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 Atrocities on Trial: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes


SPECS: xxx + 327 pages, 5 tables, bibliog., index, 6 x 9
PUB DATE: 2008

KIND: paperback
ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-1084-4
PRICE: $29.95

PUBLISHED BY: University of Nebraska Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum



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Atrocities on Trial: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes
Edited by Patricia Heberer and Jürgen Matthäus; Foreword by Michael R. Marrus





"[Atrocities on Trial] leads to counter-intuitive and otherwise surprising conclusions in several areas which make it a significant contribution to the existing literature. ... Well-written ... balancing a lively if depressing story with a first-rate intellectual analysis [and] first-tier scholarship."
— Michael Livingston, professor at Rutgers School of Law–Camden
"In war-crimes trials, the players can aim for individualized justice or historical lessons, but not both. But individualized justice has one forum: a trial. Historical lessons emerge best from the kind of stimulating explorations that fill this volume. It is an edited volume at its best:...essays that complement each other, reflect off each other, and also create friction, setting off sparks that are constantly illuminating."
— Douglas G. Morris, New York Law Journal
Since the Nuremberg trials following World War II, there has been considerable debate about the nature and effects of war crimes with regard both to the Nazis and to modern-day perpetrators. What constitutes a "war crime," and how has the concept changed over time? How do victors and vanquished deal with crimes that have universal as well as national dimensions? How is the historical reality of war crimes related to their judicial treatment? How are perpetrators portrayed during investigations and trials?

These timely and provocative essays make use of newly available archival sources and a wide range of case studies to provide in-depth analyses of war crimes within a broad historical framework. The essays are organized into four sections: the history of war-crime trials from Weimar Germany to just after World War II; the sometimes diverging Allied efforts to come to terms with the Nazi concentration camp system; the ability of postwar society to confront war crimes of the past; and the legacy of war-crime trials in the twenty-first century. Atrocities on Trial illuminates a dark and timely subject and helps us to understand the ongoing struggle to hold accountable those who perpetrate crimes against humanity.
Table of Contents
Foreword Michael R. Marrus ix
Introduction
War Crimes Trials and the Historian xiii
Part I. Precedents in Punishment
The Lessons of Leipzig
Punishing German War Criminals After the First World War Jürgen Matthäus 3
Early Postwar Justice in the American Zone
The "Hadamar Murder Factory" Trial Patricia Heberer 25
U.S. Army War Crimes Trials in Germany, 1945-1947 Lisa Yavnai 49
Part II. Allied Courts and German Crimes In the Context of Nuremberg
Law and Politics in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, 1946-1949 Jonathan Friedman 75
The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and the Limitations of Context Michael R. Marrus 103
"The Scars of Ravensbrück"
Medical Experiments and British War Crimes Policy, 1945-1950 Ulf Schmidt 123
The Sachsenhausen Trials
War Crimes Prosecution in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in West and East Germany Jonathan Friedman 159
Part III. Postwar Society and the Nazi Past
"No Ordinary Criminal"
Georg Heuser, Other Mass Murderers, and West German Justice Jürgen Matthäus 187
Tainted Law
The West German Judiciary and the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals Rebecca Wittmann 211
Justice in Austrian Courts
The Case of Josef W. and Austria's Difficult Relationship with its Past Patricia Heberer 231
Part IV. Current Aspects and Implications
Crimes Against Humanity Trials in France and Their Historical and Legal Contexts
A Retrospective Look Richard J. Golsan 247
Milestones and Mythologies
The Impact of Nuremberg Donald Bloxham 263
Prosecution, Condemnation, and Punishment
Ethical Implications of Atrocities on Trial John K. Roth 283
Selected Bibliography 305
Contributors 309
Index 313
Patricia Heberer is a historian with the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is the museum's in-house specialist on medical crimes and eugenics policies in Nazi Germany.

Jürgen Matthäus is the director for applied research at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is the coeditor of Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust and a contributor to Christopher R. Browning's The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Nebraska 2004).

Contributors include: Donald Bloxham, Jonathan Friedman, Richard J. Golsan, Patricia Heberer, Michael R. Marrus, Jürgen Matthäus, John K. Roth, Ulf Schmidt, Rebecca Wittmann, and Lisa Yavnai.