Podcasts about international military tribunal

Last time we spoke about the battle of Nanjing. In December 1937, as the battle for Nanjing unfolded, terror inundated its residents, seeking safety amid the turmoil. General Tang Shengzhi rallied the Chinese forces, determined to defend against the advancing Japanese army. Fierce fighting erupted at the Gate of Enlightenment, where the determined Chinese soldiers resisted merciless assaults while tragedy loomed. By mid-December, the Japanese made substantial advances, employing relentless artillery fire to breach Nanjing's defenses. Leaders called for strategic retreats, yet amid chaos and despair, many young Chinese soldiers, driven by nationalism, continued to resist. By December 13, Nanjing succumbed to the invaders, marking a tragic chapter in history. As destruction enveloped the city, the resilience of its defenders became a poignant tale of courage amidst the horrors of war, forever marking Nanjing as a symbol of enduring hope in the face of despair.   #168 The Nanjing Massacre Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So obvious disclaimer, today we will be talking about, arguably one of if not the most horrific war atrocities ever committed. To be blunt, it may have been worse than some of the things we talked about back during the fall of the Ming Dynasty, when bandit armies raped and pillaged cities. The Nanjing Massacre as its become known is well documented by both Chinese and foreign sources. There is an abundance of primary sources, many well verified. Its going to be extremely graphic, I am going to try and tell it to the fullest. So if you got a weak stomach perhaps sit this one out, you have been warned. Chen Yiding began evacuating his troops from the area surrounding the Gate of Enlightenment before dawn on December 13. En route to Xiaguan, he took the time to visit a dozen of his soldiers housed in a makeshift hospital located in an old cemetery. These men were too severely injured to participate in the evacuation, and Chen had to leave them with only a few words of encouragement. Little did he know, within days, they would all perish in their beds, victims of the Japanese forces. Upon arriving in Xiaguan later that morning, Chen was met with grim news: his divisional commander had crossed the Yangtze River with his chief of staff the previous afternoon. Now, he was on his own. He didn't linger near the riverside chaos, quickly realizing there was nothing he could do there. Instead, he chose to move downstream, hoping to find a secure spot for himself and his soldiers to wait out the next few days before devising an escape from the war zone.  He was fortunate, for soon the Japanese would live up to their notorious reputation developed during their advance from Shanghai; they were not inclined to take prisoners. That afternoon, several hundred Chinese soldiers arrived at the northern end of the Safety Zone. The committee responsible for the area stated that they could offer no assistance. In a misguided attempt to boost morale, they suggested that if the soldiers surrendered and promised not to engage in combat, the Japanese would likely show them "merciful treatment." This optimism was woefully misplaced. Later that same day, Japanese troops entered the zone, dragging out 200 Chinese men, the majority of them soldiers, for execution just outside the city. On December 13, Japanese soldiers started patrolling the riverbank, shooting at anything and anyone floating downstream. Their comrades aboard naval vessels in the river cheered them on, applauding each time they struck another helpless victim in the water. Civilians were not spared either. While traveling through downtown Nanjing as the battle concluded, Rabe observed dead men and women every 100 to 200 yards, most of them shot in the back. A long line of Chinese men marched down the street, numbering in the hundreds, all destined for death. In a cruel twist, they were compelled to carry a large Japanese flag. They were herded into a vacant lot by a couple of Japanese soldiers and as recalled by American correspondent Archibald Steele "There, they were brutally shot dead in small groups. One Japanese soldier stood over the growing pile of corpses, firing into any bodies that showed movement." The killings commenced almost immediately after the fall of Nanjing. The victorious Japanese spread out into the city streets, seeking victims. Those unfortunate enough to be captured faced instant execution or were taken to larger killing fields to meet a grim fate alongside other Chinese prisoners. Initially, the Japanese targeted former soldiers, whether real or imagined, but within hours, the scope of victims expanded to include individuals of all age groups and genders. By the end of the first day of occupation, civilian bodies littered the streets of downtown Nanjing at a rate of roughly one per block. The defenseless and innocent were subjected to murder, torture, and humiliation in a relentless spree of violence that persisted for six harrowing weeks. At the time of the attack, Nanjing felt eerily abandoned, houses stood boarded up, vehicles lay toppled in the streets, and the once-ubiquitous rickshaws had vanished. However, hundreds of thousands remained hidden indoors, seeking refuge. The most visible sign of the city's new rulers was the display of the Japanese flag. On the morning of December 14, the Rising Sun flag was hoisted across the city, seen in front of private homes, businesses, and public buildings. Many of these flags were hastily made, often a simple white sheet with a red rag affixed, hoping to be spared. As the days progressed, horrifying accounts of violence began to emerge. A barber, the sole survivor among eight people in his shop when the Japanese arrived, was admitted to a hospital with a stab wound that had nearly severed his head from his body, damaging all muscles at the back of his neck down to his spinal canal. A woman suffered a brutal throat wound, while another pregnant woman was bayoneted in the abdomen, resulting in the death of her unborn child. A man witnessed his wife being stabbed through the heart and then saw his child hurled from a window to the street several floors below. These are but a few stories of individual atrocities committed. Alongside this there were mass executions, predominantly targeting young able-bodied men, in an effort to weaken Nanjing and deprive it of any potential resistance in the future. American professor, Lewis Smythe recalled “The disarmed soldier problem was our most serious one for the first three days, but it was soon resolved, as the Japanese shot all of them.” On the evening of December 15, the Japanese rounded up 1,300 former soldiers from the Safety Zone, binding them in groups of about 100 and marching them away in silence. A group of foreigners, permitted to leave Nanjing on a Japanese gunboat, accidentally became witnesses to the ensuing slaughter. While waiting for their vessel, they took a brief walk along the riverbank and stumbled upon a scene of mass execution, observing the Japanese shooting the men one by one in the back of the neck. “We observed about 100 such executions until the Japanese officer in charge noticed us and ordered us to leave immediately”. Not all killings were premeditated; many occurred impulsively. A common example was when Japanese soldiers led lines of Chinese POWs to holding points, tightly bound together with ropes. Every