List of events named massacres
The following is a list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word "massacre".
:wikt:massacre|Massacre is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "the indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people or animals; carnage, butchery, slaughter in numbers". It also states that the term is used "in the names of certain massacres of history".
The first recorded use in English of the word massacre in the name of an event is due to Christopher Marlow who in c. 1600 referred to what is now known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre as "The massacre at Paris"
The purpose of the list is to trace such of the term "massacre" specifically.
There are many alternative terms with similar connotations, such as :wikt:butchery|butchery, :wikt:carnage|carnage, :wikt:bloodbath|bloodbath, :wikt:mass killing|mass killing,, etc. as well as euphemisms such as Vespers, Blutgericht or "attack", "incident", "tragedy", use of which are outside the scope of this list.
Massacre is also used figuratively to describe dramatic events that did not involve any deaths, such as the "Hilo massacre" and the "Saturday Night Massacre"; this usage is also outside of the scope of this list.
Massacres after 1945 are listed separately because of inflationary use in journalism after the turn of the 20th century.
Before or in 1945
| Date | Location | Name | Deaths | Description |
| Battle of Changping | 400,000 | Live burial of surrendered State of Zhao soldiers during Qin's wars of unification. | ||
| Xin'an massacre | 200,000+ | Live burial of surrendered Qin dynasty soldiers after the Battle of Julu. | ||
| Asiatic Vespers | 80,000–150,000 | Wholesale massacre of all Roman and Italic citizens in Asia Minor, starting the Mithridatic Wars. | ||
| Menai massacre | Unknown | Gaius Suetonius Paulinus ordered the Roman army to destroy the Celtic Druid stronghold on Anglesey in Britain, sacking Druidic colleges and sacred groves. The massacre helped impose Roman religion on Britain and sent Druidism into a decline from which it never recovered. | ||
| Massacre of Xuzhou | Hundred-thousands | Warlord Cao Cao invaded several cities of Xu Province after his father, Cao Song, was killed in the province. Dead bodies of civilians blocked the Si River. | ||
| Massacre of Thessaloniki | 7,000 | Emperor Theodosius I of Rome ordered the executions after the citizens of Thessaloniki murdered a top-level military commander during a violent protest against the arrest of a popular charioteer. | ||
| Massacre of Banu Qurayza | 600–900 | Muhammad ordered his followers to attack the Banu Qurayza because according to Muslim tradition he had been ordered to do so by the angel Gabriel. Muhammad had a treaty with the tribe which was betrayed. 600–900 members of the Banu Qurayza were beheaded, while the women and children of the tribe were sold into slavery. Al Waqidi influence is in Ibn Ishaqs biography. Stillman and Watt deny the authenticity of al-Waqidi. Al-Waqidi has been frequently criticized by Muslim Ulama, who claim that he is unreliable. A reliable source says all the warriors were killed based on Sa'd ibn Mu'adh judgement whom was appointed by Banu Qurzaya for arbitration. 2 Muslims were killed | ||
| Massacre of Verden | 4,500 | Charlemagne ordered the massacre of 4,500 imprisoned rebel pagan Saxons in response to losing two envoys, four counts, and twenty nobles in battle with the Saxons during his campaign to conquer and Christianize the Saxons during the Saxon Wars. | ||
| St. Brice's Day massacre | Unknown | King Æthelred II "the Unready" of England ordered all Danes living in England killed. The Danes were accused of aiding Viking raiders. The King of Denmark, Sweyn Forkbeard, invaded England and deposed King Ethelred in 1013. | ||
| Massacre of the Jews of Granada | 4,000 | Apparently angered by a rumour that Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela intended to assassinate the king and take the throne for himself, a Muslim mob killed him and hung his body on a cross. The mob went on to kill the Jewish population of the city. | ||
| Massacre of the Rhineland Jews | 12,000 | Series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People's Crusade. | ||
| Jerusalem Massacre | Thousands | The culminating massacre of the First Crusade: Frankish expeditionary forces broke into besieged Jerusalem and killed Muslims and Jews. | ||
