Includes discussion on the rationale of teaching about genocide; the history of genocide; and 10 cases studies of genocide perpetrated in the 20th century.

Adorno and the Concept of Genocide examines the legacy of Critical Theory's foremost authority on life 'after Auschwitz.' As a leading member of the Frankfurt School and one of post-war Europe's most important public intellectuals, Adorno's reflections on genocide and its relation to contemporary society achieved a level of urgency and insight that remains unparalleled to this day. Assembled here for the first time in English is a wide-ranging collection of essays on the seminal significance of the concept of genocide for Adorno's thought, as well as the enduring relevance of that thought for our own time. Contributors include: Babette Babich, Ryan Crawford, Tom Huhn, Osman Nemli, Ulrich Plass, Erik M. Vogt, James R. Watson, Markus Zoechmeister

Since unification, the Federal Republic of Germany has made vaunted efforts to make amends for the crimes of the Third Reich. Yet it remains the case that the demands for restitution by many countries that were occupied during the Second World War are unresolved, and recent demands from Greece and Poland have only reignited old debates. This book reconstructs the German occupation of Poland and Greece and gives a thorough accounting of these debates. Working from the perspective of international law, it deepens the scholarly discourse around the issue, clarifying the 'never-ending story' of German reparations policy and making a principled call for further action. A compilation of primary sources comprising 125 annotated key texts (512 pages) on the complexity of reparations discussions covering the period between 1941 and the end of 2017 is available for free on the Berghahn Books website, doi: 10.3167/9781800732575.dd.

This book is a frank and hopeful meditation on the recurring tragedy of genocide that should be read by anybody who cares about its prevention. Hirsch argues if we are to successfully confront, prevent, or control the most egregious aspects of genocidal violence, we must create containing political institutions and social mechanisms. But ultimately human nature must change to temper the worst excesses of genocidal violence, given its long and intractable historical presence. Hirsch looks hard at complex realities and proposes how to build a politics of prevention. Focusing on the United States, a political movement must be built that supports the politics of prevention in the international realm. Long-term prevention depends on changing how humans view each other, though. Creating a new ethic of life-enhancing behavior based on the ideology of universal human rights that is passed on from generation to generation via the process of political socialization ultimately is our best hope of preventing future genocides.

This book begins with the fact that there is apparently nothing historically unique about human beings killing one another in relatively large numbers. Genocide appears to be a phenomenon that has been a part of human history since we began to record our worst excesses. Certainly it has been in the forefront of human consciousness as the last century came to its bloody conclusion. It is not an intractable problem. A mass movement to prevent genocide can be built, and once created it should pressure the federal government to focus its foreign policy on the prevention of genocide.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the Nanjing Massacre, together with an in-depth analysis of various aspects of the event and related issues. Drawing on original source materials collected from various national archives, national libraries, church historical society archives, and university libraries in China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States, it represents the first English-language academic attempt to analyze the Nanjing Massacre in such detail and scope. The book examines massacres and other killings, in addition to other war crimes, such as rape, looting, and burning. These atrocities are then explored further via a historical analysis of Chinese survivors' testimony, Japanese soldiers' diaries, Westerners' eyewitness accounts, the news coverage from American and British correspondents, and American, British and German diplomatic dispatches. Further, the book explores issues such as the role and function of the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone, burial records of massacre victims, post-war military tribunals, controversies over the Nanjing Massacre, and the 100-Man Killing Contest. This book is intended for all researchers, scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and members of the general public who are interested in Second World War issues, Sino-Japanese conflicts, Sino-Japan relations, war crimes, atrocity and holocaust studies, military tribunals for war crimes, Japanese atrocities in China, and the Nanjing Massacre.

