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 world and/or war:
“If all things were eternall,
And nothing their end bringing;
If this should be, then how should we
Here make an end of singing?”
—Unknown. If All the World Were Paper (l. 21–24)
“Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)