World War II
After World War II it was claimed by German SS general Gottlob Berger that there was a plan, proposed by the Luftwaffe and approved by Adolf Hitler, to set up special POW camps for captured airmen of the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force in large German cities, to act as human shields against their bombing raids. Berger realised that this would contravene the Geneva Convention and argued that there was not enough barbed wire—as a result this plan was not implemented.
Wehrmacht and later SS forces extensively used Polish civilians as human shield during Warsaw Uprising when attacking the insurgents' positions.
Read more about this topic: Human Shield
Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“The love between man and woman is the greatest and most complete passion the world will ever see, because it is dual, because it is of two opposing kinds.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“But, after the war was over, just think what came to pass—
A letter, sir; and the two were safe back in the old Bluegrass.
The lad had got across the border, riding Kentucky Belle;
And Kentuck she was thriving, and fat, and hearty, and well;
He cared for her, and kept her, nor touched her with whip or spur:
Ah! we’ve had many horses, but never a horse like her!”
—Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894)