Chatting with notorious war criminal Charles Taylor on the lawn of his presidential mansion as ostriches and armed teenagers strut in the background. Landing in snow-covered Afghanistan weeks after the fall of the Taliban and trying to make sense of a country shattered by years of war. Being held at gunpoint by young soldiers amid the tragedy of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Standing in the middle of a violent riot in the streets of Kathmandu. Having hushed conversations with the widows of Europe's largest massacre since World War II. These are all scenes from The Disaster Gypsies, a compelling personal memoir by a relief worker and conflict specialist who has worked on the ground in a host of war-torn countries. Initially deployed as part of a humanitarian relief team in Rwanda almost by accident, Norris has experienced the tragedies of Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Liberia over a span of ten years. Rich with poignant human stories, The Disaster Gypsies captures the reality of modern war with an immediacy and compassion that puts the reader in the front seat for some of the most wrenching events of our times. Norris approaches his story with a unique and dynamic perspective, having worked both in the upper echelons of the U.S. government and in some of the world's most dangerous places. Moving from face-to-face encounters with powerful warlords to quiet moments with the victims of horrific violence, Norris gives readers a behind-the-scenes tour of a world most of them can barely imagine. He makes a compelling argument that these nasty civil wars were often dismissed as tribal, ethnic, or regional disputes by most Americans, when in reality such violence is fundamentallypart of the human condition. That may sound simple or even self-evident, but Norris contends that most people in the United States and Europe continue to view war as something that is outside of themselves and profoundly foreign in its nature, even as their own troops continue to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Modern corporations are key participants in the new globalized economy. As such, they have been accorded tremendous latitude and granted extensive rights. However, accompanying obligations have not been similarly forthcoming. Chief among them is the obligation not to commit atrocities or human rights abuses in the pursuit of profit. Multinational corporations are increasingly complicit in genocides that occur in the developing world. While they benefit enormously from the crime, they are immune from prosecution at the international level. Prosecuting Corporations for Genocide proposes new legal pathways to ensure such companies are held criminally liable for their conduct by creating a framework for international criminal jurisdiction. If a state or a person commits genocide, they are punished, and international law demands such. Nevertheless, corporate actors have successfully avoided this through an array of legal arguments which Professor Kelly challenges. He demonstrates how international criminal jurisdiction should be extended over corporations for complicity in genocide and makes the case that it should be done promptly.

This volume provides an indispensable resource for anyone studying the Holocaust. The reference entries are enhanced by documents and other tools that make this volume a vital contribution to Holocaust research. This volume showcases a detailed look at the multifaceted attempts by Germany's Nazi regime, together with its collaborators, to annihilate the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. Several introductory essays, along with a rich chronology, reference entries, primary documents, images, and a bibliography provide crucial information that readers will need in order to try to understand the Holocaust while undertaking research on that horrible event. This text looks not only at the history of the Holocaust, but also at examples of resistance (through armed violence, attempts at rescue, or the very act of survival itself); literary and cultural expressions that have attempted to deal with the Holocaust; the social and psychological implications of the Holocaust for today; and how historians and others have attempted to do justice to the memory of those killed and seek insight into why the Holocaust happened in the first place. Comprehensively examines all angles of the Holocaust within one easily readable volume written by experts Includes primary documents, with appropriate introductions, to set the historical and contemporary contexts for the entries Contains useful chronologies of the events surrounding the Holocaust Provides a number of contextualizing essays on various facets of the Holocaust, which precede the reference entries themselves

Drawing on previously inaccessible and overlooked archival sources, The Herero Genocide undertakes a groundbreaking investigation into the war between colonizer and colonized in what was formerly German South-West Africa and is today the nation of Namibia. In addition to its eye-opening depictions of the starvation, disease, mass captivity, and other atrocities suffered by the Herero, it reaches surprising conclusions about the nature of imperial dominion, showing how the colonial state's genocidal posture arose from its own inherent weakness and military failures. The result is an indispensable account of a genocide that has been neglected for too long.

Exploring one of the least studied genocides in post-conquest South America, Robins calls into question many of the central assumptions currently held by genocide scholars. Victims of genocide usually lack the organization and weaponry to battle their enemies. During the 1780-1782 Great Rebellion in Peru and Upper Peru (now Bolivia), however, the Indian revolutionaries faced the better-organized and armed loyalist army. Whereas genocidal policies are usually characterized by centralized leadership, the Great Rebellion was highly fragmented and confederational in nature, undercutting the widely-held assumption that only the State is capable of committing genocide. The Rebellion is one of the rare cases when the victims of genocide emerged victorious.

Focusing on the events occurring in the region south of La Paz, Robins examines how a native millennial movement evolved into an Indian-led attempt at genocide, dealing an unprecedented challenge to Spanish rule in the Americas. In the eyes of the rebels, this revolt fulfilled prophecies of an inevitable, divinely assisted, and long-awaited return of native rule. Just like at the dawn of the colonial period, this new era was to be born of "pachacuti," or cataclysm. But this time the Spanish interlopers and their culture would be targeted for destruction.

Focusing on the major cases of genocide in twentieth-century Europe, including the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and genocide in the former Yugoslavia, as well as mass killing in the Soviet Union, this book outlines the internal and external roots of genocide. Internal causes lie in the rise of radical nationalism and the breakdown of old empires, while external causes lie in the experience of mass violence in European colonial empires. Such roots did not make any case of genocide inevitable but did create models for mass destruction. The book enables students to assess the interplay between general causes of violence and the specific crises that accelerated moves towards radical genocidal policies. Chapters on the major cases of twentieth-century European genocide will each describe and analyse several key themes: acts of genocide; perpetrators, victims and bystanders; and genocide in particular regions. Using the voices of the human actors in genocide, often ignored or forgotten, provides arresting new insights. The conclusion frames European genocide in a global perspective, giving students an entry point to discussion of genocide in other continents and historical periods.

