The Lieber Code was the military law that governed the wartime conduct of the Union Army by defining and describing command responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity; and the military responsibilities of the Union soldier fighting in the American Civil War against the Confederate States of America.
The jurist Franz Lieber, LL.D., modernized the military law of the 1806 Articles of War into the Lieber Code (General Orders No. 100, April 24, 1863) for the Union Army to legitimately prosecute the civil war (1861–1865) begun by the Confederate States of America.
Gen. Henry W. Halleck commissioned the jurist Franz Lieber, LL.D., to modernize the military law of the 1806 Articles of War into General Orders No. 100 (1863), the Lieber Code, for the Union Army to fight the guerrilla warfare of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861–1865).
The Prussian military theoretician Carl von Clausewitz in uniform
Gen. Sherman at Federal Fort No. 7, after the Atlanta Campaign, September 1864.
In the practice of international law, command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) is legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
Command responsibility: the war criminals of the world are tried, judged, and sentenced by the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands.
Command responsibility: The war-crimes trial of the Knight Hagenbach. (Berner Chronik des Diebold Schilling dem Älteren).
Nazi Germany (1933–1945) created the Volkssturm national militia to defend Germany from the Red Army in the last months of the Second World War (1939–1945) in Europe.
Irregular soldiers: Boer militias waged guerrilla warfare against the British Army in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa.
