Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment

As WWII is now indelibly associated with the Holocaust, it may be startling to recall just how little these atrocities figured in Allied thinking of the time. According to Kochavi, inter-departmental conflicts and maneuvering for dominance within and between the U.S. and British governments, fear of Nazi reprisals against Allied POWs and the political positioning of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin blocked any unequivocal war crimes policy until after an Allied victory was deemed certain in 1945. The United Nations War Crimes Commission, conceived in 1943 by the British and the U.S. as a palliative to public opinion and governments in exile, was never intended by either government to have any decision-making power. Kochavi shows how persistent efforts, especially by U.S. UNWCC representative Herbert Pell, resulted in the powerful new concepts included in the idea of crimes against humanity. Prominent among these was the argument that the persecution of individuals for reasons of race, religion or personal beliefs is illegal--even when nationals are persecuted by their own government. Such decisions forced the incorporation of an entire new class of crimes into international law, for which the UNWCC then gathered invaluable evidence for postwar prosecution. Kochavi, a historian at the University of Haifa, has taken a complicated, nuanced subject and, through extensive research and forceful retelling, has shed light not only on WWII but also on the response to similar atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, in which, once again, political interests have outweighed moral considerations. (Dec.)