Operating between 1943 and 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) was tasked with the goal of identifying classifying and persecuting Axis war criminals in Europe and East Asia. They did so with astonishing success assisting in more than 36 000 cases and convicting hundreds. Yet in 1949 the US government shut the UNWCC down and locked their work away from the public eye. Author Dan Plesch lobbied for years to gain access to the UNWCC files. His groundbreaking new book, Human Rights After Hitler, reveals what was hidden: in part legally-certified documents government transcripts and interviews with victims of torture that prove beyond doubt that the UK and US governments were told about Hitler’s extermination camps in the early years of the war. The UNWCC files also contain US and Allied prosecutions of torture including “water treatment,” wartime sexual assault, and crimes by foot soldiers who were “just following orders.” These lost precedents set by UNWCC cases have enormous practical utility for prosecuting war crimes and provide much-needed reinforcement for human rights efforts today.
Nonfiction
Human Rights after Hitler
- From the Publisher
May 16, 2017
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