Century Of Genocide

Through powerful first-person accounts, scholarly analyses and historical data, Century of Genocide takes on the task of explaining how and why genocides have been perpetrated throughout the course of the twentieth century. The book assembles a group of international scholars to discuss the causes, results, and ramifications of these genocides: from the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire; to the Jews, Romani, and the mentally and physically handicapped during the Holocaust; and genocides in East Timor, Bangladesh, and Cambodia.The second edition has been fully updated and featu.

Why did the twentieth century witness unprecedented organized genocide? Can we learn why genocide is perpetrated by comparing different cases of genocide? Is the Holocaust unique, or does it share causes and features with other cases of state-sponsored mass murder? Can genocide be prevented? Blending gripping narrative with trenchant analysis, Eric Weitz investigates four of the twentieth century's major eruptions of genocide: the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on historical sources as well as trial records, memoirs, novels, and poems, Weitz explains the prevalence of genocide in the twentieth century--and shows how and why it became so systematic and deadly. Weitz depicts the searing brutality of each genocide and traces its origins back to those most powerful categories of the modern world: race and nation. He demonstrates how, in each of the cases, a strong state pursuing utopia promoted a particular mix of extreme national and racial ideologies. In moments of intense crisis, these states targeted certain national and racial groups, believing that only the annihilation of these "enemies" would enable the dominant group to flourish. And in each instance, large segments of the population were enticed to join in the often ritualistic actions that destroyed their neighbors. This book offers some of the most absorbing accounts ever written of the population purges forever associated with the names Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Milosevic. A controversial and richly textured comparison of these four modern cases, it identifies the social and political forces that produce genocide.

A summary of the major atrocities of the 20th century, which looks at the historical context of genocides, and how they were perpetrated. Eyewitness accounts form the basis of the reports which range from the Khmer Rouge massacre of Cambodians, to the annihilation of the Hutu in Burundi.

The Rwandan government forces, as well as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and German, Bosnian and U.S. governments, have all been guilty of the destruction of theirindigenous cultures. This book analyses the major atrocities of our times, including recent cases of genocide in Yugoslavia and Iraq.

Describes the political situations which have resulted in genocide, shows how technological developments have made massacres more feasible, and discusses the influence of larger nations in fomenting conflict

The Rwandan government forces, as well as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and German, Bosnian and U.S. governments, have all been guilty of the destruction of their indigenous cultures. This book analyses the major atrocities of our times, including recent cases of genocide in Yugoslavia and Iraq.

'An angry and eloquent book.' Financial Times'Alain Destexhe, a former Secretary General of the relief agency Médecins sans Frontières and now a senator in the Belgium Parliament, who has writted Rwanda in Genocide in the Twentieth Century, a treatise to counter the catch-all of media coverage in which 'all catastrophes are treated alike and reduced to their lowest common denominator - compassion on the part of the onlooker.' Observer

At the end of World War II, the international community deemed genocide a crime against humanity. Yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century it has occurred repeatedly. This book explains why genocide began to occur in the twenty-first century and why the United States has been ineffective at preventing it and stopping it once it occurs.