Law, Memory, and "The Good War"
James J. Weingartner
During World War II, both Americans and Germans committed war crimes, but the ways in which the U.S. Army dealt with crimes committed by their own soldiers were drastically different from its treatment of German atrocities. In fact, by the standards the U.S. Army used to try enemy commanders for war crimes, General George Patton could have been prosecuted as a war criminal.
World War II involved an unprecedented example of state-directed and ideologically motivated genocide---the Holocaust. Beyond this horrific, premeditated war crime perpetrated on a colossal scale, there were also isolated and spontaneous war crimes committed by both German and U.S. forces.
The book is focused on two World War II atrocities---one committed by Germans and the other by Americans. The author carefully examines how the U.S. Army treated each crime and gives accounts of the atrocities from both German and American perspectives. The two events are contextualized within multiple frameworks: the international law of war, the phenomenon of war criminality in World War II, and German and American collective memories of World War II. Americans, Germans, and War Crimes Justice: Law, Memory, and "The Good War" provides a fresh and comprehensive perspective on the complex and sensitive subject of World War II war crimes and justice.
