The Second World War saw the rise not only of new technologies, new freedoms, new terrors, and a new world order, but of new legal issues. This book takes a global perspective in looking at the legal situations in seven major countries affected by the war. Fifty legal issues are identified from the war, ranging from subverting the judiciary and creating a divine military to economic and social issues to genocide and nuclear weapons. And more than 300 lawyers and judges, from more than 20 countries around the wor ...

Tracing war as a legal concept from Roman times through to the twentieth century, Stephen Neff reveals its various roles as a law-enforcement operation, duel between states and a "crime against the peace." He also considers the post World War II definition of war as an international law-enforcement mechanism under U.N. auspices. Although unsuccessful, this attempt did help transform war into a humanitarian, rather than a policy problem. This book interests historians, students of international relations and international lawyers.

"A German-American lawyer gives a unique description of life under Hitler. Judge Richard Posner said he "enjoyed the book very much and that it sounded very honest." The author was taught by Nazi teachers in high school, experienced four years in the Wehrmacht, survived the bombing of Dresden and came to America five years after he had escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Italy. After the war during Germany's occupation, while working himself through law school in Munich, he reported on the Nuremberg and Dachau war crimes trials. Emigrating in 1952 with his wife and two children he took any job a newcomer can get while again attending law school in Washington. Thereafter as an American lawyer he represented for forty years the democratic Germany before US courts in litigation dealing with the Holocaust."

Why did the judges, lawyers, and law professors of a civilized state succumb to a lawless regime? What happened to liberalism and the rule of law under the Third Reich? How many of the legal institutions and how much of their personnel carried over to the West German state after World War II?