War Crimes, Genocide, and the Law

This timely handbook offers an examination of man's history of war crimes and the parallel development of rules of war to prevent them in the future.

Kosovo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Auschwitz. War crimes have occurred in regions around the world and continue to this day. Although atrocities are as old as war itself, they did not become punishable crimes until the law evolved to define them as such. War Crimes, Genocide, and the Law: A Guide to the Issues examines the types of war crimes and the motivations behind them, as well as the laws that seek to control and abolish these heinous acts.

Within the handbook, centuries of war crimes and genocides are analyzed and catalogued. At the same time, the author offers a history of the development of the rules of war, enabling readers to grasp the importance of such precedent-setting events as the 1946 Nuremberg Trials, and to see the gradual evolution of the laws intended to punish perpetrators and prevent future barbarism.

Auteur

Arnold Krammer is Professor of History at Texas A&M University. A highly praised teacher for more than three decades, Krammer has written a number of books in both English and German about POWs, among them Nazi Prisoners of War in America and Hitler's Last Soldier in America (with Georg Gaertner), Undue Process: The Untold Story of America's German Enemy Aliens, and more than forty articles ranging from World War I, through the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Holocaust.