| Massacre of the Latins | 60,000–80,000 | Wholesale massacre of all Latin inhabitants of Constantinople by a mob. | ||
| Massacre at Béziers | 15,000+ | First major military action of the Albigensian Crusade | ||
| Massacre of the French in Sicily | 3,000 | Revolt against king Charles I, starting the War of the Sicilian Vespers | ||
| mid-14th century | Crow Creek massacre | 500 | Prehistoric massacre of Central Plains villagers in what is now South Dakota, involving scalping and dismemberment of the victims. | |
| Stockholm massacre | 80–90 | Days after his coronation in Stockholm, King Christian II of Denmark – trying to maintain the Kalmar Union, a personal union between Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and thus keep up his claims to the Swedish throne – liquidated nobles and bishops who earlier had opposed him, or who might stir up fresh opposition. | ||
| Cajamarca, Atahualpa | Cajamarca massacre | ~2,000 | The Battle of Cajamarca was the unexpected ambush and seizure of the Inca ruler Atahualpa by a small Spanish force led by Francisco Pizarro, on November 16, 1532. The Spanish killed thousands of Atahualpa's counsellors, commanders and unarmed attendants in the great plaza of Cajamarca, and caused his armed host outside the town to flee. The capture of Atahualpa marked the opening stage of the conquest of the pre-Columbian Inca civilization of Peru. | |
| Massacre of Vassy | 63 | The murder of Huguenot worshipers and citizens in an armed action by troops of Francis, Duke of Guise. | ||
| Cyprus massacre | 30,000–50,000 | Ottoman forces capturing Cyprus killed mostly Greek and Armenian Christian inhabitants. | ||
| Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day "Massacre at Paris" | 5,000–70,000 | The French King's soldiers and subjects slaughtered Huguenots; it was the first massacre to be labeled by that word in the English language. | ||
| Massacre of Smerwick Smerwick massacre | ~600 | English troops commanded by Grey de Wilton massacre Papal invasion forces at Dun an Oir in West Kerry | ||
| Chinese massacre of 1603 | 15,000–25,000 | Fearing an uprising by the large Chinese community in the Philippines, the Spanish colonists carried out a preemptive massacre, largely in the Manila area, in October 1603. | ||
| Jamestown massacre | 347 | The Powhatans killed 347 settlers, almost one-third of the English population of the Virginia colony. | ||
| Fort Mystic massacre | 400–700 | English settlers under Captain John Mason and Narragansett and Mohegan allies set fire to a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River. | ||
| "Chinese massacre of 1639" | 17,000–22,000 | The Spanish and their Filipino allies carried out a large-scale massacre, in which 17,000 to 22,000 Chinese rebels died. | ||
| Ulster massacres | 4,000–12,000 | The Ulster Massacres were a series of massacres and resulting deaths amongst the ~40,000 Protestant settlers which took place in 1641 during the Irish Rebellion. | ||
| Portadown massacre | ~100 | The Portadown massacre took place in November 1641 at what is now Portadown, County Armagh. Up to 100 mostly English Protestants were killed in the River Bann by a group of armed Irishmen. This was the biggest massacre of Protestant colonists during the 1641–42 uprising. | ||
| Bolton massacre | 200–1,600 | Royalist forces killed many of the town's defenders and citizens. | ||
| Yangzhou massacre | Up to 800,000 | Qing troops killed residents of Yangzhou as punishment for resistance | ||
| –46 | Sichuan, China | Sichuan massacre | 1,000,000 est. | There is no reliable figure, but estimated 1 million out of 3 million Sichuanese died mainly due to the massacre by army of Zhang Xianzhong. |
| Dunoon massacre | 71 | The Clan Campbell after receiving requested hospitality according to custom, slaughtered their Lamont Clan hosts in their beds and threw their bodies down the well to poison the water should they have missed anyone. | ||
| Massacre of Glencoe | 38 | Government soldiers, mainly from Clan Campbell, killed members of the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe. | ||
| Penn's Creek massacre | 14 | A group of Indians attacked settlers on Penn's Creek. | ||
| Massacre of St George's Fields | 7 | British troops fired at a mob that was protesting at the imprisonment of John Wilkes, whose crime was criticizing King George III. | ||
| Boston Massacre | 5 | British troops fired at a mob of colonists. This helped spark the American Revolution even though an all-colonist jury found the soldiers innocent. | ||