On March 29, 2002 the Israeli army launched Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military offensive against Palestinian civilians since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. When the operation ended on April 21, Israel had destroyed Palestinian's economic and social infrastructure, levelled large swathes of residential areas, killed 220 people, injured hundreds more and arrested thousands. This book documents these events through a collection of witness testimonies by Palestinians and by Israeli and international peace activists. Deeply moving and courageous, these narratives offer a powerful and intimate account of the daily reality for Palestinians who endured Ariel Sharon's military strategy.

The Turkish Republic was formed out of immense bloodshed and carnage. During the decade leading up to the end of the Ottoman Empire and the ascendancy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, virtually every town and village throughout Anatolia was wracked by intercommunal violence. Sorrowful Shores presents a unique, on-the-ground history of these bloody years of social and political transformation.
Challenging the determinism associated with nationalist interpretations of Turkish history between 1912 and 1923, Ryan Gingeras delves deeper into this period of transition between empire and nation-state. Looking closely at a corner of territory immediately south of the old Ottoman capital of Istanbul, he traces the evolution of various communities of native Christians and immigrant Muslims against the backdrop of the Balkan Wars, the First World War, the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish War of Independence, and the Greek occupation of the region.
Drawing on new sources from the Ottoman archives, Gingeras demonstrates how violence was organised at the local level. Arguing against the prevailing view of the conflict as a war between monolithic ethnic groups driven by fanaticism and ancient hatreds, he reveals instead the culpability of several competing states in fanning successive waves of bloodshed.

Listen to the podcast with Philip Drew and Bruce Oswald In Rwanda Revisited: Genocide, Civil War, and the Transformation of International Law, the contributing authors seek to recount, explore, and explain the tragedy that was the Rwanda genocide and the nature of the international community's entanglement with it. Written by people selected for their personalized knowledge of Rwanda, be it as peacekeepers, aid workers, or members of the ICTR, and/or scholarship that has been clearly influenced by the genocide, this book provides a level of insight, detail and first-hand knowledge about the genocide and its aftermath that is clearly unique. Included amongst the writers are a number of scholars whose research and writings on Rwanda, the United Nations, and genocide are internationally recognized. Contributors are: Major (ret'd) Brent Beardsley, Professor Jean Bou, Professor Jane Boulden, Dr. Emily Crawford, Lieutenant-General the Honourable Romeo Dallaire, Professor Phillip Drew, Professor Mark Drumbl , Professor Jeremy Farrall, Lieutenant-General John Frewen, Dr. Stacey Henderson, Professor Adam Jones, Ambassador Colin Keating, Professor Robert McLaughlin, Linda Melvern, Dr. Melanie O'Brien, Professor Bruce Oswald, Dr. Tamsin Phillipa Paige, Professor David J. Simon, and Professor Andrew Wallis. This book was previously published as Special Issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping, Volume 22 (2018), Issue 1-4 (published April 2020); with updated Introduction.

The dramatic uprisings that ousted the long-standing leaders of several countries in the Arab region set in motion an unprecedented period of social, political and legal transformation. The prosecution of political leaders took centre stage in the pursuit of transitional justice following the 'Arab Spring'. Through a comparative case study of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, this book argues that transitional justice in the Arab region presents the strongest challenge yet to the transitional justice paradigm. This paradigm is built on the underlying assumption that transitions constitute a shift from non-liberal to liberal democratic regimes, where often legal measures are taken to address atrocities committed during the prior regime. The book is guided by two principal questions: first, what trigger and driving factors led to the decision of whether or not to prosecute former political leaders? And second, what shaping factors affected the content and extent of decisions regarding prosecution? In answering these questions, the book enhances our understanding of how transitional justice is pursued by different actors in varied contexts. In doing so, it challenges the predominant understanding that transitional justice uniformly occurs in liberalising contexts and calls for a re-thinking of transitional justice theory and practice. Using original findings generated from almost 50 interviews across 4 countries, this research builds on the growing critical literature that claims that transitional justice is an under-theorised field and needs to be developed to take into account non-liberal and complex transitions. It will be stimulating and thought-provoking reading for all those interested in transitional justice and the 'Arab Spring'.