few yards, a Japanese soldier would stand guard with a fixed bayonet aimed at the prisoners as they trudged forward. Suddenly, one of the prisoners slipped, causing a domino effect as he fell, dragging down the men in front of and behind him. The entire group soon found themselves collapsed on the ground, struggling to stand. The Japanese guards lost their patience, jabbing their bayonets into the writhing bodies until none remained alive. In one of the largest massacres, Japanese troops from the Yamada Detachment, including the 65th Infantry Regiment, systematically executed between 17,000 and 20,000 Chinese prisoners from December 15 to 17. These prisoners were taken to the banks of the Yangtze River near Mufushan, where they were machine-gunned to death. The bodies were then disposed of by either burning or flushing them downstream. Recent research by Ono Kenji has revealed that these mass killings were premeditated and carried out systematically, in accordance with orders issued directly by Prince Asaka. A soldier from the IJA's 13th Division described killing wounded survivors of the Mufushan massacre in his diary “I figured that I'd never get another chance like this, so I stabbed thirty of the damned Chinks. Climbing atop the mountain of corpses, I felt like a real devil-slayer, stabbing again and again, with all my might. 'Ugh, ugh,' the Chinks groaned. There were old folks as well as kids, but we killed them lock, stock, and barrel. I also borrowed a buddy's sword and tried to decapitate some. I've never experienced anything so unusual”. Frequently, the Japanese just left their victims wherever they fell. Corpses began to accumulate in the streets, exposed to the elements and onlookers. Cars constantly were forced to run over corpses. Corpses were scavenged by stray dogs, which, in turn, were consumed by starving people. The water became toxic; workers in the Safety Zone discovered ponds clogged with human remains. In other instances, the Japanese gathered their machine-gunned or bayoneted victims into large heaps, doused them in kerosene, and set them ablaze. Archibald Steele wrote for the Chicago Daily News on December 17th “I saw a grisly scene at the north gate, where what was once a group of 200 men had become a smoldering mass of flesh and bones, so severely burned around the neck and head that it was difficult to believe he was still human.” During the chaos in the beginning, whereupon the Japanese had not yet fully conquered the city, its defenders scrambled desperately to escape before it was too late. Individually or in small groups, they sought vulnerabilities in the enemy lines, acutely aware that their survival hinged on their success. Months of conflict had trained them to expect no mercy if captured; previous experiences had instilled in them the belief that a swift death at the hands of the Japanese would be a fortunate outcome. On December 12, amid intense artillery fire and aerial bombardment, General Tang Sheng-chi issued the order for his troops to retreat. However, conflicting directives and a breakdown in discipline transformed the ensuing events into a disaster. While some Chinese units successfully crossed the river, a far greater number were ensnared in the widespread chaos that engulfed the city. In their desperation to evade capture, some Chinese soldiers resorted to stripping civilians of their clothing to disguise themselves, while many others were shot by their own supervisory units as they attempted to flee.Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of individual escape stories emerged from this period. In some rare instances, entire units, even up to divisional strength, successfully infiltrated Japanese lines to reach safety. For others, such as the 156th Division, there were detailed plans outlining escape routes from Nanjing. Several soldiers and officers adhered to this three-day trek, skillfully evading Japanese patrols until they reached Ningguo, located south of the capital. Nonetheless, these cases were exceptions. The vast majority of soldiers from China's defeated army faced significant risk and were more likely to be captured than to escape. Some of Chiang Kai-shek's most elite units suffered near total annihilation. Only about a thousand soldiers from the 88th Division managed to cross the Yangtze safely, as did another thousand from the Training Division, while a mere 300 from the 87th Division survived. Even for units like the 156th Division, the escape plans were only effective for those who learned of them. These plans were hurriedly disseminated through the ranks as defeat loomed, leaving mere chance to determine who received the information. Many stayed trapped in Nanjing, which had become a fatal snare. One day, Japanese soldiers visited schools within Nanjing's Safety Zone, aware that these locations sheltered many refugees. They called for all former soldiers to step forward, promising safety in exchange for labor. Many believed that the long days of hiding were finally coming to an end and complied with the request. However, they were led to an abandoned house, where they were stripped naked and bound together in groups of five. Outside, a large bonfire had been ignited. They were then bayoneted and, while still alive, thrown onto the flames. Only a few managed to escape and share the horrifying tale. The Japanese were of course well aware that numerous soldiers were hiding in Nanjing, disguised as locals, evidenced by the piles of military uniforms and equipment accumulating in the streets. Consequently, they initiated a systematic search for soldiers within hours of taking control. The Safety Zone was not spared, as the Japanese Army suspected that Chinese soldiers had sought refuge there. On December 16, they raided Ginling College, despite a policy prohibiting the admission of men, except for elderly residents in a designated dining room. The soldiers brought axes to force open doors that were not immediately complied with and positioned six machine guns on the campus, prepared to fire at anyone attempting to escape. Ultimately, they found nothing. In cases where they did encounter young men of military age, the soldiers lined them up, scrutinizing for distinct telltale features such as close-cropped hair, helmet marks, or shoulder blisters from carrying a rifle. Many men, who had never served in the military but bore callouses from hard manual labor, were captured based on the assumption that such marks indicated military experience. As noted by Goerge Fitch the head of Nanjing's YMCA “Rickshaw coolies, carpenters, and other laborers are frequently taken”. The Japanese employed additional, more cunning tactics to root out soldiers. During an inspection of a camp within the Safety Zone, they struggled to get the approximately 6,000 men and women to surrender. Before leaving, they resorted to one last trick. “Attention!” a voice commanded in flawless Chinese. Many young men, conditioned by months or years of military training, instinctively responded. Even though most realized their mistake almost immediately, it was too late; the Japanese herded them away. Given the scale of the slaughter, efforts were soon organized to facilitate the killing and disposal of as many individuals as possible in the shortest time. Rows of prisoners were mowed down by machine-gun fire, while those injured were finished off with single bullets or bayonets. Much of the mass murder occurred near the Yangtze