War And Genocide

In examining one of the defining events of the twentieth century, Doris L. Bergen situates the Holocaust in its historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts. Unlike many other treatments of the Holocaust, the revised, second edition of War and Genocide discusses not only the persecution of the Jews, but also other segments of society victimized by the Nazis: gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet POWs, the handicapped, and other groups deemed undesirable. In clear and eloquent prose, Bergen explores the two interconnected goals that drove the Nazi German program of conquest and genocide—purification of the so-called Aryan race and expansion of its living space—and discusses how these goals affected the course of World War II. Including first hand accounts from perpetrators, victims, and eyewitnesses, the book is immediate, human, and eminently readable.

This comprehensive introduction to the study of war and genocide presents a disturbing case that the potential for slaughter is deeply rooted in the political, economic, social and ideological relations of the modern world. Most accounts of war and genocide treat them as separate phenomena. This book thoroughly examines the links between these two most inhuman of human activities. It shows that the generally legitimate business of war and the monstrous crime of genocide are closely related. This is not just because genocide usually occurs in the midst of war, but because genocide is a form of war directed against civilian populations. The book shows how fine the line has been, in modern history, between ‘degenerate war’ involving the mass destruction of civilian populations, and ‘genocide’, the deliberate destruction of civilian groups as such. Written by one of the foremost sociological writers on war, War and Genocide has four main features: an original argument about the meaning and causes of mass killing in the modern world; a guide to the main intellectual resources – military, political and social theories – necessary to understand war and genocide; summaries of the main historical episodes of slaughter, from the trenches of the First World War to the Nazi Holocaust and the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda; practical guides to further reading, courses and websites. This book examines war and genocide together with their opposites, peace and justice. It looks at them from the standpoint of victims as well as perpetrators. It is an important book for anyone wanting to understand – and overcome – the continuing salience of destructive forces in modern society.

This edited volume is both a guide for educators and a resource for everyone who wants to strengthen resistance against a major atrocity that besieges human development. Its contributors explore a crucial question: how to teach about rape in war and genocide?

A definitive account and analysis of the evolving genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994, and of the judicial, political, and diplomatic responses to it.

Entries address topics related to genocide, crimes against humanity and peace, and human rights violations; profile perpetrators including Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin; and discuss institutions set up to prosecute these crimes in countries around the world.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has written an original and important study of genocide that reconceives its very nature. He does so not by examining a series of genocides but by exploring the nature of mass killing itself. Our failure to clearly describe, explain, and understand the mechanisms of genocide has made it difficult to prevent, and this book will change that. Through exhaustive research, he brilliantly lays out the roots and motivations of mass slaughter, exploring such questions as: Why do genocides occur? What makes people willing to slaughter others? How do cultural beliefs justify genocide among groups of people? Why has the world been so ineffective in reducing the incidence of genocide? Based on his thoroughgoing reconceptualization of genocide, Goldhagen proposes novel, sensible, and effective measures to put an end to this scourge of humanity, which is worse, even, than war. With the unflinching moral and analytical clarity that he is internationally known for, Goldhagen leaves no stone unturned in this groundbreaking book that will not only transform our understanding of genocide, but every person and political leader who reads it.

Taking as its point of departure Omer Bartov’s acclaimed Anatomy of a Genocide, this volume brings together previously unknown accounts by three individuals from Buczacz. These rare narratives give personal glimpses into daily life in unsettled times: a Polish headmaster during World War I, a Ukrainian teacher and witness to both Soviet and German rule, and a Jewish radio technician, genocide survivor, and member of the Polish resistance. Together, they offer a prismatic perspective on a world remote from our own that nonetheless helps us understand how people not unlike ourselves responded to mass violence and destruction.

From the tragic workings of the Holocaust and Hiroshima to contemporary examples of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, this provocative collection of original essays examines the enduring impact of cataclysmic events on the modern human psyche. Inspired by the career of Robert Jay Lifton, the distinguished contributors use a wide range of disciplinary and methodological approaches to probe society, culture, and politics in the nuclear age and they explore the therapeutic value of artistic expression to witnesses and survivors of mass violence. The essays convey a message of hope by displaying the remarkable diversity of human responses to extreme adversity and by concluding that intellectuals and professionals have an abiding obligation to act responsibly in a world of violence and to provide healing images of transformation. Contributors: Paul Boyer, John M. Broughton, Harvey Cox, Wendy Doniger, Bonnie Dugger, Kai Erikson, Richard Falk, Michael Flynn, Eva Fogelman, John Fousek, Elinor Fuchs, Lane Gerber, Charles Green, Hillel Levine, John E. Mack, Karen Malpede, Eric Markusen, Saul Mendlovitz, Greg Mitchell, George L. Mosse, Ashis Nandy, Martin J. Sherwin, Victor W. Sidel, Bennett Simon, Charles B. Strozier, Steven M. Weine, Roger Williamson, Howard Zinn

Genocide and war crimes are increasingly the focus of scholarly and activist attention. Much controversy exists over how, precisely, these grim phenomena should be defined and conceptualized. Genocide, War Crimes & the West tackles this controversy, and clarifies our understanding of an important but under-researched dimension: the involvement of the US and other liberal democracies in actions that are conventionally depicted as the exclusive province of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. Many of the authors are eminent scholars and/or renowned activists; in most cases, their contributions are specifically written for this volume. In the opening and closing sections of the book, analytical issues are considered, including questions of responsibility for genocide and war crimes, and institutional responses at both the domestic and international levels. The central section is devoted to an unprecedentedly broad range of original case studies of western involvement, or alleged involvement, in war crimes and genocide. At a moment in history when terrorism has become a near universal focus of public attention, this volume makes clear why the West, as a result of both its historical legacy and contemporary actions, so often excites widespread resentment and opposition throughout the rest of the world.

