Omar Bartov argues that war, genocide and modern identity have been intimately linked. By comparing German, French and Jewish sources, this book demonstrates the need to view the Holocaust within the context of our era's predilection to resolve its conflicts over identity by massive application of destructive technologies.

The former head of the United Nations in Sudan reveals for the first time the shocking depths of evil plumbed by those in Khartoum who designed and orchestrated 'the final solution in Darfur' Against A Tide of Evil How One Man Became the Whistleblower to the First Mass Murder of the Twenty-First Century By Dr. Mukesh Kapila When darkness stalked the plains of Africa one man stood alone to face the evil . . . In this no-holds-barred account, the former head of the United Nations in Sudan reveals for the first time the shocking depths of evil plumbed by those who designed and orchestrated 'the final solution' in Darfur. A veteran of humanitarian crisis and ethnic cleansing in Iraq, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, Dr Mukesh Kapila arrived in Sudan in March 2003 having made a promise to himself that if he were ever in a position to stop the mass-killers, they would never triumph on his watch. Against a Tide of Evil is a strident and passionate cri de coeur. It is the deeply personal account of one man driven to extreme action by the unwillingness of those in power to stop mass murder. It explores what empowers a man like Mukesh Kapila to stand up and be counted, and to act alone in the face of global indifference and venality. Kapila's story reads like a knife-edge international thriller as he uses all the powers at his disposal to bring to justice those responsible for the first mass murder of the twenty-first century - the Darfur genocide - and is finally forced to risk all and break every rule to do so.

The twentieth century has been scarred by political violence and genocide, reaching its extreme in the Holocaust. Yet, at the same time, the century has been marked by a growing commitment to human rights. This volume highlights the importance of history-of socially processed memory-in resolving the wounds left by massive state-sponsored political violence and in preventing future episodes of violence. In Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, the editors present and discuss the many different social responses to the challenge of coming to terms with past reigns of terror and collective violence.

Designed for undergraduate courses in political violence and revolution, this volume treats a wide variety of incidents of collective violence-from decades-long genocide to short-lived massacres. The selection of essays provides a broad range of thought-provoking case studies from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. This provocative collection of readings from around the world will spur debate and discussion of this timely and important topic in the classroom and beyond.

Literature and Justice in Mid Twentieth Century Britain: Crime and War Crimes examines how ideas about crime, criminality, and judicial procedure that had developed in a domestic context influenced the representation and understanding of war crimes trials, victims of war crimes, and war criminals in post-Second World War Britain. The representation of Belsen concentration camp and the subsequent British-run trial of its personnel are a particular focal point. Drawing on a range of source material including life-writing, journalism, and detective fiction, as well as criminological and sociological works from this period, this book explains why the fate of the Jews and other victims of the Nazis was sometimes brought starkly into focus and sometimes marginalised in public discourse at this period. What remain are glimpses of the events now called the Holocaust, but glimpses that can be as powerful and as meaningful as more direct or explicit representations.

Why do people participate in genocide? The Complexity of Evil responds to this fundamental question by drawing on political science, sociology, criminology, anthropology, social psychology, and history to develop a model which can explain perpetration across various different cases. Focusing in particular on the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, The Complexity of Evil model draws on, systematically sorts, and causally orders a wealth of scholarly literature and supplements it with original field research data from interviews with former members of the Khmer Rouge. The model is systematic and abstract, as well as empirically grounded, providing a tool for understanding the micro-foundations of various cases of genocide. Ultimately this model highlights that the motivations for perpetrating genocide are both complex in their diversity and banal in their ordinariness and mundanity.

How did a powerful concept in international justice evolve into an inequitable response to mass suffering? For a term coined just seventy-five years ago, genocide has become a remarkably potent idea. But has it transformed from a truly novel vision for international justice into a conservative, even inaccessible term? The Politics of Annihilation traces how the concept of genocide came to acquire such significance on the global political stage. In doing so, it reveals how the concept has been politically contested and refashioned over time. It explores how these shifts implicitly impact what forms of mass violence are considered genocide and what forms are not. Benjamin Meiches argues that the limited conception of genocide, often rigidly understood as mass killing rooted in ethno-religious identity, has created legal and political institutions that do not adequately respond to the diversity of mass violence. In his insistence on the concept's complexity, he does not undermine the need for clear condemnations of such violence. But neither does he allow genocide to become a static or timeless notion. Meiches argues that the discourse on genocide has implicitly excluded many forms of violence from popular attention including cases ranging from contemporary Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the legacies of colonial politics in Haiti, Canada, and elsewhere, to the effects of climate change on small island nations. By mapping the multiplicity of forces that entangle the concept in larger assemblages of power, The Politics of Annihilation gives us a new understanding of how the language of genocide impacts contemporary political life, especially as a means of protesting the social conditions that produce mass violence.

