Nazi Crimes and the Law

Description

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.

Nathan Stoltzfus is currently Associate Professor of Modern European History at Florida State University. He has authored, co-authored, or edited four books, including Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany (1996), Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (2001), Shades of Green: Environmental Activism around the Globe (2006) Courageous Resistance: The Power of Ordinary People (2007). His articles have appeared in publications including Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Central European History, The Atlantic Monthly, Die Zeit. He was named an H. F. Guggenheim Foundation Research Scholar and has received research grants from the Fulbright Commission, IREX, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the German Academic Exchange Commission (DAAD), and the Albert Einstein Institution. Henry Friedlander is a retired professor of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of The German Revolution of 1918 (1968/1992) and The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (1995) which received the Bruno Brand Tolerance Book Award, and DAAD Book Prize. He is also a co-editor of Archives of the Holocaust (26 vols., 1990-95, with Sybil Milton), and has received numerous research grants, most recently the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Ruth Meltzer Senior Fellowship, and The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

"The quality of this volume compares very well with that of most such collections. The chronological range of coverage is broad, which at times means that coverage of some periods and issues is stretched thin." -Richard Breitman, HISTORY: Reviews of New Books "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