The Publication of His Master Work and the Nuremberg Tribunal

Abstract

Raphael Lemkin’s seminal work, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Laws of Occupation. Analysis of Government. Proposals for Redress, was published in Washington towards the end of 1944, although his preface was dated a year earlier, 15 November 1943. It was a volume almost 700 pages in length, part of which analysed the occupation laws in terms of the techniques devised by the Germans for subjugating conquered peoples, part of which dealt with the impact of the occupation regulations on a country by country basis, while half the book contained an English translation of the German decrees. Lemkin’s main insight was to understand through studying these occupation regulations that the Germans intended to reorganize Europe on racial lines and that this would involve mass-murder and the suppression of other cultures. In violation of international law, Lemkin argued, large areas of occupied Europe were incorporated into the Reich, including western Poland, Luxembourg and certain Yugoslav provinces, and other enormous tracts of land in the East were earmarked for colonization and the Lebensraum (living space) theory was invoked by the Nazis in support of this. Himmler proclaimed that ‘Our task is to Germanize the East, not in the old sense of bringing the German language and laws to the people dwelling in that area, but to ensure that in the East only people of genuinely German, Teutonic blood shall live’.