| Bloody Falls massacre | 20 | Chipewyan warriors attacked an Inuit camp, killing men, women and children. | ||
| Baylor Massacre | 15 | British infantry troops attacked sleeping Continental Light Dragoons using bayonets. | ||
| Little Egg Harbor massacre | 30–50 | British loyalists bayonetted Continental Light Dragoons as they slept. | ||
| Waxhaw massacre | 113 | Loyalist troops under the command of British Colonel Banastre Tarleton slashed and bayoneted fallen American troops during the late stages of the Battle of Waxhaws. Conflicting contemporary accounts claim violation of an American white flag by one or the other of the sides involved. | ||
| Sugarloaf massacre | 15 | A group of loyalists and Indians during the American Revolutionary War led by Roland Montour attacked a group of American soldiers. | ||
| Pyle's Massacre | 93 | Patriot militia leader Colonel Henry Lee deceived Loyalist militia under Dr. John Pyle into thinking he was British commander Banastre Tarleton sent to meet them. Lee's men then opened fire, surprising and scattering Pyle's force. | ||
| Gnadenhutten massacre | 96 | Pennsylvania militia men attacked a Moravian mission and killed 96 peaceful Christian American Indians there in retaliation for unrelated deaths of several white Pennsylvanians. | ||
| September Massacres | ~1,440 | Popular courts in the French Revolution sentenced prisoners to death, including around 240 priests. | ||
| Massacre of Praga | 20,000 | Inhabitants of the Warsaw district Praga were massacred by pillaging Russian troops following the Battle of Praga. | ||
| 1804 Haiti massacre | 3,000–5,000 | Massacre of French people in Haiti. | ||
| Boyd massacre | 66 | Whangaroa Māori killed and ate 66 crew and passengers on board the Boyd. | ||
| Siege of Badajoz | 66 | Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese Army massacres approximately 4,000 Spanish civilians while sacking the city. | ||
| Madulla massacre | 22 | British troops killed 22 unarmed native civilians who were hiding in a cave. | ||
| Uva–Wellassa massacre | Unknown | The 1818 Uva–Wellassa uprising also known as the Great Rebellion resulted in multiple atrocities against the local Sri Lankans by the British imperialists, including razing and annihilation of villages. The entire Uva region male population above the age of 18 years were killed in revenge for resistance against the British imperialist occupation. | ||
| Peterloo Massacre | 11 | cavalry charged a meeting of 60,000–80,000 people campaigning for reform of parliamentary representation. | ||
| Constantinople Massacre of 1821 | Unknown | Hundreds of Greeks were massacred by the Ottomans, including the Greek patriarch, bishops and officials. | ||
| Navarino massacre | 3,000 | The whole Turkish population of Navarino, which was around 3000, were killed by Greeks. | ||
| March | Chios massacre | ~52,000 | Tens of thousands of Greeks on the island of Chios were slaughtered by Ottoman troops in 1822. | |
| April 13, 1822 | Naousa, Greece | Naousa massacre | 2,000 | Greek civilians were slaughtered by Ottoman Empire. |
| June 7, 1824 | Kasos, Greece | Kasos massacre | 7,000 | Ottoman-Egyptian army slaughtered Greek civilians |
| Dade massacre | 108 | Two U.S. Army companies under the command of Major Francis L. Dade were marching from Fort Brooke to Fort King when they were attacked by about 200 Seminoles. One hundred and eight soldiers were killed; only two men from the command survived. | ||
| Goliad massacre | ~400 | Around 400 Texians killed by Santa Anna's Mexican Army Presidio la Bahia Goliad Palm Sunday March 27, 1836. | ||
| Waterloo Creek massacre | 100–300 | Aboriginal Australians killed by a force of colonial mounted police. | ||
| Myall Creek massacre | 28 | A mainly white posse killed Aboriginal Australians. The perpetrators were convicted and sentenced to death. | ||
| Killough massacre | 18 | In the largest attack by Native Americans on white settlers in Texas, a disaffected band of Cherokee, Caddo, Coushatta, and perhaps other ethnicities formed a war party and killed 18 members of the extended Killough family, who had settled in the area after the Senate of the Republic of Texas nullified the treaty which President Sam Houston had negotiated with the Cherokee. | ||
| Haun's Mill massacre | 19 | About 240 Livingston County Missouri Regulators militiamen and volunteers killed 18 Mormons and one non-Mormon friend. | ||