River, where victims could be disposed of easily by being pushed into the water, hoping the current would carry them away.As the weeks progressed and the Japanese grew increasingly concerned about the possibility of former soldiers still at large, the dragnet tightened. Beginning in late December, Japanese authorities implemented a registration system for all residents of Nanjing. At Ginling College, this process lasted about a week and resulted in scenes of almost indescribable chaos, as the Japanese also decided to register residents from the surrounding areas on campus. First, the men were registered, followed by the women. Often, women attended the registration to help save their husbands and sons, who would otherwise have been taken as suspected former soldiers. Despite these efforts, a total of 28 men were ultimately seized during the registration process at Ginling College. Each individual who registered received a document from the authorities. However, it soon became clear that this paper provided little protection against the caprices of the Japanese military. That winter in Nanjing, everyone was a potential victim. While systematic mass killings primarily targeted young men of military age, every category of people faced death in the days and weeks following the Japanese conquest of Nanjing. Reports indicated that fifty police officers from the Safety Zone were executed for permitting Chinese soldiers to enter the area. The city's firefighters were taken away to meet an uncertain fate, and six street sweepers were killed inside their dwelling. Like an uncontrollable epidemic, the victors' bloodlust seemed to escalate continuously, seeking out new victims. When the Japanese ordered the Safety Zone committee to supply workers for the electricity plant in Xiaguan to restore its operations, they provided 54 individuals. Within days, 43 of them were dead. Although young men were especially targeted, the Japanese made no distinctions based on age or sex. American missionary John G. Magee documented numerous instances of indiscriminate killings, including the chilling account of two families nearly exterminated. Stabbings, shootings, and rapes marked the slaughter of three generations of innocents, including toddlers aged four and two; the older child was bayoneted, while the younger was struck in the head with a sword. The only survivors were a badly injured eight-year-old girl and her four-year-old sister, who spent the following fortnight beside their mother's decaying body. The violence was often accompanied by various forms of humiliation, as if to utterly break the spirit of the conquered people. One woman lost her parents and three children. When she purchased a coffin for her father, a Japanese soldier tore the lid off and discarded the old man's body in the street. Another soldier, in a drunken stupor, raped a Chinese woman and then vomited on her. In yet another incident, a soldier encountered a family of six huddled over a pot of thin rice soup; he stepped over them and urinated into their pot before continuing on his way, laughing heartlessly. The atrocities committed at Nanjing were not akin to something like the Holocaust. Within places like Auschwitz killings became industrialized and often took on an impersonal, unemotional character. The murders in Nanjing had an almost intimate quality, with each individual perpetrator bearing the blood of their victims on their hands, sometimes literally. In this sense, the Nanjing atrocities resemble the early Holocaust killings executed by German Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, prior to the implementation of gas chambers. How many died during the Nanjing Massacre? Eyewitnesses at the time recognized that the Japanese behavior had few immediate precedents. Missionary John Magee compared the situation to the Turkish genocide of the Armenians during World War I, which was still fresh in memory. Despite this, no consensus emerged regarding the exact number of fatalities, a state of affairs that would persist for nearly eight decades. In his first comprehensive account of the atrocities following the conquest of the capital, New York Times correspondent Tillman Durdin reported that 33,000 Chinese soldiers lost their lives in Nanjing, including 20,000 who were executed. Foreign correspondent Frank Oliver claimed in a 1939 publication that 24,000 men, women, and children were put to death during the first month of the city's occupation. As time progressed, much larger figures began to circulate. After returning to Germany in 1938, John Rabe held a lecture where he cited European estimates that between 50,000 and 60,000 people had died. In February 1942, Chiang Kai-shek stated that 200,000 were slaughtered within one week. The Nanjing tribunal established by Chiang's government to try Japanese war criminals in 1946 and 1947 reported that more than 300,000 lives had been lost following the city's fall. The highest estimate recorded comes from a Chinese military expert, who put the death toll at 430,000. Currently, the figure most commonly accepted in official Chinese media is 300,000, a number also cited by various authors sympathetic to China's contemporary regime. The debate over the Nanjing death toll has been a complex and extensive discussion, likely to remain unresolved to everyone's satisfaction. As missionary and Nanjing University teacher Miner Searle Bates remarked when he testified before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in July 1946, “The scope of this killing was so extensive that no one can provide a complete picture of it.” On December 16, American missionary Minnie Vautrin witnessed a truck passing by Ginling College, loaded with eight to ten girls. When they saw the Western woman, they cried out, "Jiu ming! Jiu ming!" which means “Help! Help!” Vautrin felt powerless, fully aware of the fate that awaited them. As early as Tuesday of that week, she had documented rumors of girls being raped. The following night, women were taken in large numbers from their homes. Another missionary, John Magee wrote to his wife “The most horrible thing now is the raping of the women, which has been going on in the most shameless way I have ever known”. A tentative list compiled by Lewis Smythe detailed instances of rape occurring soon after the Japanese Army entered Nanjing: four girls at noon on December 14; four more women that evening; three female refugees on December 15; and a young wife around the same time. The accounts revealed chilling individual horrors. A 15-year-old girl was taken to a barracks housing 200 to 300 Japanese soldiers and locked in a room, where she was raped multiple times daily. Victims ranged from as young as 11 to over 80. American correspondent Edgar Snow recalled “Discards were often bayoneted by drunken soldiers,. Frequently, mothers had to witness their babies being beheaded, only to then be raped themselves.” Y.M.C.A. head George Fitch reported the case of a woman whose five-month-old infant was deliberately smothered by a soldier to silence its cries while he raped her. Such acts were a gruesome form of humiliation, designed to demonstrate that the vanquished were powerless to protect their own families. Japanese soldier Takokoro Kozo recalled “Women suffered most. No matter how young or old, they all could not escape the fate of being raped. We sent out coal trucks to the city streets and villages to seize a lot of women. And then each of them was allocated to fifteen to twenty soldiers for sexual intercourse and abuse. After raping we would also kill them”. Women were frequently killed immediately after being raped, often through horrific mutilations, such as being penetrated with bayonets, long bamboo sticks, or other objects. For instance, one six-months-pregnant woman was stabbed sixteen times in the face and body, with one stab penetrating her abdomen and killing her unborn child. In another case, a young woman had a beer bottle forcibly inserted into her vagina after being raped, and was subsequently shot.  