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A fact from Axis war crimes in Italy appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 September 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Usually if you are going to have a long list, it's better to put it in its own article. Don't worry about the refs, there is a bot that will fix them. Catrìona (talk) 23:35, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The article at present seems very biased. A 'crime' is a breach of law, not a moral transgression. The shooting of civilians as reprisals was not illegal under international law in the Second World War. The Germans themselves didn't view many of their violent reprisals as "criminal" and indeed, in a technical sense, they weren't. The benchmark case was the 1928 international arbitration of the 1914 Naulila affair between German colonists in South-West Africa (Namibia) and Portugese Angola though even at that, there was no clear endorsement of violent reprisals but rather an inference that they were permissible. No doubt the Allies interpreted the law differently, but something of this should be mentioned in the article. The difficulty would be in finding a reputable source. World opinion has evolved so there is no question today that shooting civilians is wrong. Unfortunately, that was not the case in 1944 and so the article gives a skewed understanding of the mindset the Germans were operating under.174.0.48.147 (talk) 21:41, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We go off what it says in reliable sources, not an IP editor's interpretation of international law. Details on the (il)legality of hostage executions are not for this article, and should be covered at reprisal. (t · c) buidhe 00:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
