Sophie Knab's parents were Polish forced labourers in Germany during World War II. For years her mother was unable to discuss or answer questions about this period of her life. Compelled to learn more about her mothers experience and that of other Polish women, Knab began a personal and emotional quest. Over the course of 14 years, she conducted extensive research of post-war trial testimonies housed in archives in the U.S., London, and in Warsaw to piece together facts and individual stories from this singular and often-overlooked aspect of World War II history. As mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters, female Polish forced labourers faced a unique set of challenges and often unspeakable conditions because of their gender. Required to sew a large letter "P" onto their jackets, thousands of women, some as young as age 12, were taken from their homes in Poland and forced to work for the Reich for months and years on end. In this important contribution to World War II history, Knab explains how it all happened, from the beginning of occupation in Poland to liberation: the roundups; the horrors of transit camps; the living and working conditions of Polish women in agriculture and industry; and the anguish of sexual exploitation and forced abortions -- all under the constant threat of concentration camps. Knab draws from documents, government and family records, rare photos, and most importantly, numerous victim accounts -- diaries, letters and trial testimonies -- to present an unflinching, detailed portrait of the lives of female Polish labourers, finally giving these women a voice and bringing to light to the atrocities that they endured.

"The great work of subjugation and conquest" has changed little over the years. Analyzing Haiti, Latin America, Cuba, Indonesia, and even packets of the Third World developing in the United States. Noam Chomsky draws parallels between the genocide of colonial times and the murder and exploitation associated with modern-day imperialism.

Why would anyone commit a mass atrocity such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or terrorism? This question is at the core of the multi- and interdisciplinary field of perpetrator studies, a developing field which this book assesses in its full breadth for the first time. Perpetrators of International Crimes analyses the most prominent theories, methods, and evidence to determine what we know, what we think we know, as well as the ethical implications of gathering this knowledge. It traces the development of perpetrator studies whilst pushing the boundaries of this emerging field. The book includes contributions from experts from a wide array of disciplines, including criminology, history, law, sociology, psychology, political science, religious studies, and anthropology. They cover numerous case studies, including prominent ones such as Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, but also those that are relatively under researched and more recent, such as Sri Lanka and the Islamic State. These have been investigated through various research methods, including but not limited to, trial observations and interviews.

Most cultural and legal codes agree that the intentional killing of civilians, whether in peacetime or war, is prohibited. This is the norm of civilian immunity, widely considered to be a fundamental moral and legal principle. Yet despite this fact, the deliberate killing of large numbers of civilians remains a persistent feature of global political life. What is more, the perpetrators have often avoided criticism and punishment. Examining dozens of episodes of mass killing perpetrated by states since the French Revolution late eighteenth century, this book attempts to explain this paradox. It studies the role that civilian immunity has played in shaping the behaviour of perpetrators and how international society has responded to mass killing. The book argues that although the world has made impressive progress in legislating against the intentional killing of civilians and in constructing institutions to give meaning to that prohibition, the norm's history in practice suggests that the ascendancy of civilian immunity is both more recent and more fragile than might otherwise be thought. In practice, decisions to violate a norm are shaped by factors relating to the norm and the situation at hand, so too is the manner in which international society and individual states respond to norm violations. Responses to norm violations are not simply matters of normative obligation or calculations of self-interest but are instead guided by a combination of these logics as well as perceptions about the situation at hand, existing relations with the actors involved, and power relations between actors holding different accounts of the situation. Thus, whilst civilian immunity has for the time being prevailed over 'anti-civilian ideologies' which seek to justify mass killing, it remains challenged by these ideologies and its implementation shaped by individual circumstances. As a result, whilst it has become much more difficult for states to get away with mass murder, it is still not entirely impossible for them to do so.

