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The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials by Kevin Heller,Gerry Simpson Pdf
Several war crimes trials are well-known to scholars, but others have received far less attention. This book assesses a number of these little-studied trials to recognise institutional innovations, clarify doctrinal debates, and identify their general relevance to the development of international criminal law.
The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials by Kevin Jon Heller,Gerry J. Simpson Pdf
Several instances of war crimes trials are familiar to all scholars, but in order to advance understanding of the development of international criminal law, it is important to provide a full range of evidence from less-familiar trials. This book therefore provides a comprehensive overview, uncovering and exploring some of the lesser-known war crimes trials that have taken place in a variety of contexts: international and domestic, northern and southern, historic and contemporary. It analyses these trials with a view to recognizing institutional innovations, clarifying doctrinal debates, and identifying their general relevance to contemporary international criminal law. At the same time, the book recognizes international criminal law's history of suppression or sublimation: What stories has the discipline refused to tell? What stories have been displaced by the ones it has told? Has international criminal law's framing or telling of these stories excluded other possibilities? And -- perhaps most important of all -- how can recovering the lost stories and imagining new narrative forms reconfigure the discipline?
In this classic text, Peter Maguire follows America's legal relationship with war, both before and after the Nuremberg trials of the 1940s. Maguire argues that the precedents set by the trials were nothing less than revolutionary, and he traces the development of these new attitudes throughout American history. The text has been revised throughout, with a new preface and postscript discussing the George W. Bush administration's attempt to rewrite the laws of war after 9/11. Maguire connects these efforts to the decline in American power and reputation. Praise for the previous edition: "[An] intriguing historical analysis."—Harvard Law Review "Outstanding... impressive... a terrific book."—American Historical Review "A five-star accomplishment that will intrigue the reader and prove that, in history, truth is often more fascinating than fiction."—H. W. William Caming, former Nuremberg prosecutor "Perceptive."—Journal of American History "An important and fascinating study, marked by impressive research and moral passion."—Ronald Steel, University of Southern California "A 'must read' for all those interested in international criminal law, war crimes, and war crime trials."—J. C. Watkins Jr., University of Alabama "A sobering exploration of the hypocrisy and double standards that shape the laws of war. Maguire reveals the conflict between American ideology and American imperialism, the Faustian compromises made by our leaders during their elusive quest for justice."—Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking "A pioneering account.... Law and War goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century to trace the history of modern war crimes, their shock value, and the efforts made to bring their perpetrators to account."—Thomas Keenan, Bardian
War Crimes Trials in the Wake of Decolonization and Cold War in Asia, 1945-1956 by Kerstin von Lingen Pdf
This book investigates the political context and intentions behind the trialling of Japanese war criminals in the wake of World War Two. After the Second World War in Asia, the victorious Allies placed around 5,700 Japanese on trial for war crimes. Ostensibly crafted to bring perpetrators to justice, the trials intersected in complex ways with the great issues of the day. They were meant to finish off the business of World War Two and to consolidate United States hegemony over Japan in the Pacific, but they lost impetus as Japan morphed into an ally of the West in the Cold War. Embattled colonial powers used the trials to bolster their authority against nationalist revolutionaries, but they found the principles of international humanitarian law were sharply at odds with the inequalities embodied in colonialism. Within nationalist movements, local enmities often overshadowed the reckoning with Japan. And hovering over the trials was the critical question: just what was justice for the Japanese in a world where all sides had committed atrocities?
