Atrocities committed by the United States of America against Europe

Source: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities.md

In the 1936-39 Spanish civil war, the Roosevelt administration sponsored a neutrality act that had the effect of shutting off help to the Spanish government while Hitler and Mussolini gave critical aid to Franco, aiding yet another fascist victory in Europe. American President Richard Nixon later toasted Franco's "firmness and fairness",[ and, after Franco's death, he stated: "General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United States
The US maintained a policy of neutrality during the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, discounting the rise of anti-semitism and European fascism. It was not Hitler's attacks on the Jews that brought the United States into World War II, any more than the enslavement of 4 million blacks brought Civil War in 1861. Italy's attack on Ethiopia, Hitler's invasion of Austria, his takeover of Czechoslovakia, his attack on Poland-none of those events caused the United States to enter the war, although Roosevelt did begin to give important aid to England. What brought the United States fully into the war was the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941
In the summer of 1942, the US turned away a series of ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust
In February 1945, 527 airplanes of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city of Dresden, Germany, killing ~25,000 civilians
In July, 1945, the predecessor to the CIA, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), under the name Operation Paperclip, rescued and recruited 1,500 Nazi scientists, engineers, and spies. These included Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union, SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon", who was used by the US to further anti-communist efforts in europe), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler’s). The policy of collaboration with nazi spies was deemed necessary to counter the threat from the USSR
A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.. It is estimated that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war and one historian has claimed that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.
The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were a group of 19 US prison camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany to hold captured German soldiers at the close of the Second World War, holding between one and almost two million surrendered Wehrmacht personnel. Prisoners held in the camps were designated Disarmed Enemy Forces and not POWs, to avoid international treaty regulations. Throughout the summer of 1945, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was prevented from visiting prisoners in any of the Allies' Rheinwiesenlager. Visits were only started in the autumn of 1945, at a time when most camps had closed or were closing. During their visits, the delegates observed that German prisoners of war were often detained in appalling conditions. They drew the attention of the authorities to this fact, and gradually succeeded in getting some improvements made."[ Between 3,000 to 10,000 died from starvation, dehydration and exposure to the weather elements because no structures were built inside the prison compounds. 1
US soldiers killed 73 unarmed Italian and German prisoners of war in Santo Pietro, Italy on July 1943. The survivors were then shot at close range, directly through the heart. 1
During the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, eight unarmed Italian civilians, including an eleven year old girl, were killed by U.S. troops. 1
In the post-war period, while the USSR carried out de-nazification in East Germany, in West Germany many Nazis were kept in power. One study revealed that more than half of the leadership of the West German Justice Ministry were former members of the Nazi party, including dozens of former paramilitary SA members. Several former Nazi Generals, including Adolf Heusinger, and Hans Speidel, went on to become generals in West Germany, and then NATO.
In 1947, in Greek civil war and ensuing right wing military junta of 1967-74, Truman and the CIA provided money, 74,000 tons of military equipment, and advisors to support anti-communist Greek dictators with deplorable human rights records. Support for right-wing dictatorships in Greece and Turkey were funded and sold under the Truman Doctrine, an anti-soviet foreign policy platform, despite the fact that it was Yugoslavia who provided support to the Greek labor movement rebels, and not the Soviet Union.1
In 1948, the CIA corrupts the elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to win the elections. The CIA buys votes, broadcasts propaganda, threatens and beats up opposition leaders, and infiltrates and disrupts their organizations. The communists are defeated.1,2
From 1948 onwards, the CIA under Allen Dulles developed a program of media manipulation called Project Mockingbird, having major influence over the media, including >25 newspapers. The usual method was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to cooperating or unwitting reporters, or employing media directly as American assets.1
In 1956, Radio Free Europe (a CIA funded propaganda outlet) broadcasts Khrushchev's Secret Speech, which played a role in the Hungarian revolution, and also hinted that American aid will help the Hungarians fight. The US fails to provide any military aid to Hungary in their ensuing conflict with the Soviet Union. 1
From the 1940s - 60s, the CIA provided an average of $5 million annually in covert aid towards financially supporting centrist Italian governments and using the awarding of contracts to weaken the Italian Communist Party's hold on labor unions. It was also involved in bombings and assassinations as a part of Operation Gladio.
