21 - Atrocities and war crimes

Summary

The First World War is a good example of the dialectic of norm, conflict and revision and of the passions and polemics that accompany it. During the war, the habitual charge that the enemy-committed atrocities was translated into charges that could be tried under international law. The norms of warfare in the pre-war period served to judge the escalating violence of the war but also to blame the enemy for the worst transgressions, which occurred in various contexts, war on land, invasions and occupations, the home front, war at sea and war in the air. Land warfare immediately revealed that the protected status of the legitimate combatant, the soldier or sailor who was wounded or taken prisoner, was far from secure. The French accused the Germans of using the Red Cross flag as a ruse in battle and of executing an immense number of wounded soldiers.