The Scourge Of The Swastika

Ch. 6 (pp. 163-225), "Concentration Camps", contains a short history of the most notorious Nazi concentration and extermination camps (e.g. Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück) and describes the murder process in them. Ch. 7 (pp. 226-250), "The 'Final Solution' of the Jewish Question", focuses on Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda and on the persecution and killing of Jews in German-occupied areas (Poland, the USSR, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, etc.).

The war crimes trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo meted out the Allies’ official justice; Lord Russell of Liverpool’s sensational bestselling books on Germany’s and Japan’s war crimes decided the public’s opinion. The Knights of Bushido, Russell’s account of Japanese brutality in the Pacific in World War II, carefully compiles evidence given at the trials themselves. Russell describes how the noble founding principles of the Empire of Japan were perverted by the military into a systematic campaign of torture, murder, starvation, rape, and destruction. Notorious incidents like the Nanking Massacre and the Bataan Death March emerge as merely part of a pattern. With a new introduction for this edition, The Knights of Bushido details the horrors perpetrated by a military caught up in an ideological fervor. Often expecting death, the Japanese flouted the Geneva Convention (which they refused to ratify). They murdered aircrews, bayoneted prisoners, carried out arbitrary decapitations, and practiced medical vivisection. Undoubtedly formidable soldiers, the Japanese were terrible conquerors. Their conduct in the Pacific is a harrowing example of the doctrine of mutual destruction carried to the extreme, and begs the question of what is acceptable—and unacceptable—in total war. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

When discussing the German war crimes of the Second World War, modern histories have focused on the Holocaust. While the Final Solution was a unique and unparalleled horror, German atrocities did not end there. The Nazis terrorized their own citizens, tortured and murdered POWs, and carried out countless executions throughout occupied Europe. Lord Russell of Liverpool was part of the legal team that brought Nazi war criminals to justice, and from this first-hand position, he published the sensational, bestselling The Scourge of the Swastika in 1954. Liverpool shows that the actions of the Third Reich, including the Holocaust, were illegal, not merely immoral.

“Lord Russell rises above the well-known abuses of the Holocaust to highlight Nazi abuses on a broader and more savage scale.” —Military Review This factual account of German war crimes of World War II is a formidable indictment of Nazi brutality and of the monstrous organization which so terrorized occupied Europe and murdered at least 12 million civilians. Along with The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes, by the same author, it was a phenomenal bestseller when first published. Drawing on documentary evidence submitted to the Nuremberg Trials and brilliantly written by an expert intimately connected to the prosecution of war criminals, this searing condemnation of the Third Reich’s crimes is factual, objective and unstinting in its efforts to expose the truth behind real or alleged atrocities. It examines Hitler’s instruments of tyranny and repression the SS, Gestapo and Army; German crimes against prisoners of war; outrages committed on the high seas; crimes against civilian populations; the mass use of slave labor; the concentration camps; and the “Final Solution.” “An authoritative and evidential source of the horrors of the Holocaust . . . A benchmark classic that deals effectively with Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil.’”—The Times Higher Education “This is not an easy read—the subject material means that it never could be, but it is a very valuable, legally informed account of some of the most appalling atrocities ever committed, and a valuable reminder of why the Second World War had to be fought.” —History of War