In 1967 in Greece, the CIA installed Georgios Papadopoulos in a military coup, a CIA agent and former nazi collaborator, as the military ruler of Greece. He's seen today as an relic of authoritarianism , xenophobia, and anti-communism. 1 Phillips Talbot, the US ambassador in Athens, disapproved of the military coup which established the "Regime of the Colonels" (1967–1974), complaining that it represented "a rape of democracy"—to which Jack Maury, the CIA chief of station in Athens, answered, "How can you rape a whore?
Throughout the 1980-90s, the US, with the aid of the IMF and NATO, actively destabilized and aided in the breakup of Yugoslavia, with the goal of weakening and destroying the last surviving socialist bloc in Europe. These include stirring up ethnic tensions between the member countries, economic warfare, and military intervention. The Reagan administration in a 1982 secret memo, advocated "expanded efforts to promote a 'quiet revolution' to overthrow Communist governments and parties," while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented economy. In November 1990, the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which provided that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence within six months would lose U.S. financial support, demanded separate elections in each of the six Yugoslav republics, and mandated U.S. State Department approval of both election procedures and results as a condition for any future aid. In 1991, Yugoslav Army chief Veljko Kadijević stated: "An insidious plan has been drawn up to destroy Yugoslavia. Stage one is civil war. Stage two is foreign intervention. Then puppet regimes will be set up throughout Yugoslavia." 1, 2, 3
From the 1950s-90s, the CIA and NATO ran a series of clandestine networks, headquartered in Rome, Italy called Operation Gladio. Its purpose was supplying aid (primarily money and weaponry) to right wing paramilitaries to attack left-wing movements, and carry out assassinations and bombings, as well as funnel money to centrist political parties. It had operations in Belgium, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Austria. In Italy, the group had 600+ members, and carried out car bombings during Italy's years of lead. In Germany, it included former Nazi SS members—Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman, Lt. Col. Hans Rues, and Lt. Col. Walter Kopp. CIA weapons caches are still being discovered in all the countries above.
In 1995, the US conducted a campaign of airstrikes called Operation Deliberate Force, as part of an intervention in the Bosnian civil war.
In February, 1998, A US marine core plane flying recklessly below regulations, cut a cable supporting aerial cable cars at a ski resort near Cavalese, Italy, killing 20 people, in the Cavalese Cable Car Disaster. The pilots destroyed the plane's tape, and were found not guilty. Italian prosecutors were outraged that the US refused to forgoe the NATO treaty that gives all jurisdiction to US military courts. By February 1999, the victims' families had received USD $65,000 per victim as immediate help by the Italian government, which was reimbursed by the U.S. government. In May 1999, the U.S. Congress rejected a bill that would have set up a $40 million compensation fund for the victims. In December 1999, the Italian legislature approved a monetary compensation plan for the families ($1.9 million per victim). NATO treaties obligated the U.S. government to pay 75% of this compensation, which it did.
From March to June of 1999, After Serbs refused to acquiesce in the break-up of their republic, the US and NATO began bombing Yugoslavia killing ~500 civilians, leaving thousands homeless, destroying bridges, industrial plants, public buildings, private businesses, as well as barracks and military installations.
In 2003, the CIA kidnapped Italian Milanese Imam Abu Omar, took him to Egypt, then tortured, including rape, genital electro-shock, and resulted in him becoming deaf in one ear, in the Imam Rapito Affair. On 23 December 2005, a judge issued a European arrest warrant against 22 CIA agents, but the US hasn't responded.
In late 2019, CIA agent Anne Sacoolas hit and killed a British teenage pedestrian named Harry Dunn with her car, while she was driving on the wrong side of the road, near the RAF Croughton base in the UK where she and her husband (both CIA agents) worked. After the Foreign and Commonwealth office rejected Anne Sacoolas request for diplomatic immunity, Anne fled the UK on a US Air Force plane. Both the US and UK governments lied to the Dunn family, saying that she was a US diplomat, and hid the fact that she had fled for months. In October, the Dunn family visited the White House and met with Donald Trump. According to Seiger, Trump tried to buy off the couple, promising them that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was “standing by ready to write a check.” Trump reportedly blindsided the Dunns, telling them that Sacoolas was in the other room waiting to meet with them. The couple refused the offer, demanding her extradition. Sacoolas's lawyers have stated, “Anne will not return voluntarily to the United Kingdom to face a potential jail sentence for what was a terrible but unintentional accident.” As of February 2020, the extradition request is at an impasse, while at the same time the UK is complying with Julian Assange's extradition to the US. RAF Croughton base houses agents from the NSA and CIA, and is famous for being exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for forwarding information from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone to the CIA.