Described as one of the greatest mass-murderers in history, Rudolf Hoss, was born in Baden-Baden, on the edge of Germany's Black Forest region, on 11 December 1901\. As a child, his aim was to join the priesthood, but in his early youth he became disillusioned with religion and turned instead to the Army. Hoss joined the 21st Regiment of Dragoons, his father's and grandfather's old regiment, at the age of just 14\. He served with the Ottoman Army in its fight against the British, serving in Palestine and being present at the Siege of Kut-el-Amara. During this period, he was promoted to the rank of Feldwebel, becoming, at that time, the youngest Non-commissioned officer in the German Army. He was also decorated, receiving among other awards the Iron Cross, First and Second class. In the midst of the political upheavals in post-war Germany, Hoss was drawn to the hard-line philosophies of Adolph Hitler, joining the Nazi Party in 1922\. His ruthless commitment to the Nazi cause saw him convicted of participating in at least one political assassination, for which he spent six years in prison. Predictably, Hoss joined the SS and in 1934 became a Blockfuhrer, or Block Leader, at Dachau concentration camp. His ruthless dedication led to him becoming the adjutant to the camp commandant at another concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. Then, in May 1940, Hoss was given command of his own camp near the town of Auschwitz. In June 1941, Hoss was told that Auschwitz had been selected as the site for the Final Solution of the Jewish question. Hoss set about his task with relish, and a determination to kill as many Jews as quickly and efficiently as possible. By his own estimation, he was responsible for the deaths of at least 3,000,000,000 individuals. Justice caught up with Hoss after the German surrender when he was arrested on 11 March 1946, after a year posing as a gardener under a false name. He was found guilty of war crimes and was hanged on 16 April 1947.

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong-whether it is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else-and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible.

For over 100 years, at least one concentration camp has existed somewhere on Earth. First used as battlefield strategy, camps have evolved with each passing decade, in the scope of their effects and the savage practicality with which governments have employed them. Even in the twenty-first century, as we continue to reckon with the magnitude and horror of the Holocaust, history tells us we have broken our own solemn promise of "never again." In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, Andrea Pitzer reveals for the first time the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps. Beginning with 1890s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. From the Philippines and Southern Africa in the early twentieth century to the Soviet Gulag and detention camps in China and North Korea during the Cold War, camp systems have been used as tools for civilian relocation and political repression. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions. Drawing from exclusive testimony, landmark historical scholarship, and stunning research, Andrea Pitzer unearths the roots of this appalling phenomenon, exploring and exposing the staggering toll of the camps: our greatest atrocities, the extraordinary survivors, and even the intimate, quiet moments that have also been part of camp life during the past century.

A rich and accessible introduction to the role of the German railway system in the Holocaust, a topic that remains understudied even today. Renowned Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg considered the German railway system that delivered European Jews to ghettos and death camps in Eastern Europe to be not only an essential component of the "machinery of destruction" but also emblematic of the amoral bureaucracy that helped to implement the Jewish genocide. German Railroads, Jewish Souls centers around Hilberg's seminal essay of the same name, a landmark study of German railways in the Nazi era long unavailable in English. Supplemented with additional writings from Hilberg, primary source materials, and historical commentary from leading scholars Christopher Browning and Peter Hayes. "This important book unites three prominent scholars tackling crucial questions about German railways and the Holocaust. Two essays from the late, renowned Raul Hilberg investigate their overlooked role in the extermination of the European Jews. They provide groundbreaking investigations into the German railway as the prototype of a bureaucracy and challenge its supposed banality. While Christopher Browning eloquently situates Hilberg's essays within the historical literature, Peter Hayes makes a detailed critique of the common but false belief that the deportation and annihilation of the Jews were more of a priority for the Nazis than the war effort. This question, arising from Hilberg's essays, demonstrates the continued significance of his work today."-Wolf Gruner, author, The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses Published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In recent years, the academic study of 'war' has gained renewed popularity in criminology. This book illustrates its long-standing engagement with this social phenomenon within the discipline. Foregrounding established criminological work addressing war and connecting it to a wide range of extant sociological literature, the authors present and further develop theoretical and conceptual ways of thinking critically about war. Providing a critique of mainstream criminology, the authors question whether a 'criminology of war' is possible, and if so, how this seemingly 'new horizon' of the discipline might be usefully informed by sociology.

Between the Wires tells for the first time the history of the Janowska camp in Lviv, Ukraine. Located in a city with the third-largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe, Janowska remains one of the least-known sites of the Holocaust, despite being one of the deadliest. Simultaneously a prison, a slave labor camp, a transit camp to the gas chambers, and an extermination site, this hybrid camp played a complex role in the Holocaust.

Based on extensive archival research, Between the Wires explores the evolution and the connection to Lviv of this rare urban camp. Waitman Wade Beorn reveals the exceptional brutality of the SS staff alongside an almost unimaginable will to survive among prisoners facing horrendous suffering, whose resistance included an armed uprising.

This integrated chronicle of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders follows the history of the camp into the postwar era, including attempts to bring its criminals to justice.

