War Crimes In Web Novels

LostLibrarian

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There is also the simple fact that war crimes are a cultural thing. And a fiction.
I wouldn't call them a fiction in itself. Just because culture or rules changed, doesn't mean, they are fiction. If we go by this, most of the things we consider normal would just be "fiction". If so, I can easily kill you, because once there wasn't a rule against murder...

I think the big problem is more that people tend to evaluate past stuff on modern rules. Like the usual "XY was so bad back in 1800 because he didn't think a woman was worth as much as a man". But we can still evaluate WW1 and WW2 based on rules that already were in place during that time. Which still brings forth a lot of war crimes...

Finally, most of us are sufficiently separated from any actual armed conflicts, that all these cimes happening are, to us, just words on paper.
This I agree with completely. As I said above, I doubt many webnovel authors put in the actual research to write war crimes in a fitting way. I can only see them used as cheap shockers...
 

Bartun

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I have went and read a lot of a stories but none have ww2 type of war crime done by both sides.
Not event a bit of redo of healer bad happening during invasion committed by a few of the troops and other geocidal factions causing wars.
If no one has the balls to do this by act 2 of what am doing , I will.
Perhaps those crimes are not committed by soldiers and just by regular people? A gang of poachers can still massacre a small village of Indians, or perhaps the enforcers of some powerful Landlord, or people executed by some drug lord in some faraway banana republic, or whatever. A massacre is still a massacre, you don't need war and soldiers to make some terrific crimes. But if you are specifically looking for crimes committed during the war, then that's a different story.
 

LilTV1155

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Forgot to add: Exposure Lv. + Society's Reactions + Killer's Background

Just imagine you got an army of psychopaths, pedophiles, drug runners, rapists, sociopaths, torturers, traitors, etc. and murderers of superiors, comrades, civilians. Violence can get really creative in ways no normie would be able to understand.

Not just technologies. More like you least expected it.

One good example is a manga called Diner. It's not related to topic of thread but the violence in the story is like war crimes vs. normal crimes (ones you know).
 

SailusGebel

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In world war 1, everyone was researching poison gas and it killed a lot of civilians, as a result. They still find mustard gas that has just sat in old trenches and hasn't faded yet. The French used Phosgene which we use in plastic manufacturing as a poison since it is colorless and smells like cut grass to wipe out entire groups of Germans. The Americans, the Russians, everyone was designing them. In terms of war crimes, I would say that world war 1 was when everyone threw conventions and kindness out of the window.

While world war 2 did see 5.5x the amount of civilian death, most of that was caused by one side, while everyone else followed much stricter rules. It wasn't like the first world war where they saw Germany fire chlorine gas then went "Huh, I like this idea, let's make our own!" which didn't happen as much later. This was also everyone breaking a convention that already existed. While a lot of war crimes were committed in world war 2, it wasn't as blatant and done by all sides.

To be a war crime it must be illegal first, and in world war 1 they kind of just walked all over the conventions, which is why they were so serious about them the second time. I am not trying to put the concentration camps down, or any of the other atrocities that the Nazis committed, but I am just thinking in terms of blatant rule-breaking in war. A lot of the people in world war 1 got away with it as well and were never charged for any of their atrocities. I also mentioned flamethrowers, those weren't made illegal in the war until 1978, so I was wrong and they were not illegal, the Winchester 1897 was definitely a war crime already, and America used the shit out of them.

I have just always thought it funny that the first world war gets so little attention when everyone kind of lost their minds a bit and sort of threw out conventions for a while.
Basically, you go by the definition. If something isn't determined by different conventions as a war crime, then it's not a war crime. Something like that, right?
Forgot to add: Exposure Lv. + Society's Reactions + Killer's Background

Just imagine you got an army of psychopaths, pedophiles, drug runners, rapists, sociopaths, torturers, traitors, etc. and murderers of superiors, comrades, civilians. Violence can get really creative in ways no normie would be able to understand.

Not just technologies. More like you least expected it.

One good example is a manga called Diner. It's not related to topic of thread but the violence in the story is like war crimes vs. normal crimes (ones you know).
I don't know what you are talking about, reality or fiction, but it doesn't matter. Crime is a crime. It doesn't matter what kind of levels crime has. If you killed a civilian, or if you killed a civilian after torture. It's still a crime.
 
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Sabruness

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Fire weapons, poison gas, shotguns,
Shotguns never have been nor are war crimes. that was just the germans being annoyed that they were so effective. flamethrowers, chemical and biological weapons were actually illegal at the time but everybody decided to look the other way for the period of the war.

--------------------------------------------------------
On the general topic...
well.. part of it might be laziness, squeamishness, not wanting to offending particularly "sensitive" readers or to avoid absurd claims of "glorifying" war or war crimes. Part of it likely might be some confusion over what actually legally is a "war crime" as there are some things and circumstances that, to a layman, might seem like "war crimes" but arent actually by legal standards.

