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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues
The studies in this book concern the nature of international law, how it is and is not constituted, and whether commitments that are not legally binding can change the behaviour of states as well as or better than legal norms do.
'A profoundly significant exploration of how Europeans--both Germans and those under German occupation--struggled to make sense of the conflict.' - Richard Overy, Wall Street Journal In An Iron Wind, historian Peter Fritzsche draws on first-person accounts to show how civilians in occupied Europe struggled to understand the terrifying chaos of World War II. As the Third Reich targeted Europe's Jews, confusion and mistrust reigned. Was collaboration or resistance the wisest response? And where was God? Piecing together the broken words of the war's witnesses and victims, Fritzsche offers a haunting picture of the most violent conflict in modern history.
From the years leading up to the First World War to the aftermath of the Second, Europe experienced an era of genocide. As well as the Holocaust, this period also witnessed the Armenian genocide in 1915, mass killings in Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia, and a host of further ethnic cleansings in Anatolia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Crisis of Genocide seeks to integrate these genocidal events into a single, coherent history. Over two volumes, Mark Levene demonstrates how the relationship between geography, nation, and power came to play a key role in the emergence of genocide in a collapsed or collapsing European imperial zone - the Rimlands - and how the continuing geopolitical contest for control of these Eastern European or near-European regions destabilised relationships between diverse and multifaceted ethnic communities who traditionally had lived side by side. An emergent pattern of toxicity can also be seen in the struggles for regional dominance as pursued by post-imperial states, nation-states, and would-be states. Volume II: Annihilation covers the period from 1939 to 1953, particularly focussing on the Second World War, and its aftermath, the Holocaust and its lasting impact, and the latter part of the Stalinist regime. Levene demonstrates that while the attempted Nazi mass murder of the entirety of European Jewry represents the most thoroughgoing and extreme consequence of efforts aimed at political and social reformulation of the Rimlands' arena in particular, the accumulation and concentration of genocidal violence against many 'minority' groups would suggest that anti-Semitism or racism alone is insufficient to provide a comprehensive explanation for genocide.
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.
This book examines the circumstances surrounding SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff's escape from prosecution for war crimes in 1945. Wolff avoided prosecution because of his role in 'Operation Sunrise', negotiations conducted by high-ranking American, Swiss and British officials - in violation of the Casablanca agreements with the Soviet Union - for the surrender of German forces in Italy that enabled the Anglo-American forces to take Trieste. After 1945, Allied officials, amongst them Allen Dulles, in a move that later helped him ascend to the head of the CIA, shielded Wolff from prosecution to maintain secrecy about the negotiations. 'Operation Sunrise' thus relates to the early origins of the Cold War in Europe and had wide-ranging implications, even in the field of justice: new evidence suggests that the Western Allies not only failed to ensure cooperation between their respective national war crimes prosecution organizations, but in certain cases even obstructed justice by withholding evidence from the prosecution.
Genocide and International Relations lays the foundations for a new perspective on genocide in the modern world. Genocide studies have been influenced, negatively as well as positively, by the political and cultural context in which the field has developed. In particular, a narrow vision of comparative studies has been influential in which genocide is viewed mainly as a 'domestic' phenomenon of states. This book emphasizes the international context of genocide, seeking to specify more precisely the relationships between genocide and the international system. Shaw aims to re-interpret the classical European context of genocide in this frame, to provide a comprehensive international perspective on Cold War and post-Cold War genocide, and to re-evaluate the key transitions of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.
Genocide and International Relations lays the foundations for a new perspective on genocide in the modern world. Genocide studies have been influenced, negatively as well as positively, by the political and cultural context in which the field has developed. In particular, a narrow vision of comparative studies has been influential in which genocide is viewed mainly as a 'domestic' phenomenon of states. This book emphasizes the international context of genocide, seeking to specify more precisely the relationships between genocide and the international system. Shaw aims to re-interpret the classical European context of genocide in this frame, to provide a comprehensive international perspective on Cold War and post-Cold War genocide, and to re-evaluate the key transitions of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.