This document collection highlights the legal challenges, historical preconceptions, and political undercurrents that had informed the UN Genocide Convention, its form, contents, interpretation, and application. Featuring 436 documents from thirteen repositories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, the collection is an essential resource for students and scholars working in the field of comparative genocide studies. The selected records span the Cold War period and reflect on specific issues relevant to the Genocide Convention, as established at the time by the parties concerned. The types of documents reproduced in the collection include interoffice correspondence, memorandums, whitepapers, guidelines for national delegations, commissioned reports, draft letters, telegrams, meeting minutes, official and unofficial inquiries, formal statements, and newspaper and journal articles. On a classification curve, the featured records range from unrestricted to top secret. Taken in the aggregate, the documents reproduced in this collection suggest primacy of politics over humanitarian and/or legal considerations in the UN Genocide Convention.

The Oscar-winning movie 'Bridge Over the River Kwai' dramatized to millions the building of the infamous Japanese 'Death Railway' - the supply line for Japan's planned invasion of India during World War II. But the movie told only part of the story, giving the impression that all men working on the line were British. In fact, 668 Americans - serving on the USS Houston and with the Texas National Guard's Second Battalion - worked alongside the other Allied troops in the jungle camps. In 'Building the Death Railway', their story is told for the first time. In 22 interviews with American survivors, we learn the details of their lengthy ordeal. Disease, punishment, camaraderie, work conditions and attempts to escape are described by the men who were there. The story begins with their capture and ends with their liberation 42 months later. The Burma-Thailand 'Death Railway' was one of the most horrible sentences a prisoner of war could endure. Thousands died in the jungles of Burma. More than 130 Americans - one man in five - never returned home, victims of neglect, abuse, starvation and disease. 'Building the Death Railway' gives the American perspective on events that shocked the world.

In this remarkable and timely book, bestselling author Barbara Coloroso turns her attention to genocide: what it means, where it begins, where it must end. Through an examination of three clearly defined genocides, Coloroso deconstructs the causes of genocide and its consequences, both to the immediate victims and to the fabric of the world at large, and proposes the conditions that must exist in order to eradicate this evil from the world. Based on the author's 20 years of research and extensive travel, Extraordinary Evil is an urgently needed work in an age when acts of genocide seem to occur more frequently and are in the public's consciousness more than ever before.

Famine is an age-old scourge that almost disappeared in our lifetime. Between 2000 and 2011 there were no famines and deaths in humanitarian emergencies were much reduced. The humanitarian agenda was ascendant. Then, in 2017, the United Nations identified four situations that threatened famine or breached that threshold in north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. Today, this list is longer. Each of these famines is the result of military actions and exclusionary, authoritarian politics conducted without regard to the wellbeing or even the survival of people. Violations of international law including blockading ports, attacks on health facilities, violence against humanitarian workers, and obstruction of relief aid are carried out with renewed impunity. Yet there is an array of legal offenses, ranging from war crimes and crimes against humanity to genocide, available to a prosecutor to hold individuals to account for the deliberate starvation of civilians. However, there has been a dearth of investigations and accountability for those violating international law. The reasons for this neglect and the gaps between the black-letter law and practice are explored in this timely volume. It provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes and cases required to catalyze a new approach to understanding the law as it relates to starvation. It also illustrates the complications of historical and ongoing situations where starvation is used as a weapon of war, and provides expert analysis on defining starvation, early warning systems, gender and mass starvation, the use of sanctions, journalistic reporting, and memorialization of famine.

The adage 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' is significantly inaccurate. Ignorance and mistake of law do, under certain circumstances, exclude responsibility both in national and international criminal law. This monograph updates the existing reviews of law and practice on the topic, aiming to go a step further: it takes the analysis of mistake of law as a starting point for systematic observations about international criminal law in general. First, the volume defines the contours of the defence of mistake of law in general theory of criminal law, distinguishing it from cognate defences and highlighting, most notably, its connection with superior orders. Secondly, it gives an overview of the possible approaches to the defence, offering examples from national law as terms of reference for the subsequent analysis of international criminal law. Thirdly, it surveys the relevant law and practice of international criminal tribunals, with a focus on the International Criminal Court, and it contemplates offences for which a defence of mistake of law may potentially succeed. Finally, the author tries to interpret what the rules on mistake of law applicable before international criminal tribunals imply about the purpose of punishing individuals and to the legitimacy of such punishment. Whilst the discourse on international criminal law is more and more concerned with global politics, The Defence of Mistake of Law in International Criminal Law brings back the focus on the appropriateness of imposing a guilty verdict on the individual defendant, a human being constituting the basic unit of each society.