In the aftermath of World War II, the Allied intent to bring Axis crimes to light led to both the Nuremberg trials and their counterpart in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal of the Far East. Yet the Tokyo Trial failed to prosecute imperial Japanese leaders for the worst of war crimes: inhumane medical experimentation, including vivisection and open-air pathogen and chemical tests, which rivaled Nazi atrocities, as well as mass attacks using plague, anthrax, and cholera that killed thousands of Chinese civilians. In Hidden Atrocities, Jeanne Guillemin goes behind the scenes at the trial to reveal the American obstruction that denied justice to Japan’s victims. Responsibility for Japan’s secret germ-warfare program, organized as Unit 731 in Harbin, China, extended to top government leaders and many respected scientists, all of whom escaped indictment. Instead, motivated by early Cold War tensions, U.S. military intelligence in Tokyo insinuated itself into the Tokyo Trial by blocking prosecution access to key witnesses and then classifying incriminating documents. Washington decision makers, supported by the American occupation leader, General Douglas MacArthur, sought to acquire Japan’s biological-warfare expertise to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union, suspected of developing both biological and nuclear weapons. Ultimately, U.S. national-security goals left the victims of Unit 731 without vindication. Decades later, evidence of the Unit 731 atrocities still troubles relations between China and Japan. Guillemin’s vivid account of the cover-up at the Tokyo Trial shows how without guarantees of transparency, power politics can jeopardize international justice, with persistent consequences.
After the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the world hoped that the legacy of Nuremberg would be the institutionalization of a judicial response to atrocities committed across the globe. Yet the pledge of "never again" became the reality of "again and again" as the world failed to prosecute those responsible for crimes against humanity in Russia, China, Cambodia, Argentina, East Timor, Uganda, Iraq, and El Salvador. And then the world began to hear daily reports of barbarity in Yugoslavia. This book begins with the inside story of the politics and diplomacy behind the establishment of the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal and the launching of its investigations. It draws from the author's own experiences as the State Department attorney responsible for drafting the Security Council Resolutions leading up to the establishment of the Tribunal and the U.S. proposals for the Tribunal's Statute and Rules of Procedure. Based on extensive interviews and other sources, the book describes the key players in this international judicial drama: the investigators, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, and the defendant himself - Dusko Tadic. Scharf then details Tadic's case, the first of several to be tried before the Tribunal, from indictment to judgement and concludes with an assessment of the success and fairness of the Tribunal. "...Scharf lays out the case for an international War Crimes Tribunal while the voices of the victims provide the call for justice. The book is a fusion of current events and foreign policy told in gripping detail." -- Geraldine A. Ferraro, Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights "Although non-fiction, Balkan Justice reads like a novel, keeping the reader engrossed in the difficulties of the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal and the horrors of the Balkan conflict and atrocities. Scharf, through his first-hand experience in the State Department, provides an insider's view into the world of international affairs." -- Professor Henry T. King, Jr., Former Prosecutor at Nuremberg
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi leaders conspired to commit some of the most heinous crimes in history for which the surviving members were indicted at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials in 1946. However, both the defendants and those who escaped justice by committing suicide at the end of the war perpetrated countless acts of theft, murder, torture, false imprisonment, abduction and intimidation for which they were never prosecuted. The Secret Lives of the Nazis reveals the murderous private feuds which went on behind closed doors as the Nazi leadership schemed and plotted to eliminate their rivals while accumulating vast personal wealth and priceless possessions at the expense of their victims.
Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg by Francine Hirsch Pdf
Organized in the immediate aftermath of World War II to try the former Nazi leaders for war crimes, the Nuremberg trials, known as the International Military Tribunal (IMT), paved the way for global conversations about genocide, justice, and human rights that continue to this day. As Francine Hirsch reveals in this immersive new history of the trials, a central piece of the story has been routinely omitted from standard accounts: the critical role that the Soviet Union played in making Nuremberg happen in the first place. Hirsch's book reveals how the Soviets shaped the trials--only to be written out of their story as Western allies became bitter Cold War rivals. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers the first full picture of the war trials, illuminating the many ironies brought to bear as the Soviets did their part to bring the Nazis to justice. Everyone knew that Stalin had originally allied with Hitler before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 hung heavy over the courtroom, as did the suspicion among the Western prosecutors and judges that the Soviets had falsified evidence in an attempt to pin one of their own war crimes, the Katyn massacre of Polish officers, on the Nazis. It did not help that key members of the Soviet delegation, including the Soviet judge and chief prosecutor, had played critical roles in Stalin's infamous show trials of the 1930s. For the lead American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson and his colleagues, Soviet participation in the Nuremberg Trials undermined their overall credibility and possibly even the moral righteousness of the Allied victory. Yet Soviet jurists had been the first to conceive of a legal framework that treated war as an international crime. Without it, the IMT would have had no basis for judgment. The Soviets had borne the brunt of the fighting against Germany--enduring the horrors of the Nazi occupation and experiencing almost unimaginable human losses and devastation. There would be no denying their place on the tribunal, nor their determination to make the most of it. Once the trials were set in motion, however, little went as the Soviets had planned. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg shows how Stalin's efforts to direct the Soviet delegation and to steer the trials from afar backfired, and how Soviet war crimes became exposed in open court. Hirsch's book offers readers both a front-row seat in the courtroom and a behind-the-scenes look at the meetings in which the prosecutors shared secrets and forged alliances. It reveals the shifting relationships among the four countries of the prosecution (the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the USSR), uncovering how and why the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg became a Cold War battleground. In the process Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg offers a new understanding of the trials and a fresh perspective on the post-war movement for human rights.
An eminent psychiatrist delves into the minds of Nazi leadershipin “a fresh look at the nature of wickedness, and at our attempts to explain it” (Sir Simon Wessely, Royal College of Psychiatrists). When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders, using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. The findings were so disconcerting that portions of the data were hidden away for decades and the research became a topic for vituperative disputes. Gilbert thought that the war criminals’ malice stemmed from depraved psychopathology. Kelley viewed them as morally flawed, ordinary men who were creatures of their environment. Who was right? Drawing on his decades of experience as a psychiatrist and the dramatic advances within psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience since Nuremberg, Joel E. Dimsdale looks anew at the findings and examines in detail four of the war criminals, Robert Ley, Hermann Göring, Julius Streicher, and Rudolf Hess. Using increasingly precise diagnostic tools, he discovers a remarkably broad spectrum of pathology. Anatomy of Malice takes us on a complex and troubling quest to make sense of the most extreme evil. “In this fascinating and compelling journey . . . a respected scientist who has long studied the Holocaust asks probing questions about the nature of malice. I could not put this book down.”—Thomas N. Wise, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine “This harrowing tale and detective story asks whether the Nazi War Criminals were fundamentally like other people, or fundamentally different.”—T.M. Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real
Author : Kevin Jon Heller Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand Page : 528 pages File Size : 53,6 Mb Release : 2011-06-23 Category : History ISBN : 9780199554317
The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law by Kevin Jon Heller Pdf
This book provides the first comprehensive legal analysis of the twelve war-crimes trials held in the American zone of occupation between 1946 and 1949, collectively known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT). The judgments these Tribunals produced have played a critical role in the development of international criminal law, particularly in terms of how courts currently understand genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. The trials are of tremendous historical importance, because they provide a far more comprehensive picture of Nazi atrocities than the main Nuremberg Trial (IMT). The IMT focused exclusively on the 'major war criminals'-the Goerings, the Hesses, the Speers. The NMT, by contrast, prosecuted doctors, lawyers, judges, industrialists, bankers-the private citizens and lower-level functionaries whose willingness to take part in the destruction of millions of innocents manifested what Hannah Arendt famously called 'the banality of evil'. This book starts by tracing the history of the NMT. It then discusses the law and procedure applied by the NMT, with a focus on the important differences between Control Council Law No. 10 and the Nuremberg Charter and on the protection of the defendants' right to a fair trial. The third section, the heart of the book, provides a systematic analysis of the NMT's jurisprudence. It covers Law No. 10's core crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, as well as the crimes of conspiracy and membership of a criminal organization. This section also analyzes the general principles of liability that the Tribunals applied and on the defenses they did -and did not- recognize. The final section of the book deals with the aftermath of the trials and their historical legacy.