The emergence of a European policy on armaments is an important and politically controversial component in the building of Europe. Should European cooperation on armaments be designed from a market and a competition perspective, and according to supranational decision making? Or is it the emerging European defense policy and intergovernmental decision-making style that should determine such cooperation? The controversy and tension between the ways of framing this issue highlight fundamental questions in European politics. Organizing European Cooperation shows that the issue of armaments has been conceptualized within two different projects of European integration: the political economy project, developed through the EC, and the defense and security project, organized through NATO, the WEU, and recently through the EU. By employing an innovative theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of European politics the author's analysis of both public actors, such as the Council, the European Commission, and NATO, and non-state actors, such as aerospace companies and business interest organizations, makes this book a valuable tool for anyone trying to understand the interaction between two European organizational fields-market and defense-and the emergence of a new European organizational field on armaments.
In this groundbreaking study, Heather Jones provides the first in-depth and comparative examination of violence against First World War prisoners. She shows how the war radicalised captivity treatment in Britain, France and Germany, dramatically undermined international law protecting prisoners of war and led to new forms of forced prisoner labour and reprisals, which fuelled wartime propaganda that was often based on accurate prisoner testimony. This book reveals how, during the conflict, increasing numbers of captives were not sent to home front camps but retained in western front working units to labour directly for the British, French and German armies - in the German case, by 1918, prisoners working for the German army endured widespread malnutrition and constant beatings. Dr Jones examines the significance of these new, violent trends and their later legacy, arguing that the Great War marked a key turning-point in the twentieth-century evolution of the prison camp.
At the end of the Second World War, mass forced migration and population movement accompanied the collapse of Nazi Germany's occupation and the start of Soviet domination in East-Central Europe. Hugo Service examines the experience of Poland's new territories, exploring the Polish Communist attempt to 'cleanse' these territories in line with a nationalist vision, against the legacy of brutal wartime occupations of Central and Eastern Europe by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The expulsion of over three million Germans was intertwined with the arrival of millions of Polish settlers. Around one million German citizens were categorised as 'native Poles' and urged to adopt a Polish national identity. The most visible traces of German culture were erased. Jewish Holocaust survivors arrived and, for the most part, soon left again. Drawing on two case studies, the book exposes how these events varied by region and locality.
This book offers a broader theory of nuclear deterrence and examines the way nuclear and conventional deterrence interact with non-military factors in a series of historical case studies. The existing body of literature largely leans toward the analytical primacy of nuclear deterrence and it is often implicitly assumed that nuclear weapons are so important that, when they are present, other factors need not be studied. This book addresses this omission. It develops a research framework that incorporates the military aspects of deterrence, both nuclear and conventional, together with various perceptual factors, international circumstances, domestic politics, and norms. This framework is then used to re-examine five historical crises that brought two nuclear countries to the brink of war: the hostile asymmetric nuclear relations between the United States and China in the early 1960s; between the Soviet Union and China in the late 1960s; between Israel and Iraq in 1977-1981; between the United States and North Korea in 1992-1994; and, finally, between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The main empirical findings challenge the common expectation that the threat of nuclear retaliation represents the ultimate deterrent. In fact, it can be said, with a high degree of confidence, that it was rather the threat of conventional retaliation that acted as a major stabilizer. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, cold war studies, deterrence theory, security studies and IR in general.
A powerful and revelatory history book about the bloodlands - the lands that lie between Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany - where 14 million people were killed during the years 1933 - 1944. In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered fourteen million people in the bloodlands between Berlin and Moscow. In a twelve-year-period, in these killing fields - today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Western Russia and the eastern Baltic coast - an average of more than one million citizens were slaughtered every year, as a result of deliberate policies unrelated to combat. In this book Timothy Snyder offers a ground-breaking investigation into the motives and methods of Stalin and Hitler and, using scholarly literature and primary sources, pays special attention to the testimony of the victims, including the letters home, the notes flung from trains, the diaries on corpses. The result is a brilliantly researched, profoundly humane, authoritative and original book that forces us to re-examine one of the greatest tragedies in European history and re-think our past.
