war crimes

• 
• 8/7/2022
  

  Why Should War Criminals Operate with Impunity?

  by Lawrence Wittner

  When major military powers like Russia, China and the United States withhold participation in the International Criminal Court, it allows war criminals to do as they please. Leading a more stable international order means joining fully with the ICC. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/2/2022
  

  Distant Moments: Reviewing Joan Scott's "On the Judgment of History"

  by David A. Bell

  The belief in History as a force driving events toward greater enlightenment has long allowed people to punt on making judgment and taking action to future generations. Joan Scott's book examines the seductive power of this faith. 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  4/20/2022
  

  What Did We Do in Indochina? Robert Buzzanco Interviewed

  "There’s widespread politically useful misinformation about the war. And there’s also widespread liberal apologetics for the war."

• 
• 4/3/2022
  

  Can the US Credibly Condemn Russian Attacks on Civilians?

  by Paul Lovinger

  Are American military actions different from Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure only in degree? 

• 
• 4/3/2022
  

  More War Crimes Will Follow in Ukraine

  by Fred Zilian

  To those who believed that war and war crimes in Europe in the 21st century had become unthinkable, Thucydides offers us a simple yet powerful statement: “War is a violent teacher.”

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  3/10/2022
  

  Russia Has a Long and Cruel Record of Attacking Hospitals

  by Leonard Rubenstein

  For a century and a half, international law has prohibited attacks on hospitals, and for as long, such attacks have continued, because of the lack of accountability, argues a scholar of healthcare during war.

• 
• SOURCE: Just Security
  3/9/2022
  

  How the Soviet Union Helped Establish the Crime of Aggressive War

  by Francine Hirsch

  Putin's claims to "denazify" Ukraine are an egregious affront to the historical role of the Soviet Union in establishing the Nuremberg tribunal, and its insistence in prosecuting aggressive war itself as a crime. 

• 
• 12/21/2021
  

  The U.S. Can Legally Intervene in the Ukraine Should Russia Invade

  by Anthony J. Colangelo

  The United States should seek to prevent war between Russian and Ukraine. But if the US intervenes, it's vital that it articulate a rationale that validates and strengthens international law. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  11/15/2021
  

  Should Germany Prosecute the Few Surviving Nazis?

  by David Motadel

  "Most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust have passed away, but German courts still have an opportunity to prosecute those who remain alive. It is the final chapter in the country’s long and not very successful history of ensuring justice for their victims."

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/26/2021
  

  The History the Japanese Government Is Trying to Erase

  by Chelsea Szendi Schieder

    An academic involved in the recent "comfort women" controversy while teaching in Japan warns "In failing to teach what the wartime state did, the Japanese government only emboldens the forces of misogyny and racism and cultivates new generations of violence."

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  5/17/2021
  

  Narrative Napalm: Malcolm Gladwell's Apologia for American Butchery

  by Noah Kulwin

  Reviewer Noah Kulwin argues Malcolm Gladwell's book on the rise of American air power misrepresents the military history of World War II, wrongly elevates Curtis LeMay to the status of a heroic genius, and blithely passes over the vast carnage of incendiary and atomic bombings. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  5/17/2021
  

  How the Shocking Use of Gas in World War I Led Nations to Ban It

  "In 1925, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use of chemical and biological agents in war, but did not stop nations from continuing to develop and stockpile such weapons."

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  3/29/2021
  

  The Other Nuremberg Trials, Seventy-Five Years On

  by Erica X. Eisen

  The defense of capitalism during the Cold War meant that businesses and businessmen who collaborated in war crimes went unpunished. 

• 
• 3/21/2021
  

  Review – The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive by Philippe Sands

  by James Thornton Harris

  The life of Otto Wachter, the SS officer indicted for the murder of 400,000 Jews in Ukraine, complicates the "banality of evil" idea. Philippe Sands shows him as both a bureaucrat and a cruel ideologue, as well as a man sufficiently aware of his guilt to go on the run. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/8/2021
  

  Of Nazis, Crimes and Punishment

  Understanding the neurological changes brought on by adolescence and aging make it complicated to determine what justice is in the case of a Nazi camp guard deported from the United States to Germany in February. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/26/2021
  

  A Harvard Professor Called Wartime Sex Slaves ‘Prostitutes.’ One Pushed Back

  One of the last survivors among the Korean "comfort women" of World War II has denounced a recent paper characterizing the trafficking of women by the Imperial Japanese Army as ordinary prostitution. 

• 
• SOURCE: Journal of the History of Ideas
  10/7/2020
  

  With a Touch of Wisdom: Human Rights, Memory, and Forgetting

  by Antoon de Baets

  A historian concerned with memory, censorship and human rights considers whether there is an affirmative duty for historians to promote the memory of crimes and atrocities.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  2/20/2021
  

  US Deports 95-Year-Old Former Concentration Camp Guard To Germany

  Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen, was sent back to Germany this month for serving as a guard of a Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp near Hamburg in 1945.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/16/2021
  

  Can Historians Be Traumatized by History? (Content Warning)

  by James Robins

  "If the historian—the very person supposed to process the past on behalf of everyone else—struggles with trauma, then it is little surprise that societies as a whole struggle to face the violence of how they were formed and how they prevailed."

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Crimson
  2/15/2021
  

  Journal Delays Print Publication of Harvard Law Professor’s Controversial ‘Comfort Women’ Article Amid Outcry

  "Against the historical consensus, Ramseyer claims in his paper, entitled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War," that comfort women were not coerced and instead voluntarily entered into contracts with Japanese brothels."