| Gippsland massacres | ~450 | A series of massacres spanning several years: 1840 – Nuntin, 1840 – Boney Point, 1841 – Butchers Creek – 30–35, 1841 – Maffra, 1842 – Skull Creek, 1842 – Bruthen Creek – "hundreds killed", 1843 – Warrigal Creek – between 60 and 180 shot, 1844 – Maffra, 1846 – South Gippsland – 14 killed, 1846 – Snowy River – 8 killed, 1846–47 – Central Gippsland – 50 or more shot, 1850 – East Gippsland – 15–20 killed, 1850 – Murrindal – 16 poisoned, 1850 – Brodribb River – 15–20 killed. See also Angus McMillan. | ||
| Massacre of Elphinstone's army | 16,000 | Afghan tribes massacred Elphinstone's British army including some 12,000 civilians. | ||
| Crabb massacre | 84 | Mexican rebels fight American rebels at Caborca, Sonora. Out of less than ninety Americans, about thirty were killed in battle and the rest were executed by the Mexicans. | ||
| Mountain Meadows massacre | 120–140 | Mormon militia, some dressed as Indians, and Paiute tribesmen killed and plundered unarmed members of the Baker-Fancher emigrant wagon train. | ||
| Shelton Laurel massacre | 13 | Thirteen boys and men, accused of being Union sympathizers and spies, were summarily executed by members of the 64th North Carolina Regiment of the Confederate Army. | ||
| Bear River massacre | ~225 | 3rd Regiment California Volunteer Infantry destroyed a village of Shoshone in southeastern Idaho. | ||
| Lawrence massacre | ~150 | Pro-Confederate bushwhackers attacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas during the American Civil War in retaliation for the Union attack on Osceola, Missouri. | ||
| Fort Pillow massacre | 350 | After their surrender following the Battle of Fort Pillow, most of the Union garrison – consisting primarily of Black troops – as well as civilians, including women and children, were massacred by Confederate forces under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. | ||
| Sand Creek massacre | ~200 | Colorado Territory 90-day militia destroyed a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho on the eastern plains. | ||
| Washita Massacre | 29–150 | Lt. Col. G.A.Custer's 7th cavalry attacked a village of sleeping Cheyenne led by Black Kettle. Custer reported 103 – later revised to 140 – warriors, "some" women and "few" children killed, and 53 women and children taken hostage. Other casualty estimates by cavalry members, scouts and Indians vary widely, with the number of men killed ranging as low as 11 and the numbers of women and children ranging as high as 75. Before returning to their base, the cavalry killed several hundred Indian ponies and burned the village. | ||
| Tianjin Massacre | 60 | Attacks on French Catholic priests and nuns, violent belligerence from French diplomats, and armed foreign intervention in Tianjin. | ||
| Chinese massacre of 1871 | 17–20 | A mob of over 500 men entered Chinatown in Los Angeles, rioted, ransacked, then tortured and killed 18 Chinese-Americans, making this among the largest mass lynchings in American history. | ||
| Batak massacre | 3,000–5,000 | Ottoman army irregulars killed Bulgarian civilians barricaded in Batak's church. | ||
| Frog Lake Massacre | 9 | Cree warriors, dissatisfied with the lack of support from the Canadian Government for Treaty Indians, and exacerbated by food shortages resulting from the near-extinction of bison, killed nine white settlers, including Indian agent Thomas Quinn. | ||
| Rock Springs massacre | 28 | Rioting white immigrant miners killed 28 Chinese miners, wounded 15, and 75 Chinese homes burned. | ||
| Wounded Knee Massacre | 200–300 | The U.S. 7th Cavalry intercepted a band of Lakota people on their way to the Pine Ridge Reservation for shelter from the winter; as they were disarming them, a gun was fired, and the soldiers turned their artillery on the Lakota, killing men women and children. | ||
| –1896 | Hamidian massacres | 100,000–300,000 | Sultan Abdul Hamid II ordered Ottoman forces to kill Armenians across the empire. | |
| Kucheng massacre | 11 | Members of a Chinese cult attacked British missionaries, killing eleven people and destroying two houses. | ||
| Lattimer massacre | 19 | Unarmed striking miners were shot in the back: many were wounded and 19 were killed. | ||
| Mazocoba massacre | ~400 | Mexican Army troops attack Yaqui hostiles west of Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico. | ||
| Blagoveshchensk and Sixty-Four Villages East of the River | Blagoveshchensk massacre and Sixty-Four Villages East of the River massacre | 7,000 | The Russian Empire invaded the two cities ruled by the Qing Dynasty. A total of 7,000 innocent Chinese civilians were killed in the massacres. | |
