Daniel Marc Segesser

Raphael Lemkin and the international debate on the punishment of war crimes (1919–1948)

When World War I ended in 1918 the issue of the punishment of war crimes was central, not only to many members of the governments of the victorious allies, but also to many jurists who had already worked on the topic during the war. David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time, won the election immediately after the end of the war with the slogan “Hang the Kaiser” and Benjamin Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France, insisted that Germany would have to pay for the war and that those responsible not only for war crimes but also for the outbreak of the war would have to be punished. All of this finally resulted in articles 227 to 230 of the Versailles Treaty that were, with the exception of the article relating to the former Kaiser, almost literally also incorporated into the treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. These articles were the work of the so-called Responsibilities Commission set up by the Preliminary Peace Conference and of the council of four, which had decided on the final wording of these articles. Within the commission as well as among the four leading statesmen of the Paris Peace Conference there had been no full agreement on the fact what a war crime exactly was and as to whether the unleashing of a war was to be considered a war crime or not. This was not surprising as the term “war crime,” used for the first time in 1872 by Johann Caspar Bluntschli in his Modern International Law of Civilised States to describe the crimes of franctireurs in the Franco-German War, had not been frequently used before the beginning of World War I and was therefore only loosely defined. Consequently, the commission set up a list of crimes which it considered as criminal breaches of the laws and customs of war. Amongst them were classical violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, but also many crimes that have since been called crimes against humanity, such as massacres, systematic terrorism, deliberate starvation of civilians, enforced prostitution, forced labour of civilians or the internment of civilians under inhuman conditions. Jurists, publicists, diplomats and members of governments were not able to agree as to what exactly a war crime was. Almost all of them—at least amongst Journal of Genocide Research (2005), 7(4), December, 453–468

Dissolve or punish? The international debate amongst jurists and publicists on the consequences of the Armenian genocide for the Ottoman Empire, 1915–23

From the fifteenth century onwards, the rule of law began to play an ever more important role in the western parts of the European continent and forced individuals, who had thus far been free to use force as they wished, to accept the state’s monopoly on the use of force. More and more, the norms and laws of the state regulated the social, economic and political conduct of the people. Liberal ideas from the periods of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution began to shape those norms and laws during the process of legislative reform, which took place in many countries in western and central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. In this context liberal jurists and publicists paid great attention to the principle of equality before the law and the importance of the study of comparative law. In order to further international cooperation on matters of national and international law, some of them, like Gustave RolinJaequemyns, Pasquale-Stanislao Mancini, Tobias Asser or John Westlake, joined forces by founding academic journals and associations, thereby starting a debate on international legal reform. Equality before the law was also one of the main issues that shaped the debate on the future of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, as the existing Islamic law divided its subjects into Muslims and non-Muslims. The latter were tolerated as members of the Ottoman society (dhimma) as long as they submitted to Muslim rule. They had to pay a poll tax, which was usually collected by their own religious leaders, and in exchange had the right to practise their religion. This included some aspects of civil law such as marriage, divorce, education and inheritance. Although the minorities enjoyed some degree of autonomy, they had a subordinate status in many legal matters. Persecutions were rare and atypical, but disadvantages, discrimination and humiliation were part of their daily lives. Journal of Genocide Research (2008), 10(1), March, 95–110

The Punishment of War Crimes Committed against Prisoners of War, Deportees and Refugees during and after the First World War

the trials of war crimes were very much in the forefront of the news during the years immediately after the end of World War II. They then ceased to be of news value except on rare occasions such as the My Lai Massacre, and even then much of the media did not really view that as a war crime. With the events in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Rwanda, war crimes trials have once again become front-page material.

From Bregenz via Turkestan to Solothurn: Military Migration in the First World War in Transnational Perspective

For a long time the First World War has been analysed through national or at best bilateral perspectives. Transnational and global views of this war are a rather recent phenomenon and were pushed by a more general interest in such perspectives from about the 1990ties. This presentation tries to take up ideas of “moving actors” as well as “military migration” and focuses on the example of Romedius Wacker, a medical doctor caught between two worlds, his native Vorarlberg, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the world of his studies and professional life in Switzerland, which in the end made him a citizen of Feldbrunnen in the Canton of Solothurn. In between Wacker shared the life of millions as a prisoner of war in Turkestan, which makes him an ideal example for a military moving actor or a man shaped by military migration, although like in many other cases there are not many sources left to tell his life.

Ein Weltkrieg auf der Kippe: Zur Geschichte aus Schützengräben sowie von Werkbänken und Nahrungsmitteln in den Jahren 1916-1917

In den Jahren 1916 und 1917 stand im Ersten Weltkrieg vieles auf der Kippe. In diesem Vortrag macht der Autor ausgehend vom Beispiel der Schweiz Verwicklungen und Verflechtungen zwischen lokalen und globalen Entwicklungen im Ersten Weltkrieg zum Thema. Im Fokus stehen dabei militarische Ereignisse, Kriegsgefangene, Kriegsarbeiter und die in vielen Landern problematische Versorgungslage. Erweitert werden diese Ausfuhrunge auf der Grundlage neuer, dank der Vortrage in Dornach und Soloturn gewonnenen Erkenntnissen zur Geschichte des bei Kriegsbeginn in Solothurn ansassigen Vorarlbergers Romedius Wacker.

