Political History Commons^™

Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The book Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths is a survey of a vast amount of human wrongdoing. It lays bare the motivations of aggressors who wish to subjugate nations or groups of people and corporate executives and government bureaucrats who make discretionary decisions that harm people. Along with cataloging mass killings by despots and soldiers, the book includes stories about Ponzi-schemers and the deaths of automobile drivers and passengers who were killed by vehicle defects known to the manufacturer. The book posits that “[p]owerful, elite forces are trying to force us backward toward a non-democratic state, one where power, wealth, and prerogative …

Book Review: Children Of The Greek Civil War: Refugees And The Politics Of Memory, Victor Bivell

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The book ‘Children of the Greek Civil War’ makes several key steps forward in analyzing the politics and emotions surrounding the 47,000 child refugees of the Greek Civil War. Although the war was between the right-wing Greek Government and the left-wing Greek Communist Party, it drew in a large portion of the ethnic Macedonian population of northern Greece who had been promised greater freedom and ethnic recognition by the communists. Among the book’s key steps forward are its side-by-side and even-handed analysis of how the war affected both the Greek and Macedonian children, its discussion and comparison of the government-backed …

Putin’S Invasion Of Ukraine In 2022: Implications For Strategic Studies, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This special commentary examines critical issues for the field of strategic studies raised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the waning of major war, strategic coercion, and “War Amongst the People.” Drawing on previous scholarship and current events, this commentary considers the questions raised by the first major war of the twenty-first century. It provides recommendations for scholars and senior leaders on how to work together to address the questions of strategy and policy that have and continue to arise as the war progresses.

Film Review: The Trial Of Ratko Mladić, Iva Vukušić

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

The Mass Murder Of The European Jews And The Concept Of ‘Genocide’ In The Nuremberg Trials: Reassessing Raphaël Lemkin’S Impact, Alexa Stiller

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Nuremberg’s prosecutors prominently used Lemkin’s genocide concept. They also dealt in detail with the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. However, for them ‘genocide’ and the Holocaust were not congruent. They used different definitions of Lemkin’s concept and interpreted the relationship between the mass murder of the European Jews and the entire mass violence of the Nazis differently. Lemkin had little influence on the application of his concept in the Nuremberg trials between 1945 and 1949. The implementation of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention put an end to the broad use of the original concept from 1944. Although both Lemkin …

The Complicated Cases Of Soghomon Tehlirian And Sholem Schwartzbard And Their Influences On Raphaël Lemkin's Thinking About Genocide, Steven Leonard Jacobs

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The article is an examination of the persons and trials of Soghomon Tehlirian and Sholem Schwartzbard, their political assassinations as acts of vengeance for genocide and pogroms, their trials and subsequent acquittals. It is also an examination of the influences of these two events on the evolved thinking of Raphael Lemkin on his conceptualization of the needs for an international law contra genocide. Finally, it also elaborates on what information is now available on both men and their associations, and what was known and unknown to Lemkin and whether or not these two cases remained centrally important to his understandings.

Nineteen Minutes Of Horror: Insights From The Scorpions Execution Video, Iva Vukušić

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

After the fall of Srebrenica in summer of 1995, the Scorpions unit, dispatched to support the Bosnian Serb Army as it took over the enclave, shot six men in Trnovo. The men, three of whom were underage, were some of thousands of Bosnian Muslims that fell into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops, and that were executed in the days and weeks following July 11th. A member of the unit filmed the execution. Fragments of the video were first shown during the Slobodan Milosevic trial, and multiple times in the years after, in the courtrooms in The Hague and Belgrade. …

The Imperial Legacy: An Examination Of The Trends Of Empire And Genocide From German Southwest Africa To The General Government, Laura Guebert

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

This project is an examination of correlations between imperial enterprises of the Second German Empire and the Nazi Reich through the lenses of global and imperial critiques. The three primary case studies are German Southwest Africa, the Ober Ost, and Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, particularly the General Government. This research draws heavily on certain themes and theories developed by leading historians of modern German and Eastern European history, including Timothy Snyder, Ben Kiernan, Shelley Baranowski, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, and Christopher Browning. By understanding the shared trends of empire and genocide, it is my aim to bring the actions of the National …