On December 19, 1937, the Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary “I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet... People are hysterical... Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases”.  Rabe wrote in his diary dated December 17 “wo Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital... Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling College...alone. You hear nothing but rape. If husbands or brothers intervene, they're shot. What you hear and see on all sides is the brutality and bestiality of the Japanese soldiers”. In a documentary film about the Nanjing Massacre, In the Name of the Emperor, a former Japanese soldier named Shiro Azuma spoke candidly about the process of rape and murder in Nanjing. “At first we used some kinky words like Pikankan. Pi means "hip", kankan means "look". Pikankan means, "Let's see a woman open up her legs." Chinese women didn't wear under-pants. Instead, they wore trousers tied with a string. There was no belt. As we pulled the string, the buttocks were exposed. We "pikankan". We looked. After a while we would say something like, "It's my day to take a bath," and we took turns raping them. It would be all right if we only raped them. I shouldn't say all right. But we always stabbed and killed them. Because dead bodies don't talk”. Without anyone to defend them, the women of Nanjing resorted to desperate measures for their safety. The young and attractive cut their hair and smeared soot on their faces to diminish their allure. Others donned boys' clothes or the garments of elderly women. However, the Japanese were well aware of these tactics and were not easily deceived. As American correspondent Snow described, it was an orgy of unprecedented debauchery, involving not only the lower ranks of the Japanese military but also officers who turned their quarters into harems, bedding a new captive each night. Open-air sexual assaults were common. During the first ten days of occupation, groups of Japanese soldiers entered the Ginling campus ten to twenty times daily, brandishing fixed bayonets stained with fresh blood. So overwhelmed, Vautrin decided to prioritize saving lives over salvaging possessions, spending those early days frantically moving across campus to prevent marauding soldiers from taking away women. A particularly tense situation unfolded on the evening of December 17, when Vautrin and other staff members at Ginling College were called to the front of the campus to confront a group of Japanese soldiers. Earlier, Vautrin had received documentation from another officer affirming that the area was a legitimate refugee camp. The soldiers torn up the document in front of her. For hours, with armed Japanese soldiers encircling them, Vautrin and her colleagues were left standing or kneeling, uncertain of what awaited them. Gradually, it became clear that they had been lured to the front gate so that other soldiers could enter through a side entrance and abduct twelve women. As Vautrin recalled “Never shall I forget the scene. The dried leaves rattling, the moaning of the wind, the cries of women being led away.” The staff remained at the entrance until 11:00 pm, fearing that hiding soldiers might fire on them if they moved. This was the only time that Vautrin was unable to prevent rape, a failure that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Some Japanese soldiers, seeking young girls, ordered a middle-aged Chinese woman to assist them in finding targets. When she either could not or would not comply, they shot a rifle across her abdomen, narrowly missing and taking away “three handbreadths of flesh.” When the Japanese Army entered Nanjing, little damage had been inflicted on the buildings, as noted by U.S. missionary James McCallum at the end of December. On the first day of their occupation, Japanese soldiers immediately dispersed into Nanjing in small groups, breaking shop windows and looting the goods within. They carried away their spoils in crates and stolen rickshaws. Initially, the looting was partly a makeshift response to the poor logistics of the Japanese Army. Combat soldiers had arrived well ahead of their supply lines and faced severe food shortages until the roads reopened and the Yangtze River became navigable.  Every building in Nanjing was looted and turned upside down. Everything not nailed down was stolen: doors and window frames were removed, safes opened with rifle shots or grenades. Japanese soldiers often pillaged property while the owners were present, threatening them with bayonets. Abandoned cars littered the streets, typically overturned and stripped of useful items, including batteries. Like Russian soldiers in Berlin seven and a half years later, the rank-and-file soldiers displayed a particular interest in watches. As the scale of plunder grew, transportation became scarce. By the end of December, looting was being conducted using trucks. When vehicles were unavailable, Japanese soldiers resorted to wheelbarrows and even children's prams. Mules, donkeys, and people were also commandeered. Just as during their advance from Shanghai to Nanjing, the Chinese were forced to assist in looting their own homes. A common sight was a Japanese soldier leading a group of Chinese down the street, laden with stolen goods. While Chinese soldiers had also engaged in some looting during their evacuation of Nanjing, it was nothing compared to the scale of the Japanese victors' plunder. The Chinese forces had deliberately avoided breaking into foreign buildings, a distinction that the Japanese disregarded. The American, British, and German embassies, along with the ambassadors' residences, were ransacked, stripped of everything from bedding and money to watches, rugs, and artwork. The American School was looted, and its wall breached to remove the piano. As the Japanese stripped the city, they also began to burn it. While the winter sky could have been sparkling, it was instead filled with smoke from thousands of fires across the city. Some fires resulted from carelessness, such as when soldiers cooked meat from a stolen cow over a bonfire, accidentally igniting an ancient building. Others were acts of mindless vandalism. The Nanking Music Shop saw all its instruments and sheets piled in the street and set ablaze. The extent of the massacre can, to some degree, be linked to a breakdown in discipline among Japanese soldiers. Released from weeks or months of hardship on the battlefield, many soldiers experienced an intoxicating sense of freedom, resembling misbehaving boys. The deterioration of order among Japanese soldiers astonished those familiar with the stories of the stringent discipline within Japan's armed forces. Observers commented on soldiers laughing at proclamations from their own officers or tearing up orders and tossing them to the ground. Some foreign