| Leliefontein massacre | 35 | During the Second Boer War, Boer forces under Manie Maritz massacred 35 Khoikhoi for being British sympathisers. | ||
| Moro Crater massacre | 800–1,000 | A U.S. Army force of 540 soldiers under the command of Major General Leonard Wood, accompanied by a naval detachment and with a detachment of native constabulary, armed with artillery and small firearms, attacked a Muslim village hidden in the crater of a dormant volcano. | ||
| Santa María School massacre | 2,200–3,600 | A massacre of striking workers, mostly saltpeter miners, along with wives and children, committed by the Chilean Army in Iquique, Chile. It occurred during the peak of the nitrate mining era, which coincided with the Parliamentary Period in Chilean political history. With the massacre and an ensuing reign of terror, not only was the strike broken, but the workers' movement was thrown into limbo for over a decade. | ||
| –May 1909 | Adana massacre | 15,000–30,000 | In April 1909, a religious-ethnic clash in the city of Adana, amidst governmental upheaval, resulted in a series of anti-Armenian pogroms throughout the district, resulting in an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 deaths. | |
| 1912–1913 | territories occupied by Serbia, especially in the regions of today's Kosovo, Western Macedonia and Northern Albania | Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars | 20,000–25,000 | Montenengrin and Serbian army massacred Albanian civilians |
| Ludlow massacre | 20 | Twenty people, 11 of them children, died during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado. The event led to wider conflict quelled only by Federal troops sent in by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. | ||
| – May 3, 1918 | Vyborg massacre | 360–420 | At least 360 mostly Russian military personnel and civilians were killed after the Finnish Civil War Battle of Vyborg by the Finnish Whites. The victims include a large number of other nationalities which the Whites presumed as Russians. The killed were not affiliated with the Reds, but most were even White supporters. Also 450–1,200 captured Finnish Red Guard fighters were executed. | |
| Jallianwala Bagh massacre | 379–1,526 | 90 British Indian Army soldiers, led by Brigadier Reginald Dyer, opened fire on an unarmed gathering of men, women and children. The firing lasted for 10 to 15 minutes, until they ran out of ammunition. | ||
| June 16–17, 1919 | Menemen, Izmir, Turkey | Menemen massacre | 200 | Greek troops and local Greeks massacred Turks. |
| 1920-1921 | Armutlu Peninsula, Turkey | Yalova Peninsula massacres | 5,500-9,900 | Local Muslims of peninsula was massacred by Greek troops, local Greeks, Armenians and Circassians. |
| Croke Park massacre | 23 | British Auxiliary police and Black and Tans fired at Gaelic football spectators at Croke Park. | ||
| – June 1, 1921 | Tulsa Race Riot | 100–300 | Mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. | |
| Rosewood massacre | 8 | Several days of violence by white mobs, ranging in size up to 400 people, resulted in the deaths of six blacks and two whites and the destruction of the town of Rosewood, which was abandoned after the incident. | ||
| Shaji massacre | ~50 | A group of strikers in Canton, China, in support of a workers' strike in Hong Kong, were fired upon by British troops, who claimed to have been provoked by gunfire. Over 200 casualties resulted. | ||
| Shanghai massacre of 1925 | 30–200 | British Shanghai Municipal Police opened fire on Chinese protesters. | ||
| Shanghai Massacre | 300–5000 | KMT elements carried out a full-scale purge of Communists in all areas under their control. | ||
| Columbine Mine massacre | 6 | In a fight between Colorado state police and a striking coal miners, the police used firearms, killing six and wounding dozens. The miners claimed that machine guns were fired at them, which was denied by the state police. | ||
| Bath School massacre | 45 | 37 children and a 30-year-old teacher at Bathtown elementary school were killed by a major explosion set off by school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe. About a half hour after the explosion, Kehoe then detonated dynamite in his truck, killing himself and five others, including a fourth grader and four adults. Also, some hours before the event, Kehoe killed his wife at their Bath Township home. This event was the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history. | ||