From events at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, to the recent trials of Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein, war crimes trials are an increasingly pervasive feature of the aftermath of conflict. In his new book, Law, War and Crime, Gerry Simpson explores the meaning and effect of such trials, and places them in their broader political and cultural contexts. The book traces the development of the war crimes field from its origins in the outlawing of piracy to its contemporary manifestation in the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Simpson argues that the field of war crimes is constituted by a number of tensions between, for example, politics and law, local justice and cosmopolitan reckoning, collective guilt and individual responsibility, and between the instinct that war, at worst, is an error and the conviction that war is a crime. Written in the wake of an extraordinary period in the life of the law, the book asks a number of critical questions. What does it mean to talk about war in the language of the criminal law? What are the consequences of seeking to criminalise the conduct of one's enemies? How did this relatively new phenomenon of putting on trial perpetrators of mass atrocity and defeated enemies come into existence? This book seeks to answer these important questions whilst shedding new light on the complex relationship between law, war and crime.
Can we achieve justice during war? Should law substitute for realpolitik? Can an international court act against the global community that created it? Justice in a Time of War is a translation from the French of the first complete, behind-the-scenes story of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, from its proposal by Balkan journalist Mirko Klarin through recent developments in the first trial of its ultimate quarry, Slobodan Miloševic. It is also a meditation on the conflicting intersection of law and politics in achieving justice and peace. Le Monde’s review (November 3, 2000) of the original edition recommended Hazan’s book as a nuanced account of the Tribunal that should be a must-read for the new president of Yugoslavia. “The story Pierre Hazan tells is that of an institution which, over the course of the years, has managed to escape in large measure from the initial hidden motives and manipulations of those who created it (not only the Americans).” With insider interviews filling out every scene, author Pierre Hazan tells a chaotic story of war while the Western powers cobbled together a tribunal in order to avoid actual intervention, hoping to threaten international criminals with indictment and thereby to force an untenable peace. The international lawyers and judges for this rump world court started with nothing—no office space, no assistants, no computers, not even a budget—but they ultimately established the tribunal as an unavoidable actor in the Balkans. This development was also a reflection of the evolving political situation: the West had created the Tribunal in 1993 as an alibi in order to avoid military intervention, but in 1999, the Tribunal suddenly became useful to NATO countries as a means by which to criminalize Miloševic’s regime and to justify military intervention in Kosovo and in Serbia. Ultimately, this hastened the end of Miloševic’s rule and led the way to history’s first war crimes trial of a former president by an international tribunal. Ironically, this triumph for international law was not really intended by the Western leaders who created the court. They sought to placate, not shape, public opinion. But the determination of a handful of people working at the Tribunal transformed it into an active agent for change, paving the road for the International Criminal Court and greatly advancing international criminal law. Yet the Tribunal’s existence poses as many questions as it answers. How independent can a U.N. Tribunal be from the political powers that created it and sustain it politically and financially ? Hazan remains cautious though optimistic for the future of international justice. His history remains a cautionary tale to the reader: realizing ideals in a world enamored of realpolitik is a difficult and often haphazard activity.
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. 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.
In October 1946, Colonel Presley Rixey arrived by destroyer at Chichi Jima to repatriate 22,000 Japanese who had been bypassed during the war in the Pacific. While waiting for a Marine battalion to arrive, the colonel met daily with a Japanese commission assigned to assist him. When asked what had happened to American prisoners on the island, the Japanese hatched a story to hide the atrocities that they had committed. In truth, the downed flyers had been captured, executed, and eaten by certain senior Japanese officers. This is the story of the investigation, the cover-up, and the last hours of those Americans who disappeared into war's wilderness and whose remains were distributed to the cooking galleys of Chichi Jima. Rixey's suspicion of a cover-up was later substantiated by a group of Americans returning from Japan who had lived on Chichi Jima for generations. It would take five months of gathering testimony to uncover all the details. Thirty war criminals were eventually tried at Guam in 1947, five of whom met their fate on the gallows.