witnesses speculated that this lack of discipline was exacerbated by the absence of visible individual numbers on soldiers, making it challenging to identify wrongdoers. The issue also stemmed from the quality of the Japanese officer corps and their ability to manage a large army of young men, many of whom were experiencing freedom from societal constraints for the first time. Not all officers rose to the occasion; Vautrin witnessed an officer almost fail to prevent a soldier from raping a girl. Even worse, some officers transitioned from passive bystanders, guilty by inaction, to active participants in prolonged rape sessions. While a few attempted to instill discipline among their troops, their efforts often fell short. A Japanese colonel, for instance, slapped a soldier attempting to rape a Chinese woman. Another general was seen striking a private who had bayoneted a Chinese man and threatened two Germans, raising questions about how much of this discipline was merely performative for the benefit of foreign observers. Ultimately, disciplinary measures had little impact. As Rabe noted in his diary dated December 18th “The soldiers have almost no regard for their officers”. The absence of effective higher leadership during this critical period likely exacerbated the problem. General Matsui had been suffering from malaria since November 3, which left him largely incapacitated from December 5 to 15. A subordinate later testified that he had been informed of "incidents of stealing, killing, assault, and rape and had become quite enraged.” Although Matsui may have been displeased by the unruly behavior of his soldiers, it is conceivable that his inaction led to even greater levels of atrocity than might have occurred otherwise. He insisted on holding a victory parade on December 17, immediately after recovering from his illness, which likely triggered a security frenzy among Japanese officers concerned about the safety of Prince Asaka, uncle to Emperor Hirohito. This reaction likely prompted a surge in searches for, and executions of, suspected former Chinese soldiers. The Japanese high command in Tokyo was also aware of the unraveling discipline. On January 4, 1938, Army Headquarters sent Matsui an unusually direct message ordering him to restore control among his troops: Our old friend Ishiwara Kanji bitterly criticized the situation and placed the blame on Matsui “We earnestly request enhancement of military discipline and public morals. The morale of the Japanese had never been at a lower level.” A detachment of military police eventually arrived in Nanjing, leading to some improvements, though their presence was mixed. Some officers stationed outside the Safety Zone ignored atrocities occurring before them and, in some cases, participated directly. At Ginling College, the experience with military police was decidedly uneven. The first group of about 25 men tasked with guarding the college ended up committing rape themselves.  Despite frequent visits from Japanese soldiers in search of loot and victims to assault, the Safety Zone was perceived as successful. Many believed that both the zone and the work of its managing committee were responsible for saving countless lives. W. Plumer Mills, vice chairman of the committee, noted that the zone “did give some protection during the fighting…but the chief usefulness of the Zone has been the measure of protection it has afforded to the people since the occupation.” Shortly after the Japanese conquest, the population of the Safety Zone swelled to a quarter million people. Around 70,000 of these were organized into 25 pre-arranged camps, while the majority sought accommodation wherever possible. Makeshift “mat-shed villages” sprang up in vacant areas throughout the zone. Nanjing quickly became informally divided into two distinct cities. Outside the Safety Zone, the atmosphere was ghostly, with a population dwindling to around 10,000, while within the zone, bustling activity thrived. Shanghai Road, which ran through the center of the zone and had once been a wide boulevard, transformed into a hub of barter and trade, resembling a festive market during Chinese New Year, overflowing with makeshift stalls, tea shops, and restaurants, making it nearly impossible to traverse by vehicle. The Japanese held a degree of respect for Westerners, although this sentiment was not universal and did not always offer protection. Many foreigners tried to safeguard their homes by displaying their national flags outside, but they often found that Japanese soldiers would break in regardless. To protect Ginling College, American flags were displayed at eight locations around the compound, and a large 30-foot American flag was spread out in the center. However, this proved to be “of absolutely no use” in preventing Japanese soldiers from entering the area. Despite this, there was some limited outright hostility towards Americans. Stronger negative sentiments were directed towards the Russians and the British, who were viewed as representatives of nations with competing interests against the Japanese Empire. The Japanese displayed particular reverence for one nationality, the Germans. Rabe would shout “Deutsch” or “Hitler” to command respect from unruly Japanese soldiers or show them his swastika armband, indicating his allegiance to the Nazi Party. Germany was seen as a rising power and rapidly becoming one of Japan's closest allies, a fellow outcast in global politics. However, as time passed, the limits of this respect became evident; individual soldiers began searching for women within the German embassy compound, and eventually, nearly all German buildings were broken into. Despite all the challenges, there was no doubting that foreigners offered a form of protection unavailable elsewhere. Within days of the Japanese conquest, women and children began appearing in large numbers outside Rabe's home, kneeling and knocking their heads on the ground as they begged to be let into his already overcrowded garden.  At 1:00 pm on January 1, the Chinese were proclaimed rulers of their own city, or at least this is what Japanese propaganda sought to convey. On the first day of the new year, a puppet government was established in a ceremony held just north of the Safety Zone. A new five-bar flag, the one associated with the early Chinese republic was raised, signaling a patriotic spirit in a gesture that felt unconvincing. As the new leaders took office, vowing to resurrect their city, buildings burned all around them. The ceremony marked the culmination of two weeks of preparatory work. As early as December 15, General Matsui met with a local Chinese leader, referred to in the Japanese commander's diary only as Chen, who had been selected to assist in forming this new puppet government. Chen had been present in the northern port city of Tianjin two years earlier when Matsui helped establish the Chinese chapter of the Greater Asia Association. He subscribed to Matsui's concepts of “Asia for Asians,” but cautioned that Chinese fears of the Japanese would complicate the governance of the conquered territories.   