La Victoire allemande de 1940 comme justification de l’idéologie raciale nazie

Pendant les derniers jours de mai 1940, Hitler et son ministre de la propagande Joseph Goebbels lancèrent une campagne visant à introduire l’idée que la France avait recruté des « sauvages » noirs et sousentendant que la France était devenue un pays dégénéré. Cette propagande conditionna et prépara les soldats allemands à commettre de nombreuses exactions contre des prisonniers de guerre noirs. Les implications de cette propagande en Allemagne sont moins bien étudiées. Les monographies de Pet..

Homosexual Relations between Western Prisoners of War and Civilians in Nazi Germany

Analyzes court martial files against western prisoners of war in Nazi Germany, arguing that the German authorities cared little for homosexual acts between prisoners but punished homosexual prisoner-civilian relationships very harshly according to Nazi anti-homosexual legislation (§175 and 175a), especially if they involved young Germans. The perceived character of the prisoner and of his German partner influenced the verdict. The article highlights a Belgian-German relationship leading to harsh penitentiary sentences as well as two death sentences for French POWs involved with minors. It shows also that homosexual relations between prisoners and German men over 21 rarely came before the courts, partly because they were harder to detect than heterosexual relations and partly because the Nazi regime always was much more worried about sex between POWs and German women than between POWs and German men

Raphaël Lemkin’s Derivation of Genocide from His Analysis of Nazi-Occupied Europe

The breadth and complexity of Lemkin’s definition of “genocide” results from several influences during the time he developed the concept. One of them is a belief that Nazi Germany was engineering a demographic revolution that would leave Germany predominant in Europe regardless of the outcome of the military conflict. This notion facilitated the assumption of a coherent cynical motivation behind disparate policies, laws, and decrees. Second, Lemkin’s daily work for the U.S. Government reinforced his focus on economic and legal matters and helps to explain why they occupy such a prominent place in his book Axis Rule. His job provided Lemkin with good access to information and encouraged a detailed analysis of Nazi occupation techniques, but it prioritized economic exploitation over atrocities, with a view to restitution after the liberation of the occupied territories. Third, Lemkin’s strong focus on the law and his belief in the curative effect of law, although already evident before the war, was reinforced by his desire to prove German violations to a hesitant American public and by his hope to contribute to a legal condemnation of genocide in all of its forms after the war. This focus favored Nazi violations of international law that could be proven through legal texts and therefore led to a broad definition of genocidal acts while obscuring the most heinous crimes

L'Europe occupée par l'Allemagne pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale

International audienc

La guerre de 1940

À la veille du 75e anniversaire du début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, ce livre propose un nouveau regard sur la débâcle de mai-juin 1940. Les auteurs, chercheurs français et étrangers, adoptent une perspective originale : celle d’une histoire croisée et régionale, qui s’intéresse non seulement à l’Allemagne et à la France, mais aussi aux Pays-Bas, au Luxembourg et à la Belgique. C’est donc l’Europe occidentale dans sa totalité qui se trouve au centre de cet ouvrage, en tant que théâtre de cette offensive fulgurante et point de départ des vagues d’exode successives