sentences. Talaat, the worst of The Young Turks regarding the genocide, escaped to Germany. But he was tracked by a surviving Armenian who assassinated Talaat. The assassin was acquitted by a sympathetic German court which ruled that the extermination of the assassin’s family had been so traumatic that temporary insanity relieved the assassin of criminal responsibility.

He was the Secretary of State in the War Office at the time. The Royal Air Force had suggested an experiment---gassing “recalcitrant Arabs” from the air. This predated Sadaam Hussein's gassing of Hussein's gassing of his own people by over 70 years.

The Colonel defined people capable of bearing arms as males and females over 20 years of age. Many were slaughtered. Fortunately, most of his officers and men did not follow this order but enough did to make it one of the most disgraceful events in American military history. Smith was court marshaled and found guilty but his punishment was to be cashiered from the army. There were many atrocities committed by the minorities of both sides in this brutal war. Military and Congressional Investigations caused the army manual to be revised military policies reformed.

The note was found in an abandoned Japanese camp on Bataan. There are some who believe that this note was a forgery. However, most think it genuine as it reflected one of the Japanese
“aces in the hole” to defend against an allied invasion of the Japanese mainland. It was one of the reasons that some American planners advocated use of the Atomic Bomb. Of course that was a real risk of using the bomb. The Japanese might be so angry and feel morally abused and kill the many allied prisoners they had. Many thought it was a lesser risk because it did not have the symbolic animus that foreigners occupying the Japanese homeland had. The quotation illustrates the amazing complexity that the American and allied leadership faced trying to end WWII in the Pacific.

In 1936, Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in an effort to obtain an African colony like other European Countries had. Over 50 nations had promised aid to Ethiopia if attacked but then the Italian attacks came, it was not just soldiers with some small artillery and vehicles. Instead it was a full modern army with not only heavy artillery and tanks, but extensive use of air power against villages and towns which generally hardly had rifles. The airplane carnage of civilian populations was a shock to the world. However, the tactics were studied by the Italian German Fascist allies who further developed air power use against unarmed towns and cities in the Spanish Civil war. The aid promised to Christian Ethiopia never materialized because there was a worldwide depression and the great powers would have had to commit to major war—not just send some arms and ammunition. The Ethiopians mostly fought with spears and knives. The Fascists were thus emboldened for the invasion of Europe a few years later.