The new government aligned with the Japanese army to implement a system of indoctrination centered on conservatism, primarily targeting the youth, who were perceived as most likely to resist. The indoctrination included messages like, “You must follow the old custom in marriage, letting your parents make arrangements for you. You must not go to theaters or study English, etc. China and Japan must become one, and then the nation will be strong.” Few were deceived by these attempts to win hearts and minds. The government-sanctioned newspaper, the Xinshengbao, or New Life Journal, was immediately dismissed as a crude vehicle for propaganda. Additionally, the government made minimal progress in more urgent tasks, such as restoring peacetime conditions and revitalizing Nanjing's economy, a challenge made formidable by Japanese brutality. Given the fate of the first group of volunteers at the electricity plant after the conquest, no one could be found to fill the needed 40 to 45 worker slots. The same was true for firefighters. The predictable outcomes followed. Water and limited power were restored to parts of the city by January 2, but within two days, the city was plunged back into darkness. By January 13, the waterworks were still non-operational, and the power supply remained intermittent while fires continued to blaze well into January. The government was not taken seriously, struggling even with the Japanese. It quickly built a reputation for being venal and corrupt. One of its names was the Nanjing Autonomous Government, which a clever member of the foreign community humorously rebranded as the “Automatic Government,” reflecting its actual role as a puppet regime devoid of autonomy.  While Nanjing endured its own nightmarish reality, the city's inhabitants had little understanding of the events transpiring beyond its walls. The first radio news that reached foreign residents came on January 7, reporting Japanese air raids on Wuhan. There were also unconfirmed rumors suggesting that Hangzhou was experiencing similar horrors to those in Nanjing, but details were scarce. It was perhaps expected that reports from afar would be limited in wartime, yet information about situations closer to Nanjing was similarly scarce, and the horrific truth gradually dawned on the city's populace. A Westerner who managed to escape east from Nanjing in early January reported that all villages within a 20-mile radius had been burned to the ground. Outside the city, Japanese soldiers were randomly shooting civilians, including children. A German who drove an hour from Nanjing encountered no living souls. After the conquest, Chinese who managed to leave Nanjing reported that every pond between the city and Juyong was filled with the decaying corpses of people and animals. Many of the atrocities committed during this time appeared to stem from boredom and a search for cheap thrills. American missionary Magee witnessed a young farmer who had sustained severe burns on his upper body. After the soldiers demanded money from him and he failed to comply, they doused him in kerosene and set him ablaze. Similarly, a young boy suffered horrific burns after he failed to lead a group of soldiers to his “mama.” People in the rural areas surrounding Nanjing faced danger from numerous directions. Not only were they potential targets for marauding Japanese soldiers, but they were also at risk from bands of Chinese outlaws, who preyed on the large influx of refugees on the roads and the few souls who remained at home despite the fierce conflict raging nearby. Magee encountered a 49-year-old woman whose home was invaded by bandits looking for money. “When she and her husband said they had none they battered her head and breast with a stool and burned her feet until she revealed their savings of between four and five dollars.” In the absence of a formal government, informal authority was often wielded by secret societies. For instance, the “Big Sword Society” reportedly offered protection not only against Japanese soldiers and local bandits but also against small groups of Chinese troops seeking to escape back to their lines and resorting to theft for survival. What a blast from the past eh?   Rumors began to circulate in early January 1938 that the Chinese Army was preparing to retake Nanjing and that Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers had already been spotted inside the city walls. Many of the small makeshift Japanese flags that had appeared outside private homes in mid-December suddenly vanished, and some Chinese residents who had been wearing Japanese armbands hastily removed them. There was even talk of launching an attack on the Japanese embassy. Word spread that the Japanese were becoming frightened and were searching for Chinese clothing to disguise themselves as civilians in the event of a retreat. In reality, none of this was true. The Chinese Army was still reorganizing after the costly campaign that had forced it from Shanghai to Nanjing and then further into the interior. However, this did not imply that the Japanese had achieved complete control over the city. After six weeks of terror, Nanjing began to reassert itself. Japanese soldiers faced fatalities and injuries in skirmishes with members of secret organizations like the “Yellow Spears” and the “Big Sword Society.”  After the New Year, the population within the Safety Zone began to dwindle. A week into 1938, the number of refugees at Ginling College, which had peaked at more than 10,000, fell to around 5,000. Less than a month after the conquest, many former residents started returning to their homes during the day and then coming back to the college at night. Still, the city was far from safe, and even for those whose homes were located within the Safety Zone, Vautrin believed it was unwise to stray too far from her refugee camp. One month after Japanese forces had surged through its gates, Nanjing was a thoroughly devastated city, with fires still being set every day and night. By mid-January, estimates suggested that more than half the city had been burned down, with the main shopping district completely gone, as well as the entertainment area surrounding the Confucius Temple. Nevertheless, slowly but surely, the shell-shocked city began to pull itself together and started the long process of renewal. Vautrin considered opening an industrial school offering four-month courses for women to help compensate for the loss of labor resulting from the indiscriminate killing of men. Chinese New Year fell on January 31, 1938. Celebrated throughout Asia, it was also recognized by the Japanese. It was a “dismal, muddy” day, and as many feared, soldiers who appeared “too happy” from excessive drinking attempted to enter the Safety Zone in search of women but were stopped. The sound of thousands of firecrackers filled the air, fulfilling the age-old purpose of scaring away evil spirits. Refugees in Rabe's compound presented him with a large red silk banner adorned with a gold Chinese inscription. His Chinese friends translated the message for him “You are the living Buddha For a hundred thousand people”. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In December 1937, the battle for Nanjing left its residents in terror as the Japanese army advanced. Following the invasion, a horrific massacre began, with thousands targeted in brutal killings, torture, and humiliation. Civilians and soldiers alike were indiscriminately slain, and the Japanese military showed no mercy. To this day the Nanjing Massacre stands as a testament to the unbelievable evil man holds within him.

The Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials were based on the London Agreement, signed on August 8, 1945, which was an accord between the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union to establish an International Military Tribunal to prosecute the major war criminals of the European Axis. It provided a legal framework that codified crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, laying the foundation for the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials. Beginning on November 20, 1945, 22 Nazi officials were brought to trial in the city of Nuremberg in Germany. And on May 3, 1946, 28 Japanese Military and Civil Leaders were brought to trial in Tokyo.  

Last time we spoke about the surrender of Japan. Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender on August 15, prompting mixed public reactions: grief, shock, and sympathy for the Emperor, tempered by fear of hardship and occupation. The government's response included resignations and suicide as new leadership was brought in under Prime Minister Higashikuni, with Mamoru Shigemitsu as Foreign Minister and Kawabe Torashiro heading a delegation to Manila. General MacArthur directed the occupation plan, “Blacklist,” prioritizing rapid, phased entry into key Japanese areas and Korea, while demobilizing enemy forces. The surrender ceremony occurred aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, with Wainwright, Percival, Nimitz, and UN representatives in attendance. Civilians and soldiers across Asia began surrendering, and postwar rehabilitation, Indochina and Vietnam's independence movements, and Southeast Asian transitions rapidly unfolded as Allied forces established control. This episode is the Aftermath of the Pacific War Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  The Pacific War has ended. Peace has been restored by the Allies and most of the places conquered by the Japanese Empire have been liberated. In this post-war period, new challenges would be faced for those who won the war; and from the ashes of an empire, a defeated nation was also seeking to rebuild. As the Japanese demobilized their armed forces, many young boys were set to return to their homeland, even if they had previously thought that they wouldn't survive the ordeal. And yet, there were some cases of isolated men that would continue to fight for decades even, unaware that the war had already ended.  As we last saw, after the Japanese surrender, General MacArthur's forces began the occupation of the Japanese home islands, while their overseas empire was being dismantled by the Allies. To handle civil administration, MacArthur established the Military Government Section, commanded by Brigadier-General William Crist, staffed by hundreds of US experts trained in civil governance who were reassigned from Okinawa and the Philippines. As the occupation began, Americans dispatched tactical units and Military Government Teams to each prefecture to ensure that policies were faithfully carried out. By mid-September, General Eichelberger's 8th Army had taken over the Tokyo Bay region and began deploying to occupy Hokkaido and the northern half of Honshu. Then General Krueger's 6th Army arrived in late September, taking southern Honshu and Shikoku, with its base in Kyoto. In December, 6th Army was relieved of its occupation duties; in January 1946, it was deactivated, leaving the 8th Army as the main garrison force. By late 1945, about 430,000 American soldiers were garrisoned across Japan. President Truman approved inviting Allied involvement on American terms, with occupation armies integrated into a US command structure. Yet with the Chinese civil war and Russia's reluctance to place its forces under MacArthur's control, only Australia, Britain, India, and New Zealand sent brigades, more than 40,000 troops in southwestern Japan. Japanese troops were gradually disarmed by order of their own commanders, so the stigma of surrender would be less keenly felt by the individual soldier. In the homeland, about 1.5 million men were discharged and returned home by the end of August. Demobilization overseas, however, proceeded, not quickly, but as a long, difficult process of repatriation. In compliance with General Order No. 1, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters disbanded on September 13 and was superseded by the Japanese War Department to manage demobilization. By November 1, the homeland had demobilized 2,228,761 personnel, roughly 97% of the Homeland Army. Yet some 6,413,215 men remained to be repatriated from overseas. On December 1, the Japanese War Ministry dissolved, and the First Demobilization Ministry took its place. The Second Demobilization Ministry was established to handle IJN demobilization, with 1,299,868 sailors, 81% of the Navy, demobilized by December 17. Japanese warships and merchant ships had their weapons rendered inoperative, and suicide craft were destroyed. Forty percent of naval vessels were allocated to evacuations in the Philippines, and 60% to evacuations of other Pacific islands. This effort eventually repatriated about 823,984 men to Japan by February 15, 1946. As repatriation accelerated, by October 15 only 1,909,401 men remained to be repatriated, most of them in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the Higashikuni Cabinet and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru managed to persuade MacArthur not to impose direct military rule or martial law over all of Japan. Instead, the occupation would be indirect, guided by the Japanese government under the Emperor's direction. An early decision to feed occupation forces from American supplies, and to allow the Japanese to use their own limited food stores, helped ease a core fear: that Imperial forces would impose forced deliveries on the people they conquered. On September 17, MacArthur transferred his headquarters from Yokohama to Tokyo, setting up primary offices on the sixth floor of the Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Building, an imposing edifice overlooking the moat and the Imperial palace grounds in Hibiya, a symbolic heart of the nation.  While the average soldier did not fit the rapacious image of wartime Japanese propagandists, occupation personnel often behaved like neo-colonial overlords. The conquerors claimed privileges unimaginable to most Japanese. Entire trains and train compartments, fitted with dining cars, were set aside for the exclusive use of occupation forces. These silenced, half-empty trains sped past crowded platforms, provoking ire as Japanese passengers were forced to enter and exit packed cars through punched-out windows, or perch on carriage roofs, couplings, and running boards, often with tragic consequences. The luxury express coaches became irresistible targets for anonymous stone-throwers. During the war, retrenchment measures had closed restaurants, cabarets, beer halls, geisha houses, and theatres in Tokyo and other large cities. Now, a vast leisure industry sprang up to cater to the needs of the foreign occupants. Reopened restaurants and theatres, along with train stations, buses, and streetcars, were sometimes kept off limits to Allied personnel, partly for security, partly to avoid burdening Japanese resources, but a costly service infrastructure was built to the occupiers' specifications. Facilities reserved for occupation troops bore large signs reading “Japanese Keep Out” or “For Allied Personnel Only.” In downtown Tokyo, important public buildings requisitioned for occupation use had separate entrances for Americans and Japanese. The effect? A subtle but clear