Understanding Evil seeks to articulate the evil that happened in Bosnia within the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its analysis centers on the question of whether it is possible to understand evil as action. Since the foundations of the social are found in human action, evil's assault on these foundations results in the demise of the social. While evil simulates the outer form of action, ultimately evil belies itself as action. Can someone act with an evil end? Socrates says no, no one willingly does evil. Although, with a mixture of reason and empiricism, the author tries hard to overcome the Socratic positionasearching for evil's agency, purpose, means, conditions, and ethosain the end, the search fails. The author concludes by accepting the Socratic position: action whose end is evil is unthinkable. This tack provides an alternative to recent theorizing about evil by philosophers such as Richard Bernstein and Jeffrey Alexander.The book understands evil via a neologismaas sociocide, the murdering of society. In Bosnia, not only were families destroyed, but their homes as well. Not only were bridges, libraries, schools, mosques, and churches demolished, but towns and cities were obliterated. Bosnian Muslims were murdered behind the mindless rhetoric of "ethnic cleansing," and their history and collective memory were viciously attacked. In the first case, the social violence is called "domicide," in the second, "urbicide," and in the third, "genocide." In Bosnia, however, war took on a truly twisted orientation. Not only were social structures and institutions attacked, but society itself became the target. The book develops the significance of sociocide as theconsequence of evil in order to understand the suffering and tragedy of people and communities in Bosnia.

This is the true story of a young American missionary woman courage and triump of faith in the jungles of New Guinea and her four years in a notorious Japanese prison camp. Never to see her husband again, she was forced to sign a confession to a crime she did not commit and face the executioner's sword, only to be miraculously spared.

"A classic in the field" (New York Times), this is a penetrating investigation into moral and ethical questions raised by war, drawing on examples from antiquity to the present. Just and Unjust Wars has forever changed how we think about the ethics of conflict. In this modern classic, political philosopher Michael Walzer examines the moral issues that arise before, during, and after the wars we fight. Reaching from the Athenian attack on Melos, to the Mai Lai massacre, to the war in Afghanistan and beyond, Walzer mines historical and contemporary accounts and the testimony of participants, decision makers, and victims to explain when war is justified and what ethical limitations apply to those who wage it.

THE CLASSIC LOST THRILLER FROM THE ICONIC NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER 'Shockingly good' The Sun 'A prescient, high-octane thriller' Daily Express 'Totally on the money - and ripe for this republication' i Newspaper * * * * * It always starts with a small lie. That's how you stop noticing the bigger ones. After his friend suspects something strange going on at the satellite facility where they both work - and then goes missing - Martin Hepton doesn't believe the official line of "long-term sick leave"... Refusing to stop asking questions, he leaves his old life behind, aware that someone is shadowing his every move. But why? The only hope he has is his ex-girlfriend Jill Watson - the only journalist who will believe his story. But neither of them can believe the puzzle they're piecing together - or just how shocking the secret is that everybody wants to stay hidden... DISCOVER THE CLASSIC LOST THRILLER FROM THE ICONIC NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. * * * * * 'Rankin is a master storyteller' Guardian 'Great fiction, full stop' The Times 'Ian Rankin is a genius' Lee Child 'One of Britain's leading novelists in any genre' New Statesman 'A virtuoso of the craft' Daily Mail 'Rankin is a phenomenon' Spectator 'Britain's No.1 crime writer' Mirror 'Quite simply, crime writing of the highest order' Express 'Worthy of Agatha Christie at her best' Scotsman

Shortly after the Nazi government fell, a philosophy professor at Heidelberg University lectured on a subject that burned the consciousness and conscience of thinking Germans. aAre the German people guilty?a These lectures by Karl Jaspers, an outstanding European philosopher, attracted wide attention among German intellectuals and students; they seemed to offer a path to sanity and morality in a disordered world. Jaspers, a life-long liberal, attempted in this book to discuss rationally a problem that had thus far evoked only heat and fury. Neither an evasive apology nor a wholesome condemnation, his book distinguished between types of guilt and degrees of responsibility. He listed four categories of guilt: criminal guilt (the commitment of overt acts), political guilt (the degree of political acquiescence in the Nazi regime), moral guilt (a matter of private judgment among oneas friends), and metaphysical guilt (a universally shared responsibility of those who chose to remain alive rather than die in protest against Nazi atrocities). Karl Jaspers (1883a1969) took his degree in medicine but soon became interested in psychiatry. He is the author of a standard work of psychopathology, as well as special studies on Strindberg, Van Gogh and Nietsche. After World War I he became Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he achieved fame as a brilliant teacher and an early exponent of existentialism. He was among the first to acquaint German readers with the works of Kierkegaard. Jaspers had to resign from his post in 1935. From the total isolation into which the Hitler regime forced him, Jaspers returned in 1945 to a position of central intellectual leadership of the younger liberalelements of Germany. In his first lecture in 1945, he forcefully reminded his audience of the fate of the German Jews. Jaspersas unblemished record as an anti-Nazi, as well as his sentient mind, have made him a rallying point center for those of his compatriots who wish to reconstruct a free and democratic Germany.