Wellen der Erinnerung und der Analyse: Gedanken zu Historiographie und Narrativen vom «Grossen Krieg» zwischen 1914 und 2014 in globaler Perspektive

Fur Wissenschaftler wie Medienleute, die sich mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg beschaftigen, konnte 2014 in Anlehnung an Eric Hobsbawm durchaus als ein Jahr der Extreme bezeichnet werden. Der vorliegende Beitrag versucht diese Herausforderung in globaler Perspektive in den historischen Kontext der Entwicklung der Weltkriegshistoriographie zu stellen und damit einen Beitrag zur Historisierung der Weltkriegsforschung zu leisten. Zudem fragt er danach, inwiefern der Weltkriegshype in den Jahren nach 2014 anhielt und welche zukunftige Herausforderungen auf die Weltkriegshistoriographie zukommen konnten.

December 1916: Deadly Wartime Weather

One of the worst meteorological disasters in history took place in the southeastern Alps during the infamous winter of 1916 / 17. Avalanches following a massive snowfall event killed thousands of soldiers as well as civilians. Novel insight into the event arises from a detailed reconstruction based on weather forecast models and shows the potential of combining numerical techniques with historical documents. This helps to better understand worst-case weather events in the past and future and their societal impacts.

Jörg Friedrich, 14/18. Der Weg nach Versailles. Berlin, Propyläen 2014

tinent als wichtige Voraussetzung für den Weg hin zur Entkolonisierung nach Beendigung des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Es ist beeindruckend, auf welcher breiten Quellenbasis der Verfasser seine Analysen und Schlussfolgerungen basiert und dann die weitere historische Entwicklung skizziert. Das Buch hat eine breit klaffende Lücke in der Geschichtsschreibung über Afrika geschlossen, wenn auch die eine oder andere Thematik zukünftig – etwa über Südafrikas Einbeziehung der europäischstämmigen wie auch der indigenen Bevölkerungselite in den Krieg – tiefergehend hinterfragt werden muss. Dafür hat Braukämper entscheidende Anregungen gegeben.

Kriegsverbrechen – Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit – Völkermord? Zeitgenössische Völkerrechtler und die Deportation der christlichen Minderheiten in Anatolien während des Ersten Weltkrieges

Beim Thema Schuld und Verantwortung lassen sich Emotionen nicht immer einfach zuruckstellen. Das gilt auch fur Wissenschaftler wie die Volkerrechtler des spaten 19. und fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts, die sich wahrend des Ersten Weltkrieges mit den Makroverbrechen an den christlichen Minderheiten in Anatolien wahrend des Ersten Weltkrieges konfrontiert sahen. Der politische, wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Kontext, in welchem sie aktiv waren, pragte ihre Haltung und ihre wissenschaftlichen Thesen entscheidend mit. Die „language of rights“, die Opfern eine Stimme geben sollte (Mahmood Mamdani), war daher schon in dieser Zeit auch eine „language of power“. Entsprechend waren die Diskussionen uber die damals noch wesentlich weniger prazis gefassten Begriffe und Tatbestande der Kriegsverbrechen, Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit und Volkermord Teil der damals globalen Auseinandersetzung um die Gestaltung der Zukunft der Ahndung von internationalen Makroverbrechen im Krieg. Die Tatsache, dass der Vorschlag von Gustave Moynier, 1864–1910 Prasident des IKRK, von 1872 fur die Schaffung eines Internationalen Strafgerichtshofes keine Umsetzung gefunden hatte, spielte dabei eine nicht unwesentliche Rolle, wie der vorliegende, historisch ausgerichtete Beitrag zu zeigen versucht.

Hitler's Generals on Trial: The Last War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg

After the end of the Cold War, and with the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Nuremberg Trials again became a major focus of academic research on war-related crimes. Most studies at first concentrated on the trial held before the International Military Tribunal between November 1945 and October 1946 to prosecute the major war criminals of Nazi Germany. Other trials between 1945 and 1949, such as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, those against former commanding officers such as Albert Kesselring or Erich von Manstein, and the many trials against lesser figures of the Nazi system, only later received significant attention. Valerie Geneviève Hébert’s study is a welcome addition to this literature, and focuses on a trial that has so far been neglected: the so called OKW or High Command Trial, the last of the twelve trials of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. Hébert’s aim is not just to reconstruct the legal case mounted against fourteen high-ranking German officers between December 1947 and October 1948. As important, for her, is whether the trial succeeded in its didactic purpose—that is, to educate the German people about the criminal involvement of the military in the Nazi past, in order to provoke a complete rejection of Nazism and militarism. Hébert begins her study with an examination of American judicial policy between 1942 and 1948. Based largely on the studies of Kochavi, Maguire and Smith, as well as on the trial records of the IMT, her analysis shows how US officials were convinced to hold trials to punish German war criminals at the end of World War II, and how they finally abandoned the idea of a second trial before the IMT in 1946. Although the material here is well-researched, it is a pity that Hébert does not discuss the military organization of Nazi Germany, especially how those indicted in the High Command Trial were bound to Hitler as commander-in-chief and to other major figures of the German military leadership. Furthermore, the indictment and judgment regarding the German High Command (OKW) and the general staff in the IMT trial requires a more detailed exposition, because this was the starting-point for the further prosecution of high-ranking German officers in the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, and of Field-Marshal von Manstein by a British court in Hamburg in 1949. Taking up ideas presented in the studies of Johannes Hürter (2006), Jürgen Förster (2007) and Felix Römer (2008), Hébert could have supplied a clearer portrait of the involvement of the Wehrmacht leadership in Nazi macro-criminality. Rather than moving on to the trial itself, in her second chapter Hébert focuses on responses to the trials previously held, and the criticisms raised by German clergy, lawyers, politicians and publicists in the context of other proceedings. It would have been interesting to learn more about proceedings such as the Malmédy trial, the trial of Ilse Koch, and especially the Hostage Case, the only BOOK REVIEWS