Germany and Japan were by no means the only combatant nations that perpetrated atrocities during World War II. Viewed from the perspective of traditionally acceptable rules of warfare as well as from international law and formal convention, the British and Americans were guilty of massive atrocities when their massive bombing raids targeted civilians, and the Soviets operated concentration camps, called gulags, long before the regime of Adolf Hitler built Germany's concentration and extermination camps. Nevertheless, throughout World War II, atrocities on an epic and horrific scale were matters of policy and routine for the forces of both Germany and Japan.

The most egregious of Nazi atrocities was, of course, the perpetration of the Holocaust, the systematic murder of some 6 million Jews within the Reich and nations occupied by the Reich. Although Jews were the single greatest target of Nazi genocide, other groups were also singled out for deportation to concentration camps or execution. These included Slavs, certain categories of prisoners of war, Gypsies, political dissidents and "undesirables," homosexuals, and, in some cases, those judged physically or mentally subnormal. Although Hitler was careful to avoid issuing any written orders directing mass murder and other persecution of civilian populations, the historical evidence that these crimes were committed at his behest is overwhelming.

In addition to the systematic and outright persecution and genocide of civilian populations, German combat practices often involved atrocities. The bombing of Warsaw during the 1939 invasion of Poland and the 1940 Rotterdam air raid were deliberate military attacks on civilians intended to terrorize and thereby break the will of the nations to resist conquest. In fact, these tactics, terrible though they were, proved ineffective. Often, instead of crushing resistance, they tended to intensify it. The German Coventry air raid (which, like Allied strategic bombing raids, targeted an industrial war production center and was not simply intended to induce terror) triggered vehement Allied reprisals against German civilian targets. No less a figure than the chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goring, coined a new German verb to apply to the subsequent Allied air raids against German cities: coventrieren. It did not simply mean "to bomb" a target but literally meant "to Coventry" it.

On the ground, German troops and officers were greatly feared for their brutality, which was often as gratuitous as it was vicious and prodigal. This was especially the case on the eastern front, although not confined to it. Perhaps the most infamous instance of officially sanctioned atrocity was Hitler's so-called Commissar Order of 1941, which authorized the immediate execution of all Soviet political officers taken as prisoners of war. Another form of German atrocity was the practice of disproportionate reprisal. When partisan or other resistance was encountered in occupied areas--acts of sabotage, sniper activity, the assassination of German soldiers or officials--the German occupiers routinely responded by seizing and summarily executing large groups of individuals. If partisans killed one German officer, 10, 20, perhaps 100 individuals from the city or village in which the incident occurred would be rounded up and shot, typically in the presence of family members. Among the most notorious incidents of reprisal took place in the little Czech village of Lidice. After Czech partisans assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi overlord of Czechoslovakia, the Schutzstaffel (SS) arrested thousands, killing more than 2,000 Czechs and descending upon Lidice--population about 450--which they totally destroyed. All men were executed, the women were deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp, and the children (81 of them) were gassed in a death camp. . .

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