Book Review: The Failures Of Ethics: Confronting The Holocaust, Genocide, And Other Mass Atrocities, James J. Snow 4995784

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Review: John K. Roth, The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities

Book Review: From War To Genocide: Criminal Politics In Rwanda, 1990-1994, Erin Jessee

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Remembering To Prevent: The Preventive Capacity Of Public Memory, Kerry E. Whigham

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

It is without doubt the case that memory of the past has been and is being used in certain places to justify radical intolerance and unspeakable violence. But for every instance where that is the case, a dozen alternative cases exist where memory creates cohesion, positive change, and a less violent society. This article focuses on the instances where memory does the latter. It first discusses why and how the formation of a public memory culture can be preventive of future violence. Next, it introduces several categories of memory practices, each of which exemplifies the embodied nature of public memory, …

Book Review: The History Of A Forgotten German Camp: Nazi Ideology And Genocide In Szmalcówka, Darren J. O'Brien

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Civil War Or Genocide? The United Nations Commission Of Experts’ Misunderstanding Of The Third Balkan War Of The 1990s, Matthew G. Morley

Grand Valley Journal of History

When the country of Yugoslavia disintegrated into war, the United Nations created a research commission, the Yugoslav Commission of Experts, to document war crimes. This commission, led by Cherif M. Bassiouni, depicted the conflict as a perpetual problem with historical roots and also as having victims on both sides, which presented a legal-definitional paradox to the Security Council, requiring litigation of principles, categorization of conflicts, and discussion of further involvement - if applicable. This paper traces the essentialist understandings of the Commission of Experts and the International Human Rights Law Institute – two groups that otherwise had good intentions to …

The Successes And Failures Of The Battle Of Mogadishu And Its Effects On U.S. Foreign Policy, Philip B. Dotson

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

The Battle of Mogadishu, more commonly referred to as “Black Hawk Down,” was one of the most controversial conflicts in the second half of the twentieth century. It left a lingering question in people’s minds: was it a success or a failure? While certainly there were many failures and casualties throughout the mission, based on a military definition, it was a clear cut success; Task Force Ranger (TFR) accomplished the objective of the mission, despite significant losses, by retrieving the two targets assigned them. Both the failures and successes of the mission, as well as the overarching Operation Restore Hope …

Book Review: Genocide On The Drina River, Iva Vukušić

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Towards A Theory Of Displacement Atrocities: The Cherokee Trail Of Tears, The Herero Genocide, And The Pontic Greek Genocide, Andrew R. Basso

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines how displacement is used as a tool of atrocity perpetration and offers initial observations that will be used to create a future typology of Displacement Atrocities. Perpetrators' uses of forced population displacement coupled with systematic deprivations of vital daily needs (i.e., food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care) combine to kill targeted victims through primarily indirect methods. A preliminary theoretical framework of Displacement Atrocities is offered and the critical elements that comprise this crime are explored. I argue that the Displacement Atrocity crime is a new way of understanding lethal forced population displacement. This theoretical framework is …

Book Review: Remembering Genocide, Tony Barta

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

"Liberat[Ing] Mankind From Such An Odious Scourge": The Genocide Convention And The Continued Failure To Prevent Or Halt Genocide In The Twenty-First Century, Kelly Maddox

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Since it came into force in 1951, the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a document created with the explicit purpose of "liberat[ing] mankind from such an odious scourge," has largely failed to deliver on the promises it enshrined. The twentieth century bore witness to an increasing frequency of genocides, a pattern which is continuing into the twenty-first century with the outbreak of arguably genocidal violence in Darfur in 2003, and more recently, the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2014. This article analyses the failure of the Genocide Convention by exploring its deficiencies …

Joyce Apsel On The Oxford Handbook Of Genocide Studies. Edited By Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press, 2010. 675pp., Joyce Apsel

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. Edited by Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 675pp.

German Reparations To The Herero Nation: An Assertion Of Herero Nationhood In The Path Of Namibian Development, Sidney L. Harring

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.