Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century

(Paperback)

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How do societies remember, or forget, the wartime atrocities their soldiers and citizens may have committed In this volume, leading historians explore this difficult, troubling question, offering comparative insight. The book includes original essays on the United States in Vietnam and Korea, the Germans during World War II, and the Japanese in China. Citing recent admissions of the killing of unarmed Koreans by American troops at No Gun Ri, newly unearthed evidence of atrocities committed by German soldiers (who were not affiliated with the Nazi SS) on the Russian front, and a new spate of information on Japanese barbarity in China during World War II, the essays sketch a distinctive, repeated pattern from country to country, which typically includes a half-century of denial before a given society is prepared to confront these kinds of grizzly truths about the behaviour of its citizens and soldiers.

Author Bio

Omer Bartov is Professor of European History at Brown University and author of 'Mirrors of Destruction'. Mary Nolan is a professor of History at New York University and author of 'Visions of Modernity'. Atina Grossmann is an Associate Professor of History at the Cooper Union in New York and author of 'Reforming Sex'.