Did the Allied forces, especially US and UK, rape and pillage during their campaigns like the germans and the soviets did? I've read many accounts of these acts being committed by German, Japanese and Soviet troops, but no mention of the same by the other Allied ones.
Such descriptions always seem to suggest, if only in omission, that the Western troops were civilised and didn't engage in such barbaric acts. But, is this the truth? I somehow find it hard to believe that they would (I'm an indian, so no home bias) since there is a perception of them being the good guys (the actual good guys, unlike the 'godless' soviets, who only were allied for expediency), but its also unrealistic to expect a couple of countries to be the paragons of virtue, while others were the paragons of vice.
While you are waiting for a response, this related answer from u/Georgy_K_Zhukov on looting by allied soldiers might interest you.
I wrote a paper in undergrad about war crimes committed by Allied troops in Europe (mainly US and UK).
Two great books about Allied military policing was Clive Emsley's book Exporting British Policing During the Second World War and the book Allies and Italians under Occupation: Sicily and Southern Italy, 1943-45 by Isobel Williams was super helpful.
Emsley noted that the age of consent in Italy was 14 in the 1940s. A British judge declared that trying a British soldier for a crime that is not on the books in Italy was unfair (Emsley, 2017, p. 57). As the allies pushed further north the SIB ended up investigating more war crimes committed by retreating Germans and Italian fascists (Emsley, 2017, p. 62).
After the initial invasion of mainland Italy the Allied forces had to set up a government. Troops to keep order were called Civil Affairs Officer (CAO) and Civil Affairs Police Officers (CAPO). The troops being used to set up new governments were called the Allied Military Government (AMGOT). Recruiting men for this job was a problem. The best and brightest young men were already enlisted into the army for both the US and UK. The average age of CAO and CAPO was 48 (Williams, 2013, p. 14). The US did have more Italian speaking citizens then the UK and they were picked to fill these roles.
The CAO and the CAPO were joint US UK units that alternated hierarchy roles (so a US sergeant serving under a British lieutenant serving under an American colonel, etc.) which caused some friction because of different sensibilities.
More serious crimes took place further away from the front. 75% of violent crimes occurred in areas the allies had under their control. 16 million American troops served in the military during the war and one in eight were court martialed (Williams, 2013, p. 79). British troops were court martialed less because they had less minor offenses than the United States.
French colonial troops committed a number of violent crimes against Italian civilians. The French used Goum irregulars from Morocco to conduct small unit raids on axis controlled areas. These troops were lead by French officers and some NCOs. The Moroccans were accused of raping and looting by Italian civilians. Ninety percent of the 1157 rapes and thirty percent of the 14,045 robberies/thefts documented in Italy were committed by troops serving under the French flag (Williams, 2013, p. 52). The French had 75,000 troops served in Italy and only 9-15,000 were Goum. The French ended up carrying out 102 executions of Goum troops, fifteen of which occured in the field. The Goum troops were sent home in August 1944 (Williams, 2013, p. 56). The French believed that because these troops were often used to intimidate that they did not see these acts as wrong. Italians started killing these troops. There had been reports of Moroccan troops being enticed to enter houses with the promise of sex and than being killed once inside (Williams 2013, p. 55). It is important to note that these troops were not used in the liberation of France in 1944.
Italian civilians kept records of crimes committed against them by allied soldiers. They would report these to the Carabinieri Reali, a national police force that the allies used to help police the southern half of Italy (Williams, 2013, p. 80). Financial compensation was awarded to victims of certain crimes if all the proper paperwork is filled out. This inflated numbers to include people claiming they were victims of crimes that did not affect them. There were 60,000 women applied for compensation for being raped by the Goum troops, even though the number is projected to be around 1035 (Williams, 2013, p. 82).
Colonial and African American troops were accused and convicted of more crimes than their white counterparts. This was in part because of fascist propaganda, and partly prejudice that the allied troops had when deciding what to investigate.
Williams does make a point to say that most of the crimes committed by allied troops were done by diserters and that most of the men that served in the allied arm forces were served without criminal incident. Williams mentions that drafts in both the United States and the United Kingdom scooped up young men that were criminals in their country of origins and continued to be criminals once overseas (Williams, 2013, p. 86). Over all Williams concludes that violent crimes were treated as serious problems and investigated to the fullest abilities.
edit: Made a mistake when I copied pasted from a paper I wrote. Thank you for pointing it out to me
u/Superplaner gave me an excellent answer on this topic.