Genocide in the Carpathians presents the history of Subcarpathian Rus', a multiethnic and multireligious borderland in the heart of Europe. This society of Carpatho-Ruthenians, Jews, Magyars, and Roma disintegrated under pressure of state building in interwar Czechoslovakia and, during World War II, from the onslaught of the Hungarian occupation. Charges of "foreignness" and disloyalty to the Hungarian state linked antisemitism to xenophobia and national security anxieties. Genocide unfolded as a Hungarian policy, and Hungarian authorities committed mass robbery, deportations, and killings against all non-Magyar groups in their efforts to recast the region as part of an ethnonational "Greater Hungary." In considering the events that preceded the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, this book reorients our view of the Holocaust not simply as a German drive for continent-wide genocide, but as a truly international campaign of mass murder, related to violence against non-Jews unleashed by projects of state and nation building. Focusing on both state and society, Raz Segal shows how Hungary's genocidal attack on Subcarpathian Rus' obliterated not only tens of thousands of lives but also a diverse society and way of life that today, from the vantage point of our world of nation-states, we find difficult to imagine.
The status of prisoners of war was firmly rooted in the practice of ransoming in the Middle Ages. By the opening stages of the Hundred Years War, ransoming had become widespread among the knightly community, and the crown had already begun to exercise tighter control over the practice of war. This led to tensions between public and private interests over ransoms and prisoners of war. Historians have long emphasised the significance of the French and English crowns' interference in the issue of prisoners of war, but this original and stimulating study questions whether they have been too influenced by the state-centred nature of most surviving sources. Based on extensive archival research, this book tests customs, laws and theory against the individual experiences of captors and prisoners during the Hundred Years War, to evoke their world in all its complexity.
Finalist - 2010 Book of the Year Award by ForeWord MagazineFinalist - 2010 USA Best Book Award This book, in seven parts, offers you the opportunity to visit the garden that is Taekwondo. Discover what it means to be a steadfast practitioner, understand Taekwondo's honorable past, and prosper in the confidence and purpose that Taekwondo offers to all that participate. By following Taekwondo's path and developing its indomitable spirit, youthe Taekwondo travelerwill see the 'Do' or the Way. Learn how to cultivate a natural harmony and rhythm to life, be able to distinguish right from wrong, and be equipped to defend against that which might harm what you hold most sacred.
Gareth Jones (1905-1934), the young Welsh investigative journalist, is revered in Ukraine as a national hero and is now rightly recognised as the first reporter to reveal the horror of the Holodomor, the Soviet Government-induced famine of the early 1930s, which killed millions of Ukrainians. Gareth Jones - Eyewitness to the Holodomor is a meticulous study of the efforts made by the the Aberystwyth and Cambridge-educated journalist, a fluent Russian-speaker, to investigate the Soviet Government's denials, that its Five Year Plan had led to mass starvation, by visiting Ukraine in 1933 and reporting what he saw and witnessed: `I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, "There is no bread. We are dying"'. Determined to alert the world to the suffering in Ukraine and to expose Stalin's policies and prejudices towards the Ukrainian people, Jones published numerous articles in the UK (The Times, Daily Express and Western Mail) and the USA (New York Evening News and Chicago Daily News) with headlines such as `Famine Grips Russia. Millions Dying', but soon saw his credibility and integrity attacked and denigrated by Soviet sympathizers, most famously by Moscow-based Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Gareth Jones was killed by bandits the following year, on the eve of his 30th birthday, whilst travelling in Japanese-controlled China. There remain strong suspicions that Jones' murder was arranged by the Soviets in revenge for his eyewitness reporting which brought global attention to the Holodomor.
Arms Procurement Decision-Making Processes is a comparative analysis of the arms procurement decision-making processes in five countries China, India, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. It examines whether or not national arms procurement processes, even as they involve sensitive security issues and complex systems, can become more responsive to the broader objectives of security and public accountability. The country case studies are based to a large extent on original research papers written by experts from the respective national academic and defence procurement communities.