The Rwandan genocide has become a touchstone for debates about the causes of mass violence and the responsibilities of the international community. Yet a number of key questions about this tragedy remain unanswered: How did the violence spread from community to community and so rapidly engulf the nation? Why did individuals make decisions that led them to take up machetes against their neighbors? And what was the logic that drove the campaign of extermination? According to Scott Straus, a social scientist and former journalist in East Africa for several years (who received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his reporting for the Houston Chronicle), many of the widely held beliefs about the causes and course of genocide in Rwanda are incomplete. They focus largely on the actions of the ruling elite or the inaction of the international community. Considerably less is known about how and why elite decisions became widespread exterminatory violence. Challenging the prevailing wisdom, Straus provides substantial new evidence about local patterns of violence, using original research-including the most comprehensive surveys yet undertaken among convicted perpetrators-to assess competing theories about the causes and dynamics of the genocide. Current interpretations stress three main causes for the genocide: ethnic identity, ideology, and mass-media indoctrination (in particular the influence of hate radio). Straus's research does not deny the importance of ethnicity, but he finds that it operated more as a background condition. Instead, Straus emphasizes fear and intra-ethnic intimidation as the primary drivers of the violence. A defensive civil war and the assassination of a president created a feeling of acute insecurity. Rwanda's unusually effective state was also central, as was the country's geography and population density, which limited the number of exit options for both victims and perpetrators. In conclusion, Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a new, dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in recent history-the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans-and assessing the future likelihood of such events.

This timely handbook offers an examination of man's history of war crimes and the parallel development of rules of war to prevent them in the future. Kosovo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Auschwitz. War crimes have occurred in regions around the world and continue to this day. Although atrocities are as old as war itself, they did not become punishable crimes until the law evolved to define them as such. War Crimes, Genocide, and the Law: A Guide to the Issues examines the types of war crimes and the motivations behind them, as well as the laws that seek to control and abolish these heinous acts. Within the handbook, centuries of war crimes and genocides are analyzed and catalogued. At the same time, the author offers a history of the development of the rules of war, enabling readers to grasp the importance of such precedent-setting events as the 1946 Nuremberg Trials, and to see the gradual evolution of the laws intended to punish perpetrators and prevent future barbarism.

Cubanske Frihedskrig 1895 - 1898. Bogen handler om Cubas krig for at opnå uafhængighed af Spanien. Spanien satte alt ind på ikke at miste Cuba, og krigen blev ført med stor grusomhed og kostede mange civile cubanere livet, bl.a. i koncentrationslejre oprettet af spanierne. I 1898 greb USA, der havde store økonomiske interesser på Cuba, ind og afsluttede krigen, der sluttede med Spaniens nederlag få måneder senere og førte til oprettelsen af Guantánamo basen og Cubas selvstændighed i 1902.

Among the many myths about the relationship of Nazism to the mass of the German population, few proved more powerful in postwar West Germany than the notion that the Wehrmacht had not been involved in the crimes of the Third Reich. Former generals were particularly effective in spreading, through memoirs and speeches, the legend that millions of German soldiers had fought an honest and "clean" war and that mass murder, especially in the East, was entirely the work of Himmler's SS. This volume contains the most important contributions by distinguished historians who have thoroughly demolished this Wehrmacht myth. The picture that emerges from this collection is a depressing one and raises many questions about why "ordinary men" got involved as perpetrators and bystanders in an unprecedented program of extermination of "racially inferior" men, women, and children in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Those who have seen these terrible photos of mass executions and other atrocities, currently on show in an exhibition in Germany and soon to be in the United States, will find this volume most enlightening. Hannes Heer is a historian and film director. Klaus Naumann is a historain and journalist; both are Fellows of the Hamburg Institute for Social Studies.

Combining history, politics, and critical analysis, he revisits the killing fields of Cambodia, documents the three-month Hutu "machete genocide" of about 800,000 Tutsi villagers in Rwanda, and casts recent headlines from Kosovo in the light of these other conflicts."--BOOK JACKET.

On June 22, 1941, Hitler began what would be the most important campaign of the European theater. The war against the Soviet Union would leave tens of millions of Soviet citizens dead and large parts of the country in ruins. This title provides a concise history of the Germans' opening campaign of conquest and genocide in 1941.

In this intellectually and politically potent new book, Martin Shaw proposes a way through the confusion surrounding the idea of genocide. He considers the origins and development of the concept and its relationships to other forms of political violence. Offering a radical critique of the existing literature on genocide, Shaw argues that what distinguishes genocide from more legitimate warfare is that the enemies targeted are groups and individuals of a civilian character. He vividly illustrates his argument from a wide range of historical episodes, and shows how the question 'What is genocide?' matters politically whenever populations are threatened by violence. This compelling book will undoubtedly open up vigorous debate, appealing to students and scholars across the social sciences and in law. Shaw's arguments will be of lasting importance.

He then examines the pacifist reaction in interwar France to show how it contributed to a climate of collaboration with dictatorship and mass murder.

Based on extensive research into the and newspaper framing of the Bosnian war. The issues and questions addressed include the critical use of official sources and propaganda in journalism; how media and policymakers interact to detect and frame problems for policy action; and what factors limit the accurate reporting of war.

This title in the Genocide in Modern Times series examines the mass killing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The text clearly lays out the roots of the region's long-simmering ethnic hatred among Croats, Serbs, and Bosnian Muslims, and explains the chain of events that led to the genocide. Also discussed are the complications brought on by the failure of world leaders to step in and demand an end to the killing.