The launch of Dan Plesch’s book – Human Rights After Hitler – The Lost History of Prosecuting Axis War Crimes (Georgetown University Press) – will be hosted at the Wiener Library on May 4th 2017.
Human Rights After Hitler reveals the work of the United Nations War Crimes Commission – the forgotten Allied prosecutions of thousands of Axis war criminals (high and low), the indictments of Holocaust perpetrators made while the death camps were still operating (at a time that conventional wisdom says there was no official Allied response to these mass killings), and the first proposals to prosecute crimes against humanity before an international criminal court. It also details the US response to this; how growing Cold War tensions undermined and eventually prematurely halted these efforts.
It expands on the material already on this website, shedding light on a vast archive of material that has languished in a sealed UN archive for nearly 70 years to weave together a largely untold story of the origins of modern-day international criminal justice.
For more information, and to book tickets, click here.