| Coniston massacre | 31–170 | The last known officially sanctioned massacre of indigenous Australians which took place in the vicinity of Coniston cattle station in the Territory of Central Australia, Australia in revenge for the death of a dingo hunter named Frederick Brooks. | ||
| Banana massacre | 47–2,000 | The Banana massacre was a massacre of workers for the United Fruit Company that occurred on December 6, 1928 in the town of Ciénaga near Santa Marta, Colombia. An unknown number of workers died after the Conservative government of Miguel Abadía decided to send the Colombian army to end a month-long strike organized by the workers' union in order to secure better working conditions. The government of the United States of America had threatened to invade with the U.S. Marine Corps if the Colombian government did not act to protect United Fruit's interests. | ||
| Saint Valentine's Day massacre | 7 | Al Capone's gang shot rival gang members and their associates. | ||
| 1929 Hebron massacre | 69 | Arabs kill 69 Jews after being incited by religious leaders. Survivors were relocated to Jerusalem, "leaving Hebron barren of Jews for the first time in hundreds of years." | ||
| 1929 Safed massacre | 18 | Arabs killed 18 Jews, wounded around 40, and some 200 houses were burned and looted. | ||
| Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre | 200–250 | Soldiers of the British Raj fired on unarmed non-violent protestors of the Khudai Khidmatgar with machine guns during the Indian independence movement | ||
| Zilan massacre | 4,500–47,000 | Turkish troops massacred Kurdish residents during the Ararat rebellion. | ||
| Simele massacre | 3,000 | Iraqi Army killed 3,000 Assyrian men, women and children. The massacre, amongst other things, included rape, cars running over children and bayoneting children and pregnant women. | ||
| Ponce massacre | 19 | The Insular Police fired on unarmed Nationalist demonstrators peacefully marching to commemorate the ending of slavery in Puerto Rico. It was the biggest massacre in Puerto Rican history. | ||
| –8, 1937 | Parsley massacre | Up to 38,000 | The Dominican military used machetes to brutally slash people to death and decapitate thousands of black Haitians; they also took people to the port of Montecristi, where thousands of Haitians were thrown into the ocean to drown with their hands and feet bound. Their executioners often inflicted wounds on their bodies before throwing them overboard in order to attract sharks. Survivors who managed to cross the border and return to Haiti told stories of family members being hacked with machetes and strangled by the soldiers, and children dashed against rocks and tree trunks. | |
| –38 | Dersim massacre | 13,160–70,000 | Turkish troops massacred Alevi residents during the Dersim Rebellion. | |
| – January 1938 | Nanking Massacre | 300,000+ | The Imperial Japanese Army pillaged and burned Nanking while, at the same time, murdering, enslaving, raping, and torturing prisoners-of-war and civilians. | |
| –May 1940 | Katyn massacre | 21,857–25,700 | Soviet NKVD executed Polish intelligentsia, POWs and reserve officers. | |
| Le Paradis village, commune of Lestrem, Northern France | Le Paradis massacre | 97 | Soldiers of the 14th Company, S.S. Division Totenkopf, under the command of Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein shot prisoners-of-war during the Battle of France. | |
| Gudovac massacre | 184–196 | The mass killing of around 190 Bjelovar Serbs by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše | ||
| –August 1941 | Glina massacres | 2,400 | The mass killings of Serb peasants by the Ustashe in the town of Glina, that occurred between May and August 1941 | |
| –October 1941 | NKVD prisoner massacres | 100,000+ | The Soviet NKVD executed thousands of political prisoners in the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa. | |
| Babi Yar massacre | 30,000 | Nazi Einsatzgruppen killed the Jewish population of Kiev. | ||
| –21, 1941 | Kragujevac massacre | 2,796–5,000 | Nazi soldiers massacred Serb and Roma hostages in retaliation for attacks on the occupying forces. | |
| –24, 1941 | Odessa massacre | 25,000–34,000 | Romanian and German troops, supported by local authorities, massacred Jews in Odessa and the surrounding towns in Transnistria. The Romanians blamed Jews and communists for the detonation of a mine that was placed by Red Army sappers prior to their defeat. | |
