Nazi Crimes and the Law

This book examines the use of national and international law to prosecute Nazi crimes.

Nathan Stoltzfus (Edited by), Henry Friedlander (Edited by)

9780521899741, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 October 2008

238 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.52 kg

"White and Browning offer unique insights into bringing justice to genocide. They step out of pure historical study to merge the past and present in showing how some Nazi crimes (or in Browning's case, Holocaust denial) are still as relevant today as 60 years ago...These essays put forth fascinating real and theoretical considerations of the role of history and the professional historian in prosecuting Nazi crimes, making this already broad collection even broader."
German Studies Review, Stephanie Cousineau, University of Northern British Columbia

This book examines the use of national and international law to prosecute Nazi crimes, the centerpiece of twentieth-century state-sponsored genocide and mass murder crimes, the paradigmatic instance of state-sponsored criminality and genocide in the twentieth century. In its various essays, the contributors reconstruct the historical historical setting of the crimes committed under the aegis of the Nazi regime and examine why postwar adjudication took place only within limits, within the national and international judicial forums responsible for prosecuting perpetrators. The topics discussed include the impact of the Nazi justice system on postwar justice, postwar legal proceedings against those who committed war crimes and genocide, the work of the Nuremberg tribunal and Allied trials, and judicial investigations and prosecutions in East Germany, West Germany, and Austria. They span the postwar period up to contemporary US legal efforts to deport Nazi criminals within its borders and libel trials against Holocaust denials in London and Canadian courts and libel suits brought by Holocaust deniers in British and Canadian courts.

1. German law and Nazi crimes Henry Friedlander
2. The setting and significance of the Nuremberg trials: a historian's perspective Gerhard Weinberg
3. The American military commission trials of 1945 Patricia Heberer
4. Punishing the excess: sadism, bureaucratized atrocity, and the US army concentration camp trials, 1945–7 Michael Bryant
5. Perceptions and suppression of Nazi crimes by the postwar German judiciary Joachim Perels
6. Getting away with murder: the Taubner case Dick de Mildt
7. Cold war pressures and the German prosecution of Wehmacht war crimes: the case of Cephalonia, 1943 Natha Stotzfus
8. The trials of Nazi war criminals in Austria Wilfried R. Garscha
9. The German-German rivalry and the prosecution of Nazi war criminals during the cold war, 1958–65 Annette Weinke
10. History in the courthouse: the presentation of World War II crimes in US courts 50 years later Elizabeth B. White
11. Law, history, and Holocaust denial in the courtroom: the Zundel and Irving cases Christopher R. Browning.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], Second World War [HBWQ]