Of course, the whole thing of war crimes and the several treaties and conventions that govern them are quite a very complex topic so i figure most authors just wouldnt want to bother with trying to work out the complexities of it all.

Then, aren't things like "treating captured soldiers badly" war crimes? I'm pretty sure no one cared before WWII, and even then...
Yes, it is classed as a war crime. It's not that no-one cared before WW2, it;s just that it was very rare to happen in WW1.
Quite a lot of japanese soldiers and officers were actually tried, convicted and punished for abuse of POWs along with the litany of abuses against captured civilians and inhabitants of occupied territories in the post-war International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
The trials in europe are much harder to extrapolate as all the different charges were bundled into 4 major and broad indictments for the 24 highest profile defendants as the first (and most famous) Nuremburg Trials while details on the several thousand lower level defendants (across standard military tribunals as well as multiple other trials held across Europe over a long span of time (the longest single set of trials ran for 30 years) makes it harder to figure out the details.
 
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Assurbanipal_II

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In world war 1, everyone was researching poison gas and it killed a lot of civilians, as a result. They still find mustard gas that has just sat in old trenches and hasn't faded yet. The French used Phosgene which we use in plastic manufacturing as a poison since it is colorless and smells like cut grass to wipe out entire groups of Germans. The Americans, the Russians, everyone was designing them. In terms of war crimes, I would say that world war 1 was when everyone threw conventions and kindness out of the window.

While world war 2 did see 5.5x the amount of civilian death, most of that was caused by one side, while everyone else followed much stricter rules. It wasn't like the first world war where they saw Germany fire chlorine gas then went "Huh, I like this idea, let's make our own!" which didn't happen as much later. This was also everyone breaking a convention that already existed. While a lot of war crimes were committed in world war 2, it wasn't as blatant and done by all sides.

To be a war crime it must be illegal first, and in world war 1 they kind of just walked all over the conventions, which is why they were so serious about them the second time. I am not trying to put the concentration camps down, or any of the other atrocities that the Nazis committed, but I am just thinking in terms of blatant rule-breaking in war. A lot of the people in world war 1 got away with it as well and were never charged for any of their atrocities. I also mentioned flamethrowers, those weren't made illegal in the war until 1978, so I was wrong and they were not illegal, the Winchester 1897 was definitely a war crime already, and America used the shit out of them.

I have just always thought it funny that the first world war gets so little attention when everyone kind of lost their minds a bit and sort of threw out conventions for a while.
With all due respect, but your version of the events is dubious.

"everyone was researching poison gas, and it killed a lot of civilians, as a result. They still find mustard gas that has just sat in old trenches and hasn't faded yet."

Poison gas was never deployed against civilians. It was a pure battlefield weapon due to technical limitations of aviation and the static nature of WWI at the Western front. The Entente never set a foot on Germany proper before the armistice. There simply were mo civilian targets for poison gas.

In general, in terms of civilian victims, WWI, was quite gracious. The vast majority of casualties are attributable to mundane things like hunger, sickness, the British blockade, and some ethnic cleansing in the east, but never to battlefield action.

"The French used Phosgene which we use in plastic manufacturing as a poison since it is colorless and smells like cut grass to wipe out entire groups of Germans. The Americans, the Russians, everyone was designing them. In terms of war crimes, I would say that world war 1 was when everyone threw conventions and kindness out of the window."

The German chemical weapons of WWII makes their predecessors look like jokes. Be glad they were never used.

"While world war 2 did see 5.5x the amount of civilian death, most of that was caused by one side, while everyone else followed much stricter rules. It wasn't like the first world war where they saw Germany fire chlorine gas then went"

Stricter rules? The indiscriminate Allied strategic bombing campaign was a clear war crime by every definition and brought untold devastation over Germany with their systematic dehousing campaign. WWI was nothing in comparison. They also tried out the blockade once again. Didn't work out this time as other nationalities paid the price.

But do you seriously call that stricter rules? Germany claims 720 civilian casualties for WWI, while for WWII, they are estimated 500,000 for the bombing campaign alone. Obviously, this is a testament to following much stricter rules.

"To be a war crime it must be illegal first, and in world war 1 they kind of just walked all over the conventions, which is why they were so serious about them the second time. I am not trying to put the concentration camps down, or any of the other atrocities that the Nazis committed, but I am just thinking in terms of blatant rule-breaking in war. A lot of the people in world war 1 got away with it as well and were never charged for any of their atrocities."

They were no different at all. 99% of the war criminals during WWII. We would have entire armies of criminals if any side was even remotely serious about judging war crimes.