| and 29, 1941 | Ninth Fort massacres of November 1941 | 4,934 | The first systematic mass killings of German Jews during the Holocaust. | |
| and | Rumbula massacre | 25,000 | 25,000 Jews were killed in Rumbula Forest, near Riga, Latvia, by the Nazis. | |
| Laha massacre | 300+ | The Japanese killed surrendered Australian soldiers. | ||
| Lidice massacre | 340 | Nazis killed 192 men, and sent the women and children to Nazi concentration camps where many died. | ||
| Massacre of the Acqui Division | 5,155 | Wehrmacht troops executed 5,155 POWs from the Italian 33 Infantry Division Acqui after the latter refused to hand over their weapons and resisted. A further 3,000 Italian POWs drowned at sea on transports that sank after hitting mines. | ||
| Wake Island massacre | 98 | Japanese forces under Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara massacred the remaining 98 U.S. civilians in fear of the anticipation U.S. invasion of Wake Island two days after a U.S. air raid on the island. | ||
| Massacre of Kalavryta | 511–1,200 | The extermination of the male population and the subsequent total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying forces during World War II on 13 December 1943. It is the most serious case of war crimes committed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. | ||
| Khaibakh massacre | 700 | The Khaibakh massacre refers to a report of mass execution of the ethnically Chechen population of the aul of Khaibakh, in the mountainous part of Chechnya, by Soviet forces under NKVD Colonel Mikhail Gveshiani. | ||
| Ardeatine massacre | 335 | Mass killing carried out by German occupation troops as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted on the previous day in central Rome against the SS Police Regiment Bozen. | ||
| Ascq massacre | 86 | The Waffen-SS killed 86 men after a bomb attack in the Gare d'Ascq. | ||
| Oradour-sur-Glane massacre | 642 | The Waffen-SS killed 642 men, women and children without giving any specific reasons for their actions. | ||
| Distomo massacre | 218 | Nazi war crime perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo, Greece, during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. | ||
| Wola massacre | 40,000–100,000 | Special groups of SS and German soldiers of the Wehrmacht went from house to house in Warsaw district Wola, rounding-up and shooting all inhabitants. | ||
| Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre | 560 | Retreating SS-men of the II Battalion of SS-Panzergrenadier–Regiment 35 of 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, rounded up 560 villagers and refugees — mostly women, children and older men — shot them and then burned their bodies. | ||
| –25, 1944 | Ochota massacre | 10,000 | Mass murders of citizens of Warsaw district Ochota in August 1944, committed by Waffen-SS. | |
| Rüsselsheim massacre | 6 | The townspeople of Rüsselsheim killed six American POWs who were walking through the bombed-out town while escorted by two German guards. | ||
| – October 5, 1944 | Marzabotto massacre | 700–1,800 | The SS killed Italian civilians in reprisal for support given to the resistance movement. | |
| Malmedy massacre | 88 | Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers shot American POWs. | ||
| Chenogne massacre | 60 | German prisoners of war were shot by American soldiers in an unauthorized retaliation for the Malmedy Massacre. | ||
| Manila massacre | 100,000 | Japanese occupying forces massacred an estimated 100,000 Filipino civilians during the Battle of Manila. | ||
| Celle massacre | 300 | Massacre of concentration camp inmates that took place in Celle at the end of the Second World War. | ||
| Bleiburg massacre | 50,000–250,000 | Fleeing Croatian soldiers, members of the Chetnik movement and Slovene Home Guard associated with the fascist Ustaše Regime of Croatia were apprehended by Yugoslav Partisans at the Austrian border. Among those killed were an unknown number of civilians. | ||
| Sétif massacre | 6,000 | Muslim villages were bombed by French aircraft and the cruiser Duguay-Trouin standing off the coast, in the Gulf of Bougie, shelled Kerrata. Pied noir vigilantes lynched prisoners taken from local gaols or randomly shot Muslims | ||
| Ústí massacre | 80–2,700 | The Ústí massacre was a lynching of ethnic Germans in Ústí nad Labem, a largely ethnic German city in northern Bohemia shortly after the end of the World War II, on July 31, 1945. |