In most societies, courts are where the rubber of government meets the road of the people. If a state cannot settle disputes and ensure that its decisions are carried out, for practical purposes it is no longer in charge. This is why successful rebels put courts and justice at the top of their agendas. Rebel Law examines this key weapon in the armory of insurgent groups, ranging from the Ireland of the 1920s, where the IRA sapped British power using 'Republican Tribunals' to today's 'Caliphate of Law' -- the Islamic State, by way of Algeria in the 1950s and the Afghan Taliban. Frank Ledwidge tells how insurgent courts bleed legitimacy from government, decide cases and enforce judgments on the battlefield itself. Astute counterinsurgents, especially in 'ungoverned space,' can ensure that they retain the initiative. The book describes French, Turkish and British colonial 'judicial strategy' and contrasts their experience with the chaos of more recent 'stabilization operations' in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing lessons for contemporary counterinsurgents. Rebel Law builds on his insights and shows that the courts themselves can be used as weapons for both sides in highly unconventional warfare.

The war, the people, the crime, the cover-up, and finally the truth. An engaging book revealing the shocking truth of the Kavieng Massacre in March 1944. During the push southward in the Pacific by the Japanese during World War II, a large group of expa-triate Australian men and German Catholic mission-aries were trapped on New Ireland, many interned by the Japanese in September 1942 at Kavieng. They disappeared without trace in March 1944. The Australian Government commenced a largely secret enquiry into the fate of these missing civilians, dis-covering that all the Kavieng internees had been secretly murdered by their captors. The Japanese naval officers responsible for the Kavieng massacre elaborately concealed their embarrassing crime to mislead Australian investigations. This concealment was successful and delayed revelation of the truth until 1947.

Pirates and Emperors is a brilliant exploration of the role of the United States in the Middle East that exposes how the media manipulates public opinion about what constitutes terrorism. Chomsky masterfully argues that appreciating the differences between state terror and nongovernmental terror is crucial to stopping terrorism and understanding why atrocities like the bombing of the World Trade Center and the killing of the Charlie Hebdo journalists happen.

A rare and poignant testimony of a survivor of the Armenian genocide. The twentieth century was an era of genocide, which started with the Turkish destruction of more than one million Armenian men, women, and children-a modern process of total, violent erasure that began in 1895 and exploded under the cover of the First World War. John Minassian lived through this as a teenager, witnessing the murder of his own kin, concealing his identity as an orphan and laborer in Syria, and eventually immigrating to the United States to start his life anew. A rare testimony of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, one of just a handful of accounts in English, Minassian's memoir is breathtaking in its vivid portraits of Armenian life and culture and poignant in its sensitive recollections of the many people who harmed and helped him. As well as a searing testimony, his memoir documents the wartime policies and behavior of Ottoman officials and their collaborators; the roles played by the British, French, and Indian armies, as well as American missionaries; and the ultimate collapse of the empire. The author's journey, and his powerful story of perseverance, despair, and survival will resonate with readers today.

April 2004 sees the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, an event generally acknowledged to be one of the most appalling of the twentieth century and potentially avoidable. Linda Melvern's new book, the result of a decade of investigative work, is a damning indictment of almost all the key figures and the institutions involved. It reveals how the French military trained the killers, how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence that the genocide was about to begin, how the John Major government ignored vital warnings that the genocide was planned, how much Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the French government knew prior to the genocide and how the Security Council's shameful decision to evacuate the peacekeepers came about. In addition to these official sources, the author draws on dozens of witness statements yet to be heard at the International Criminal Tribunal, at which she will be an expert witness, and a sixty-hour confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide never before made publicly available and currently locked in the safe of the chief prosecutors at the ICT court.

The growth of scholarship on the pressing problem of genocide shows no sign of abating. This volume takes stock of Genocide Studies in all its multi-disciplinary diversity by adopting a thematic rather than case-study approach. Each chapter is by an expert in the field and comprises an up-to-date survey of emerging and established areas of enquiry while highlighting problems and making suggestions about avenues for future research. Each essay also has a select bibliography to facilitate further reading. Key themes include imperial violence and military contexts for genocide, predicting, preventing, and prosecuting genocide, gender, ideology, the state, memory, transitional justice, and ecocide. The volume also scrutinises the concept of genocide - its elasticity, limits, and problems. It does not provide a definition of genocide but rather encourages the reader to think critically about genocide as a conceptual and legal category concerned with identity-based violence against civilians.