During the Battle of the Bulge, Waffen SS soldiers shot 84 American prisoners near the Belgian town of Malmedy-the deadliest mass execution of U.S. soldiers during World War II. The bloody deeds of December 17, 1944, produced the most controversial war crimes trial in American history. Drawing on newly declassified documents, Steven Remy revisits the massacre-and the decade-long controversy that followed-to set the record straight. After the war, the U.S. Army tracked down 74 of the SS men involved in the massacre and other atrocities and put them on trial at Dachau. All the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Over the following decade, however, a network of Germans and sympathetic Americans succeeded in discrediting the trial. They claimed that interrogators-some of them Jewish emigres-had coerced false confessions and that heat of battle conditions, rather than superiors' orders, had led to the shooting. They insisted that vengeance, not justice, was the prosecution's true objective. The controversy generated by these accusations, leveled just as the United States was anxious to placate its West German ally, resulted in the release of all the convicted men by 1957. The Malmedy Massacre shows that the torture accusations were untrue, and the massacre was no accident but was typical of the Waffen SS's brutal fighting style. Remy reveals in unprecedented depth how German and American amnesty advocates warped our understanding of one of the war's most infamous crimes through a systematic campaign of fabrications and distortions.

As the world becomes ever more unequal, people become ever more 'disposable'. Today, governments systematically exclude sections of their populations from society through heavy-handed policing. But it doesn't always go to plan. William I. Robinson exposes the nature and dynamics of this out-of-control system, arguing for the urgency of creating a movement capable of overthrowing it. The global police state uses a variety of ingenious methods of control, including mass incarceration, police violence, US-led wars, the persecution of immigrants and refugees, and the repression of environmental activists. Movements have emerged to combat the increasing militarization, surveillance and social cleansing; however many of them appeal to a moral sense of social justice rather than addressing its root - global capitalism. Using shocking data which reveals how far capitalism has become a system of repression, Robinson argues that the emerging megacities of the world are becoming the battlegrounds where the excluded and the oppressed face off against the global police state.

Keenie Meenie Services - the most powerful mercenary company you've never heard of - was involved in war crimes around the world from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua for which its shadowy directors have never been held accountable. Like its mysterious name, Keenie Meenie Services escaped definition and to this day has evaded sanctions. Now explosive new evidence - only recently declassified - exposes the extent of these war crimes, and the British government's tacit support for the company's operations. Including testimonies from SAS veterans, spy chiefs and diplomats, we hear from key figures battle-hardened by the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Iranian Embassy siege. Investigative journalist Phil Miller asks, who were these mercenaries: heroes, terrorists, freedom fighters or war criminals? This book presents the first ever comprehensive case against Keenie Meenie Services, providing long overdue evidence on the crimes of the people who make a killing from killing.

As the world becomes ever more unequal, people become ever more 'disposable'. Today, governments systematically exclude sections of their populations from society through heavy-handed policing. But it doesn't always go to plan. William I. Robinson exposes the nature and dynamics of this out-of-control system, arguing for the urgency of creating a movement capable of overthrowing it. The global police state uses a variety of ingenious methods of control, including mass incarceration, police violence, US-led wars, the persecution of immigrants and refugees, and the repression of environmental activists. Movements have emerged to combat the increasing militarization, surveillance and social cleansing; however many of them appeal to a moral sense of social justice rather than addressing its root - global capitalism. Using shocking data which reveals how far capitalism has become a system of repression, Robinson argues that the emerging megacities of the world are becoming the battlegrounds where the excluded and the oppressed face off against the global police state.

