War Crimes

by Henny H. Kim

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0737701706
• ISBN13: 9780737701708
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Greenhaven Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 15 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 10 and higher

Customer Reviews

For young people or students of all ages

The Contemporary Issues Companion series of books is designed to offer readers "a broad perspective in one convenient volume." As War Crimes become more prominent in the news of the current geopolitical situation, this might provide some basic background for a journalism or political science course. High school students doing a research paper might ask their teachers if a single volume of this nature could provide sufficient citations for a research paper which is supposed to show a comparison of a variety of sources. Of the 20 authors in this book, Telford Taylor, an American prosecutor of war crimes at Nuremberg, and Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General, are the most familiar to me.After declaring that Nuremberg Trials in 1945 were "the first time in history that an international court successfully tried and convicted war criminals," (p. 9) establishing "a great moral principle" (p. 9) "that the planning and waging of aggressive war is the greatest crime known to mankind and that those guilty of perpetrating it shall be punished," (p. 10) it took until 1995 to bring an action against "Dusan Tadic, the first suspected war criminal to be tried since the end of World War II." (p. 10).Chapter 1, "An Examination of War Crimes," attempts to establish rules of war, and lists results from the 22 leading Nazis tried before the International Military Tribunal (November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946), 185 other leading Germans "indicted before 12 tribunals, composed exclusively of United States judges," (p. 22) and a Tokyo international tribunal established on January 19, 1946. The French trials of "Marshal Henri Philippe Petain and Pierre Laval--respectively head of state and prime minister of France's Vichy regime" (p. 23) and the trial of Vidkun Quisling, who managed to take over the government in Norway to prevent opposition to a German invasion, were also famous. After a long delay and some unusual capturing of the suspect, the abducted Adolf Eichmann was tried in 1961 "before the High Court of Israel." (p. 23)Chapter 1 also includes a selection by Samantha Powers on "The Persistence of Genocide." An article by Valerie Oosterveld on crimes of sexual violence is reprinted from UNESCO Courier, August 1998, contains reports of mass rape in the former Yugoslavia and charges of sexual violence charged by the Rwanda Tribunal. David J. Scheffer was the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes, and part of a speech he gave on February 24, 1998 is included. A Sharon Clarke article on "the West's right to sit in judgement on the rest of the world?" (p. 42) is reprinted from Living Marxism, July 1993.Chapter 2, "War Crimes: A Historical Overview" starts with "The Development of the Laws of War" by Telford Taylor. In an article by Eric Norden, originally called "American Atrocities in Vietnam," reprinted from Liberation, 1966, Norden wrote, "Many U.S. reporters have witnessed torture first-hand." (p. 77). Donald Wise, chief foreign correspond