Winner, "Publishers Weekly" Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction

"In badly constructed books, the reader doesn't care what happens on the next page. In well-constructed books, the reader can't wait to see what happens on the next page. This book is a rare, third kind: The reader dreads what will happen on the next page. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to read on. . . . McAllester takes the reader not only along the streets where atrocities have been committed but inside homes while they are happening. As is the case with many good reads, the power of such scenes comes from the order in which events are presented. First the author develops a character, then later in the book informs you about his fate. Or the author will describe how a family is brutalized, then describes, almost as an aside -- in the course of a succeeding chapter about his own adventures in war-torn Kosovo -- how he meets a traumatized eyewitness to the previous account. In this way, the reader becomes an observer not only of what was happening inside Kosovo during the NATO bombardment but of what was happening to McAllester himself and how he managed to assemble his book."
--"Washington Post"

"The power of McAllester's extraordinary book lies not in its comprehensiveness or its literary polish-though there are many brilliantly moving and perceptive passages-but in its shocking authenticity and deep moral concern. One gets the sense that he risked his life not simply to pursue a story, timely and important as it was, but because of the enormity of the evil being done and his conviction that, in a world of bland policy abstractions, what happened in those days inside Kosovo had to be told."
--"New Leader"

"McAllester powerfully concludes that a sickening mixture of greed, ethnic hostility, and wartime nihilism has displaced the healing power for love and reconciliation for the forseeable future. One of the most thoughtful accounts of the conflict in Kosovo to date conveyed with taut journalistic clarity that should ensure the book a broad range of readers."
--"Kirkus, Starred Review"

"This account is not of the avirtual wara that Westerners saw on their television screens but of the real effects on people who consider the ravaged area home."
--"Library Journal, Starred Review"

"McAllester's spare, understated prose is potent as is his exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war."
--"Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"

"In a twist that took McAllester as much by surprise as it will the reader, it appears that Isa Bala lived in that ill-defined world too, a world where people make deals and concessions just to survive another day. Perhaps he believed that through such compromises, his family would be safe. if so, he was tragically wrong."
--"Sunday Telegraph (London)"

"Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is a gripping, if depressing, account of what McAllester found among the ruins. . . . There is no bravado. . . . He offers vivid thumbnail sketches of Kosovar warriors in the field."
-- "Newsday"

"McAllester offers us the kind of specific detail that we need to make other people's lives human to us. Even more importantly, he tells us how it is to be the oppressor, or at least one of the minions of the oppressors"
--"American Book Review"

For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts longafter the act has been committed.

Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two menone Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia.

In March of 1999, the world watched thousands of Albanian refugees pour out of Kosovo, carrying stories of the terror that drove them from their homes. To Isa Bala and his family, Albanian Muslims who stayed in Pec during the NATO bombardment, the war in Kosovo was not about cruise missiles and geopolitics. It was about tiptoeing between survival and death in the town that saw the fiercest destruction, the most thorough eviction of the Albanian population and killings whose brutality demands explanation. To Nebojsa Minic and other Serb militiamen who ruled with murder, the conflict was about the exercise of power. Today they are alive and well in the new Yugoslavia. So unconcerned are they over the prospect of ever being held accountable for their crimes that they were willing to sit down over coffee after the war and discuss in detail their brief, brutal reign.

The My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968 and the court martial of Lt. William Calley a year and a half later are among the bleakest episodes in American history and continue to provide a volatile focus for debates about the Vietnam War. Other books have exposed the facts surrounding the incident; "Facing My Lai" now examines its haunting legacy through a unique exchange of contemporary viewpoints.

This powerful book emerges from a stellar gathering of historians, military professionals, writers, mental health experts, and Vietnamese and American war veterans convened to memorialize the tragedy. The cast of prominent speakers included journalists Seymour Hersh and David Halberstam, novelist Tim O'Brien, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, military prosecutor William Eckhardt, and veterans Hugh Thompson and Ron Ridenhour--the two true heroes in the My Lai story. David Anderson's reflective recasting of their presentations creates an impassioned chorus of voices that demonstrates why this tragedy remains one of the key emblems of the American experience in Vietnam.

These authors address many of the troubling questions that still persist about My Lai. Why had it been identified as a Viet Cong stronghold? What orders were the troops actually given? Why didn't someone stop the slaughter? But these questions are asked again in the hope that they might lead to a better understanding of what My Lai means for us now.

As these authors show, our nation is still trying to come to grips with the bitter legacies of the Vietnam War. A grim window into the darker side of American history (like the massacre at Wounded Knee), My Lai reminds us of humanity's baffling capacity for atrocity within the crucible of war. Facing My Lai does not allow us to forget or hide from such horrors, but it also seeks to heal the deep wounds inflicted by the war. Its unflinching look at the past ultimately leads us away from darkness and towards a more enlightened understanding of a war that in many ways is not over yet.