You might know about Kurt Meyer who was judged by a Canadian court to death for the Normandy massacres.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardenne_Abbey_massacre

His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment not in small part to the judge, Major-General Christopher Vokes, who admitted personally in later writing,

"There isn't a general or colonel on the Allied side that I know of who hasn't said, 'Well, this time we don't want any prisoners’."

Of course, such orders were war crimes. Were they ever judged? I doubt so.

Charles B. McDonald, former Army Deputy Chief Historian, was also quite open about it,

"I told him to get out as quickly as he could, “Then move back to the castle and follow us around to the left. You’ll be the support platoon. If you can’t get away soon, we’ll start on up the hill without you. Just leave the Krauts. F company will take care of them.”


We’ve got three prisoners in the basement of a house,” Patton said, “and we have to cross a hundred yards of open field to get back out. We’ll never make it with the prisoners.”


“Roger,” I answered. “Do what you can.”…


Sergeant Patton’s platoon arrived, tired and dusty from the tiring uphill walk from Bendorf-Sayn. The prisoners were not with them.


Company G today committed a war crime. They are going to win the war, however, so I don’t suppose it really matters
."
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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I have went and read a lot of a stories but none have ww2 type of war crime done by both sides.
Not event a bit of redo of healer bad happening during invasion committed by a few of the troops and other geocidal factions causing wars.
If no one has the balls to do this by act 2 of what am doing , I will.
I literally have a story, that is literally just war crimes. That’s literally the plot.
 

Kitsura

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Just because it's not called a war crime doesn't mean it isn't one.

But if you want a light novel with war crimes then Youjo senki might be up your alley.
 

Paul_Tromba

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I have went and read a lot of a stories but none have ww2 type of war crime done by both sides.
Not event a bit of redo of healer bad happening during invasion committed by a few of the troops and other geocidal factions causing wars.
If no one has the balls to do this by act 2 of what am doing , I will.
I actually just started a story two weeks ago called, I accidentally summoned the hero! Now what? that will involve several factions committing obvious war crimes just to piss off everyone else. However, it's still in its prologue phase so I would give it some time. Also, when I say war crimes though, I don't mean simple ones like this person used a weapon that we don't like. I'm talking about surrendering just so that the enemy will let their guard down, taking out medical units, and using relief aid to sneak troops behind enemy lines.
 

AKnightWithaKnife

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War crimes are a western invention. Where I’m from(Africa) anything is fair in war in fact I come form a group of people who have lost a civil war bafria to be exact.
I actually just started a story two weeks ago called, I accidentally summoned the hero! Now what? that will involve several factions committing obvious war crimes just to piss off everyone else. However, it's still in its prologue phase so I would give it some time. Also, when I say war crimes though, I don't mean simple ones like this person used a weapon that we don't like. I'm talking about surrendering just so that the enemy will let their guard down, taking out medical units, and using relief aid to sneak troops behind enemy lines.
Um nobody’s that dumb
 

CheertheDead

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I have went and read a lot of a stories but none have ww2 type of war crime done by both sides.
Not event a bit of redo of healer bad happening during invasion committed by a few of the troops and other geocidal factions causing wars.
If no one has the balls to do this by act 2 of what am doing , I will.

Like what?

Throwing infants out of the window of the 2nd floor.

Stuffing the survivors of a town into the hall, barred all doors and set fire while chuckling on their scream?

Tie POWs in front of cannon barrels and fire?

Line up citizens and start beheading them?

Have tanks run over them?


Stripping flesh and skin off children while they are alive and start betting how many slashes till they die? Or make a competition on who can make the most cut and still have them alive?

Throw them to crocodile river?

Pour molten copper into their mouth?

Make juices out of newborns by putting them under a platform then have people running or jumping on it?

Panfry a POW’s head by dipping their head in a boiling oil-filled gong?

Mangle their limbs and then let them slowly die off from starvation/dehydration?

You get better idea I am all ears.
 

_ciro_

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A war crime can only be one that is named as such, because it is a diplomatic agreement.
 

T.K._Paradox

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I have went and read a lot of a stories but none have ww2 type of war crime done by both sides.
Not event a bit of redo of healer bad happening during invasion committed by a few of the troops and other geocidal factions causing wars.
If no one has the balls to do this by act 2 of what am doing , I will.
Saga of Tanya the Evil, but it is set in World War 1.
 

Ai-chan

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I have went and read a lot of a stories but none have ww2 type of war crime done by both sides.
Not event a bit of redo of healer bad happening during invasion committed by a few of the troops and other geocidal factions causing wars.
If no one has the balls to do this by act 2 of what am doing , I will.
Pretty sure a lot of stories have war crimes. Using flames on people is war crime. So does using insect repellants on people for the sake of causing damage. If you accidentally use chemicals on people without knowing how it could harm them, it's not a war crime. Similarly, raping the locals after you attacked them is also a war crime. Plenty of web novels does this.
 
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