Until the late twentieth century, relatively few Americans knew that the United States government forcibly detained nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. At war's end, the nation, including many of those who were confined to the ten Relocation Centers-which President Roosevelt initially referred to as "concentration camps"-wished to wipe this national tragedy from memory. That Damned Fence, titled after a poem written by a Japanese American held at the Minidoka camp in Idaho, draws on the creative work of the internees themselves to cast new light on this historical injustice. While in captivity, detainees produced moving poetry and fiction, compelling investigative journalism, and lasting work of arts to make sense of their hardships and to leave a record of their emotional and psychological suffering. Heather Hathaway explores the experiences of inmates in five camps-Topaz in Utah; Granada/Amache in Colorado; Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas; and Tule Lake in northern California-each with their own literary magazines, such as TREK, All Aboard, Pulse, The Pen, Magnet, and The Tulean Dispatch. Conditions in the camps varied dramatically, as did their environments, ranging from sweltering swamplands and sun-blasted desert to frigid mountain terrain. So too did the inhabitants of each camp, with some dominated by farmers from California's Central Valley and others filled with professionals from the San Francisco Bay area. This disparity extended to the attitudes of camp administrators; some deemed the plan a mistake from the outset while others believed their captives to be a significant threat to national security. That Damned Fence reveals the anger and humor, and the deep despair and steadfast resilience with which Japanese Americans faced their wartime incarceration. By emphasizing the inner lives of the unjustly accused and the myriad ways in which they portrayed their captivity, Heather Hathaway gives voice to Americans imprisoned by their own country for their country of origin or appearance.
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.
This book offers an empirically rich study of Chinese nuclear weapons behaviour and the impact of this behaviour on global nuclear politics since 1949. China's behaviour as a nuclear weapons state is a major determinant of global and regional security. For the United States, there is no other nuclear actor - with the exception of Russia- that matters more to its long-term national security. However, China's behaviour and impact on global nuclear politics is a surprisingly under-researched topic. Existing literature tends to focus on narrow policy issues, such as misdemeanours in China's non-proliferation record, the uncertain direction of its military spending, and nuclear force modernization, or enduring opaqueness in its nuclear policy. This book proposes an alternative context to understand both China's past and present nuclear behaviour: its engagement with the process of creating and maintaining global nuclear order. The concept of global nuclear order is an innovative lens through which to consider China as a nuclear weapons state because it draws attention to the inner workings -institutional and normative- that underpin nuclear politics. It is also a timely subject because global nuclear order is considered by many actors to be under serious strain and in need of reform. Indeed, today the challenges to nuclear order are numerous, from Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions to the growing threat of nuclear terrorism. This book considers these challenges from a Chinese perspective, exploring how far Beijing has gone to the aid of nuclear order in addressing these issues.
This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the politics of war crimes trials. It provides a systematic and theoretically rigorous examination of whether these trials are used as tools for political consolidation or whether justice is their primary purpose. The consideration of cases begins with the trial of Charles I of England and goes through the presidency of George W. Bush, including the trials of Saddam Hussein and those arising from the War on Terror. The book concludes that political consolidation is the primary concern of these trials - a point that runs contrary to the popular perception of the trials and their stated justification. Through the consideration of war crimes trials, this book makes a contribution to our understanding of power and conflict resolution and illuminates the developmental path of war crimes tribunals.
