A century of genocide Weitz, Eric D; Weitz, Eric D
2003., 20090209, 2003, 2009-02-09, 2015-04-27, 20030101, 20050101
eBook
Why did the twentieth century witness unprecedented organized genocide? Can we learn why genocide is perpetrated by comparing different cases of genocide? Is the Holocaust unique, or does it share ...causes and features with other cases of state-sponsored mass murder? Can genocide be prevented? Blending gripping narrative with trenchant analysis, Eric Weitz investigates four of the twentieth century's major eruptions of genocide: the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on historical sources as well as trial records, memoirs, novels, and poems, Weitz explains the prevalence of genocide in the twentieth century--and shows how and why it became so systematic and deadly. Weitz depicts the searing brutality of each genocide and traces its origins back to those most powerful categories of the modern world: race and nation. He demonstrates how, in each of the cases, a strong state pursuing utopia promoted a particular mix of extreme national and racial ideologies. In moments of intense crisis, these states targeted certain national and racial groups, believing that only the annihilation of these "enemies" would enable the dominant group to flourish. And in each instance, large segments of the population were enticed to join in the often ritualistic actions that destroyed their neighbors.
Starting in early 1915, the Ottoman Turks began deporting and killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the first major genocide of the twentieth century. By the end of the First World War, the ...number of Armenians in what would become Turkey had been reduced by 90 percent-more than a million people. A century later, the Armenian Genocide remains controversial but relatively unknown, overshadowed by later slaughters and the chasm separating Turkish and Armenian interpretations of events. In this definitive narrative history, Ronald Suny cuts through nationalist myths, propaganda, and denial to provide an unmatched account of when, how, and why the atrocities of 1915-16 were committed. Drawing on archival documents and eyewitness accounts, this is an unforgettable chronicle of a cataclysm that set a tragic pattern for a century of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Holocaust is frequently depicted in isolation by its historians. A restricted understanding of ‘uniqueness’ has set the Holocaust apart from history and set up barriers to a better understanding ...of the racial onslaught. This book combines a detailed re-appraisal of the development of the genocide of the Jews, a full consideration of Nazi policies against other population groups, and a comparative analysis of other modern genocides. The Holocaust is portrayed as the culmination of a much wider history of European genocide and ethnic cleansing, from the late 19 th century onwards. The book shows that an explanation for the Holocaust rooted exclusively in Nazism and anti-semitism is inadequate when set against one that is both prepared to give due weight to the immediate circumstances of the Second World War in eastern Europe and to situate the Jewish genocide within the broader patterns of human behavior.
Beginning with the negotiations that concluded with the unanimous
adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 9, 1948, and
...extending to the present day, the United States, Soviet
Union/Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France have put forth
great effort to ensure that they will not be implicated in the
crime of genocide. If this were to fail, they have also ensured
that holding any of them accountable for genocide will be
practically impossible. By situating genocide prevention in a
system of territorial jurisdiction; by excluding protection for
political groups and acts constituting cultural genocide from the
Genocide Convention; by controlling when genocide is meaningfully
named at the Security Council; and by pointing the responsibility
to protect in directions away from any of the P-5, they have
achieved what can only be described as practical impunity for
genocide. The Politics of Genocide is the first book to
explicitly demonstrate how the permanent member nations have
exploited the Genocide Convention to isolate themselves from the
reach of the law, marking them as "outlaw states."
After the Holocaust, the world vowed it would never again stand by and permit such heinous crimes against humanity. Yet many subsequent atrocities have gone unchecked, all over the world: from the ...killing fields of Cambodia, to Rwanda, and to Srebrenica. The bloody list continues to grow, led by the unfolding nightmare in Darfur. How and why were the world's best intentions derailed, and what can be done today to put these efforts back on track? The "responsibility to protect: - R2P for short - was unanimously embraced at the UN World Summit in 2005. The heart of this new international norm is the belief that if sovereign governments fail to protect their own people from mass atrocity crimes, then responsibility shifts to the wider international community to take whatever action is appropriate, including (in extreme cases) the use of force. The world cannot, and will not, just stand by. Evens spells out the steps needed to make R2P work in practice and clarifies the misunderstandings, real or contrived, which persist about its scope and limits. He emphasizes the need for preventive action, and for preferring assistance and persuasion to coercion, but he also makes clear when it is right to fight. The book is enlivened throughout by real world examples, analyses of current events, and assessments drawn from the author's own vast experience.
Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman ...Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akçam's most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a "crime against humanity and civilization," the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's "official history" rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that Akçam now uses to overturn the official narrative.
The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic.
By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.
