Drawing upon newly-unsealed UN documents, Human Rights after Hitler describes a proven alternative model for international law today.The post WW2 system of human rights and security is under threat, and despite its flaws, nothing better is on offer. It is very timely to discover that the post-war system of values rests on a far larger, richer and more relevant paradigm than we normally understand.
The role of great people – the Roosevelts, Lemkin and Lauterpacht in building post-war human rights standards has been over emphasized at the expense of the global popular, political and governmental that motivated the war effort and propelled the creation of the post war institutions.
My recent analysis of the long-suppressed files of the 1943-1948 UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) provides the evidence of the global effort to enforce Human Rights standards. 36,000 Nazis and their allies were indicted as war criminals by this international body at the end of World War Two, resulting in over two thousand internationally supported trials before courts across Europe and Asia.