This book provides an indispensable resource for anyone researching the scourge of mass murder in the 20th and 21st centuries, effectively using primary source documents to help them understand all aspects of genocide. This illuminating primary source collection closely examines and analyzes primary documents related to genocides, focusing on genocidal events from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Thematically organized into eight sections, each document comes with an introduction and analysis written by the author that helps provide the crucial historical background for the users of this title to learn about the complexities of genocide. The first section considers a range of definitional matters relating to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes; the second section relates to warnings of impending genocide, and how they have been received; the third considers atrocities and how they have been perpetrated; the fourth is an examination ofexamines a range of resistance initiatives that have been taken in response to genocide; the fifth looks at reactions to genocide from outside actors; the sixth considers the ways in which states have intervened to stop genocide; the seventh relates to post-genocide justice measures; and the eighth section relates to how states and NGOs have sought to prevent genocide. Offers a large number of documents relating to various genocides, demonstrating the multifaceted nature of this crime in various settings Presents the reader with an analysis of each document to help contextualize and explain it Allows documents to "speak for themselves," setting out the parameters of genocide, what events actually occurred, and what was done afterwards Provides a short list of further reading at the conclusion of each document to assist readers looking to further research the topic
Some states have violated international commitments not to develop nuclear weapons. Yet the effects of international sanctions or positive inducements on their internal politics remain highly contested. How have trade, aid, investments, diplomacy, financial measures and military threats affected different groups? How, when and why were those effects translated into compliance with non-proliferation rules? Have inducements been sufficiently biting, too harsh, too little, too late or just right for each case? How have different inducements influenced domestic cleavages? What were their unintended and unforeseen effects? Why are self-reliant autocracies more often the subject of sanctions? Leading scholars analyse the anatomy of inducements through novel conceptual perspectives, in-depth case studies, original quantitative data and newly translated documents. The volume distils ten key dilemmas of broad relevance to the study of statecraft, primarily from experiences with Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, bound to spark debate among students and practitioners of international politics.
This book shows how Rwanda s development model and the organisation of genocide are two sides of the same coin. In the absence of mineral resources, the elite organised and managed the labour of peasant producers as efficient as possible. In order to stay in power and benefit from it, the presidential clan chose a development model that would not change the political status quo. When the latter was threatened, the elite invoked the preservation of group welfare of the Hutu, called for Hutu unity and solidarity and relied on the great mass (rubanda nyamwinshi) for the execution of the genocide. A strategy as simple as it is horrific. The genocide can be regarded as the ultimate act of self-preservation through annihilation under the veil of self-defense. Why did tens of thousands of ordinary people massacred tens of thousands other ordinary people in Rwanda in 1994? What has agricultural policy and rural ideology to do with it? What was the role of the Akazu, the presidential clan around president Habyarimana? Did the civil war cause the genocide? And what insights can a political economy perspective offer ? Based on more than ten years of research, and engaging with competing and complementary arguments of authors such as Peter Uvin, Alison Des Forges, Scott Strauss, Rene Lemarchand, Filip Reyntjens, Mahmood Mamdani and Andre Guichaoua, the author blends economics, politics and agrarian studies to provide a new way of understanding the nexus between development and genocide in Rwanda. Students and practitioners of development as well as everyone interested in the causes of violent conflict and genocide in Africa and around the world will find this book compelling to read. .
Twenty years post-independence Ukraine remains split, still floundering toward viable democracy. Active participation in civic affairs required for democracy is unfamiliar for most Ukrainian citizens, having internalized centuries of divisive oppression under a series of authoritarian regimes. Democracy-building and peace-building require participant agency and voice; rising out of oppression, people often need support to speak about and transform their lived experiences. Peacebuilding with Women in Ukraine: Using Narrative to Envision a Common Future, by Maureen P. Flaherty, explores the roles women's shared narrative, dialogue, and group-visioning play in the support of personal empowerment and bridge building between diverse communities. Despite participants' initial beliefs that their regional counterparts shared little in common with them, in the process of telling their personal life stories women were able to reflect upon their own values and strengths, and with this rooting, they were then able to reach out to others. Rather than looking for differences, participants sought ways to express a shared vision for an inclusive, functional, peace-building future for themselves, their families, and Ukraine as a whole. Peacebuilding with Women in Ukraine is a model for emancipatory social action and social change, while the women's stories offer a window into the formative years and present-day lives of eighteen women born and raised in the Soviet Union. This study is a unique contribution to peace studies and to the history and building of a country that has most often had its history written for it. |
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