Human Rights after Hitler - The Lost History of Prosecuting Axis War Crimes (Hardcover)

Human Rights after Hitler reveals thousands of forgotten US and Allied war crimes prosecutions against Hitler and other Axis war criminals based on a popular movement for justice that stretched from Poland to the Pacific. These cases provide a great foundation for twenty-first-century human rights and accompany the achievements of the Nuremberg trials and postwar conventions. They include indictments of perpetrators of the Holocaust made while the death camps were still operating, which confounds the conventional wisdom that there was no official Allied response to the Holocaust at the time. This history also brings long overdue credit to the United Nations' War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which operated during and after World War II. Dan Plesch describes the commission's work and Washington's bureaucratic obstruction to a 1944 proposal to prosecute crimes against humanity before an international criminal court. From the 1940s until a recent lobbying effort by Plesch and colleagues, the UNWCC's files were kept out of public view in the UN archives under pressure from the US government. The book answers why the commission and its files were closed and reveals that the lost precedents set by these cases have enormous practical utility for prosecuting war crimes today. They cover US and Allied prosecutions of torture, including "water treatment," wartime sexual assault, and crimes by foot soldiers who were "just following orders." Plesch's book will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of the Second World War as well as provide ground-breaking revelations for historians and human rights practitioners alike.

General

Imprint:	Georgetown University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	April 2017
Authors:	Dan Plesch (Director)
Foreword by:	Benjamin B. Ferencz
Contributors:	Dan Plesch
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 28mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	271
ISBN-13:	978-1-62616-431-4
Categories:	Books > Law > International law > General Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Human rights > General Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues > War crimes > Genocide Books > Humanities > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War > The Holocaust Books > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War > The Holocaust Promotions
LSN:	1-62616-431-2
Barcode:	9781626164314

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