The shocking, true story of a soldier gone rogue, and the court martial case that divided America. This is the full story of Eddie Gallagher, a US recruit who was inspired to serve his nation, who became addicted to combat, and whose need to prove himself among his fellow soldiers pushed him to extremes. His actions during a combat deployment to Mosul would divide his platoon, then the SEALs, the Navy, the armed forces, the government, and even the American public, when the President intervened in his trial. Alpha is an examination of how culture within the military has evolved since 9/11. In an endless war without major victories, the media has instead celebrated achievements of SEAL missions - such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the rescuing of Captain Phillips, and the survival of Marcus Luttrell. But the SEALs' popularity blinded the public to what was also happening within the armed forces. When Gallagher was accused of killing an unarmed enemy combatant, it created a scandal that reached the White House and millions around the world.

Sophocles' play Antigone is a starting point for understanding the perpetual problems of human societies, families, and individuals, who are caught up in the terrible aftermath of mass violence. What is one to do after the killing has stopped? What can be done to prevent a round of new violence? The tragic and dramatic tension in the play is put in motion by setting an unyielding Antigone against King Creon. As we see through the investigation of how Germany, Japan, Spain, Yugoslavia and Turkey have dealt with their histories of mass violence and genocide in the 20th century, the forces represented by Antigone and Creon remain very much part of our world today. Through a comparison of the five countries, their political institutions, and cultural traditions, we begin to appreciate the different pathways that societies have taken when confronting their violent histories.

Beginning in late 1945, the United States, Britain, China, Australia, France, the Netherlands, and later the Philippines, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China convened national courts to prosecute Japanese military personnel for war crimes. The defendants included ethnic Koreans and Taiwanese who had served with the armed forces as Japanese subjects. In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried Japanese leaders. While the fairness of these trials has been a focus for decades, Japanese War Criminals instead argues that the most important issues arose outside the courtroom. What was the legal basis for identifying and detaining subjects, determining who should be prosecuted, collecting evidence, and granting clemency after conviction? The answers to these questions helped set the norms for transitional justice in the postwar era and today contribute to strategies for addressing problematic areas of international law. Examining the complex moral, ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding the Allied prosecution project, from the first investigations during the war to the final release of prisoners in 1958, Japanese War Criminals shows how a simple effort to punish the guilty evolved into a multidimensional struggle that muddied the assignment of criminal responsibility for war crimes. Over time, indignation in Japan over Allied military actions, particularly the deployment of the atomic bombs, eclipsed anger over Japanese atrocities, and, among the Western powers, new Cold War imperatives took hold. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the construction of the postwar international order in Asia and to our comprehension of the difficulties of implementing transitional justice.

In this work Jacques Adler, a former member of the French resistance, asks: "Are people powerless when confronted with a State determined to destroy them? Why didn't more Jews survive the Holocaust? How did we survive? Did we, the survivors, do all that we could, at the time, to help more people survive?" In answering these questions, Adler examines the diverse Jewish organizations that existed in Paris during the German occupation from 1940 to 1944. The first part of the book analyzes the national composition of the Jewish population, its expropriation and daily life. The remaining chapters discuss the roles, activities, and policies of various Jewish organizations as they supported Jews in their search for survival, alerted the non-Jewish population to the terrible threat faced by every Jewish family, and acted as representatives of the Jewish people--a role that led to inevitable administrative cooperation with the Nazis and Vichy.
Combining careful scholarship with a survivor's zeal to set the record straight, Adler gives an insider's account of resistance members, whose determination was born of the pain and anger that came from the loss of loved ones, whose political ideology sustained them even when they faced the threat of starvation and the loneliness of clandestine existence, and whose anguish was all the more intense because they belonged to that community in Paris that was selected as fodder for the "Final Solution." Thoroughly researched and drawing upon previously unavailable materials, Adler presents an important portrait of communal solidarity and communal conflict, of heroes and those whose courage failed.

Adolf Eichmann was the operational manager of the genocide that dispatched six million European Jews to the gas chambers. Escaping US custody in 1946, he hid in various locations in Germany before absconding in 1950 via a 'ratline' escape route to Argentina, where he lived, undisturbed, for the next decade. On 11 May 1960 he was captured in an operation of breathtaking skill and daring by a team of Mossad agents in a Buenos Aires suburb. Smuggled out of Argentina to Israel, Eichmann was indicted there on charges of crimes against humanity, and hanged on 1 June 1962. Part history, part detective story, part international thriller, Hunting Eichmann brings the story of the fifteen-year search for Eichmann more thrillingly, more accurately, more completely to life than ever before. Superbly researched and relentlessly paced, Hunting Eichmann brings us closer to understanding the architect of the Holocaust than ever before - a man whose terrifying ordinariness came to embody the 'banality of evil'.