War Is a Force that Gives Life Meaning

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War Is a Force that Gives Life Meaning

• Genocide and terror in WWII

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To this point..

• Take up the white mans burden
• Send forth the best ye breed
• Go bind your sons to exile
• To serve your captors needs
• Rudyard Kipling

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CONVENTION WITH RESPECT TO THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS
OF WAR ON LAND

• ARTICLE XXIII Besides the prohibitions
  provided by special Conventions, it is especially
  prohibiteda. To employ poison or poisoned
  armsb. To kill or wound treacherously
  individuals belonging to the hostile nation or
  armyc. To kill or wound an enemy who, having
  laid down arms, or having no longer means of
  defence, has surrendered at discretion d. To
  employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature
  to cause superfluous injury
• ARTICLE XXV The attack or bombardment of
  towns, villages, habitations or buildings which
  are not defended, is prohibited.

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Nuremburg PrinciplesArticle VI

• (c) Crimes against humanity namely, murder,
  extermination, enslavement, deportation, and
  other inhumane acts committed against any
  civilian populations, before or during the war
  or prosecutions on political, racial or religious
  grounds in execution of or in connection with any
  crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal,
  whether or not in violation of the domestic law
  of the country where perpetrated.

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RESOLUTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

• Recognizing the necessity of applying basic
  humanitarian principles in all armed
  conflicts,..(a) That the right of the parties to
  a conflict to adopt means of injuring the enemy
  is not unlimited(b) That it is prohibited to
  launch attacks against the civilian populations
  as such(c) That distinction must be made at all
  times between persons taking part in the
  hostilities and members of the civilian
  population to the effect that the latter be
  spared as much as possible

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Auschwitz
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Hannah Arendt

• The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that
  so many were like him, and that the many were
  neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were,
  and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.

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Arendt continued

• Half a dozen psychiatrists had certified him
  as normal More normal, at any rate, than I
  am after having examined him one of them was
  said to have concluded.

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Arendt continued

• Except for an extraordinary diligence to
  looking out for his personal advancement, he had
  no motives at all. And this diligence in itself
  was in no way criminal he certainly would never
  have murdered his superior in order to inherit
  his post. He merely, to put the matter
  colloquially, never realized what he was doing.

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Was Churchill a War Criminal?
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Dresden 1945
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Tokyo Burns