Human rights after Hitler : the lost history of prosecuting Axis war crimes / Dan Plesch.
2017
KZ1174.5 .P58 2017 (Mapit)
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Author
Title
Human rights after Hitler : the lost history of prosecuting Axis war crimes / Dan Plesch.
Imprint
Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, [2017]
Description
xx, 251 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Formatted Contents Note
Prosecuting rape : a test case of the modern relevance of WW2 legal practice
Key issues faced in prosecuting SGBV today
Conclusion
A new paradigm for providing justice for international human rights violations
Legal and political amnesia
Creation of the UNWCC
Official resistance to prosecuting war crimes
Chinese and indian leadership
A global system of complementary justice
The development of key international legal principles
When Stalin, Churchill, and FDR condemned the Holocaust
Early Allied condemnations of the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities
The declaration
Abandonment of the Jews nonetheless
Pursuing war criminals all over the world
A global achievement
Commission members and their trial structures
Conclusion
The Holocaust indictments : prosecuting the "footsoldiers of atrocity"
Belgium
Czechoslovakia
France
Greece
Luxembourg
The Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Yugoslavia
United Kingdom and United States
United States
Fair trials and collective responsibility for criminal acts
The fundamentals of fair trials
"It wasn't illegal when the action was taken" : the nullum crimen defense
Hearsay
The rights of the accused
Command responsibility
Superior orders
Group responsibility
Responsibility
Reprisals and the execution of hostages
The overall effort to secure the rights of the accused at the time of trial
Conclusion
Crimes against humanity : the "freedom to lynch," and the indictments of Adolf Hitler
Crimes against humanity
The crime of aggression
Universal jurisdiction
Liberating the Nazis
Forgetting the Nazi past to build a West German future
Harry S. Truman and State Department hostility to the commission
Opposition to the commission's closure
Ongoing prosecution of war crimes
Prisoner release
Conclusion
The legacy unleashed
The peoples' human rights
Complementarity and the UNWCC
Toward a "UNWCC 2.0"?
Conclusion
Appendix A : Timeline of principal allied political responses to Axis atrocities
Appendix B : A note on the UNWCC archives and related material
Appendix C : The UNWCC in ICTY verdicts
Appendix D : One of the early UNWCC charge files for the Treblinka Death Camp
Appendix E : An early Polish charge file against a range of Germans involved in the concentration camp system.
Key issues faced in prosecuting SGBV today
Conclusion
A new paradigm for providing justice for international human rights violations
Legal and political amnesia
Creation of the UNWCC
Official resistance to prosecuting war crimes
Chinese and indian leadership
A global system of complementary justice
The development of key international legal principles
When Stalin, Churchill, and FDR condemned the Holocaust
Early Allied condemnations of the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities
The declaration
Abandonment of the Jews nonetheless
Pursuing war criminals all over the world
A global achievement
Commission members and their trial structures
Conclusion
The Holocaust indictments : prosecuting the "footsoldiers of atrocity"
Belgium
Czechoslovakia
France
Greece
Luxembourg
The Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Yugoslavia
United Kingdom and United States
United States
Fair trials and collective responsibility for criminal acts
The fundamentals of fair trials
"It wasn't illegal when the action was taken" : the nullum crimen defense
Hearsay
The rights of the accused
Command responsibility
Superior orders
Group responsibility
Responsibility
Reprisals and the execution of hostages
The overall effort to secure the rights of the accused at the time of trial
Conclusion
Crimes against humanity : the "freedom to lynch," and the indictments of Adolf Hitler
Crimes against humanity
The crime of aggression
Universal jurisdiction
Liberating the Nazis
Forgetting the Nazi past to build a West German future
Harry S. Truman and State Department hostility to the commission
Opposition to the commission's closure
Ongoing prosecution of war crimes
Prisoner release
Conclusion
The legacy unleashed
The peoples' human rights
Complementarity and the UNWCC
Toward a "UNWCC 2.0"?
Conclusion
Appendix A : Timeline of principal allied political responses to Axis atrocities
Appendix B : A note on the UNWCC archives and related material
Appendix C : The UNWCC in ICTY verdicts
Appendix D : One of the early UNWCC charge files for the Treblinka Death Camp
Appendix E : An early Polish charge file against a range of Germans involved in the concentration camp system.
Summary
Human Rights after Hitler is a groundbreaking history about the forgotten work of the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which operated during and after World War II in response to Axis atrocities. He explains the commission's work, why its files were kept secret, and demonstrates how the lost precedents of the commission's indictments should introduce important new paradigms for prosecuting war crimes today. The UNWCC examined roughly 36,000 cases in Europe and Asia. Thousands of trials were carried out at the country-level, and hundreds of war criminals were convicted. This rewrites the history of human rights in the wake of World War II, which is too focused on the few trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo. Until a protracted lobbying effort by Plesch and colleagues, the UNWCC's files had been kept out of public view in the UN archives under pressure from the US government. The US initially wanted the files closed to smooth the way for post-war collaboration with Germany and Japan, and the few researchers who did gain permission to see the files were not permitted to even take notes until the files' recent release. Now revealed, the precedents set by these cases should have enormous practical utility for prosecuting war crimes today.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Location
STA
Available in Other Form
Online version: Plesch, Daniel. Human rights after Hitler. Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2017
Call Number
KZ1174.5 .P58 2017
Language
English
ISBN
9781626164314 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
1626164312 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
9781626164338 (electronic book)
1626164312 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)
9781626164338 (electronic book)
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