colour bar between the predominantly white conquerors and the conquered “Asiatic” Japanese. Although MacArthur was ready to work through the Japanese government, he lacked the organizational infrastructure to administer a nation of 74 million. Consequently, on October 2, MacArthur dissolved the Military Government Section and inaugurated General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, a separate headquarters focused on civil affairs and operating in tandem with the Army high command. SCAP immediately assumed responsibility for administering the Japanese home islands. It commandeered every large building not burned down to house thousands of civilians and requisitioned vast tracts of prime real estate to quarter several hundred thousand troops in the Tokyo–Yokohama area alone. Amidst the rise of American privilege, entire buildings were refurbished as officers' clubs, replete with slot machines and gambling parlours installed at occupation expense. The Stars and Stripes were hoisted over Tokyo, while the display of the Rising Sun was banned; and the downtown area, known as “Little America,” was transformed into a US enclave. The enclave mentality of this cocooned existence was reinforced by the arrival within the first six months of roughly 700 American families. At the peak of the occupation, about 14,800 families employed some 25,000 Japanese servants to ease the “rigours” of overseas duty. Even enlisted men in the sparse quonset-hut towns around the city lived like kings compared with ordinary Japanese. Japanese workers cleaned barracks, did kitchen chores, and handled other base duties. The lowest private earned a 25% hardship bonus until these special allotments were discontinued in 1949. Most military families quickly adjusted to a pampered lifestyle that went beyond maids and “boys,” including cooks, laundresses, babysitters, gardeners, and masseuses. Perks included spacious quarters with swimming pools, central heating, hot running water, and modern plumbing. Two observers compared GHQ to the British Raj at its height. George F. Kennan, head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, warned during his 1948 mission to Japan that Americans had monopolized “everything that smacks of comfort or elegance or luxury,” criticizing what he called the “American brand of philistinism” and the “monumental imperviousness” of MacArthur's staff to the Japanese suffering. This conqueror's mentality also showed in the bullying attitudes many top occupation officials displayed toward the Japanese with whom they dealt. Major Faubion Bowers, MacArthur's military secretary, later said, “I and nearly all the occupation people I knew were extremely conceited and extremely arrogant and used our power every inch of the way.” Initially, there were spasms of defiance against the occupation forces, such as anonymous stone-throwing, while armed robbery and minor assaults against occupation personnel were rife in the weeks and months after capitulation. Yet active resistance was neither widespread nor organized. The Americans successfully completed their initial deployment without violence, an astonishing feat given a heavily armed and vastly superior enemy operating on home terrain. The average citizen regarded the occupation as akin to force majeure, the unfortunate but inevitable aftermath of a natural calamity. Japan lay prostrate. Industrial output had fallen to about 10% of pre-war levels, and as late as 1946, more than 13 million remained unemployed. Nearly 40% of Japan's urban areas had been turned to rubble, and some 9 million people were homeless. The war-displaced, many of them orphans, slept in doorways and hallways, in bombed-out ruins, dugouts and packing crates, under bridges or on pavements, and crowded the hallways of train and subway stations. As winter 1945 descended, with food, fuel, and clothing scarce, people froze to death. Bonfires lit the streets to ward off the chill. "The only warm hands I have shaken thus far in Japan belonged to Americans," Mark Gayn noted in December 1945. "The Japanese do not have much of a chance to thaw out, and their hands are cold and red." Unable to afford shoes, many wore straw sandals; those with geta felt themselves privileged. The sight of a man wearing a woman's high-buttoned shoes in winter epitomized the daily struggle to stay dry and warm. Shantytowns built of scrap wood, rusted metal, and scavenged odds and ends sprang up everywhere, resembling vast junk yards. The poorest searched smouldering refuse heaps for castoffs that might be bartered for a scrap to eat or wear. Black markets (yami'ichi) run by Japanese, Koreans, and For-mosans mushroomed to replace collapsed distribution channels and cash in on inflated prices. Tokyo became "a world of scarcity in which every nail, every rag, and even a tangerine peel [had a] market value." Psychologically numbed, disoriented, and disillusioned with their leaders, demobilized veterans and civilians alike struggled to get their bearings, shed militaristic ideologies, and begin to embrace new values. In the vacuum of defeat, the Japanese people appeared ready to reject the past and grasp at the straw held out by the former enemy. Relations between occupier and occupied were not smooth, however. American troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Much of the violence was directed against women, with the first attacks beginning within hours after the landing of advance units. When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence, and drunken brawling ensued. Newspaper accounts reported 931 serious offences by GIs in the Yokohama area during the first week of occupation, including 487 armed robberies, 411 thefts of currency or goods, 9 rapes, 5 break-ins, 3 cases of assault and battery, and 16 other acts of lawlessness. In the first 10 days of occupation, there were 1,336 reported rapes by US soldiers in Kanagawa Prefecture alone. Americans were not the only perpetrators. A former prostitute recalled that when Australian troops arrived in Kure in early 1946, they “dragged young women into their jeeps, took them to the mountain, and then raped them. I heard them screaming for help nearly every night.” Such behaviour was commonplace, but news of criminal activity by occupation forces was quickly suppressed. On September 10, 1945, SCAP issued press and pre-censorship codes outlawing the publication of reports and statistics "inimical to the objectives of the occupation." In the sole instance of self-help General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when locals formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, 8th Army ordered armored vehicles into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms. Misbehavior ranged from black-market activity, petty theft, reckless driving, and disorderly conduct to vandalism, arson, murder, and rape. Soldiers and sailors often broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape, and even murder were widely reported. Gang rapes and other sex atrocities were not infrequent; victims, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned to prostitution in desperation, while others took their own lives to avoid bringing shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer; Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely, and restitution for victims was rare. Fearing the worst, Japanese authorities had already prepared countermeasures against the supposed rapacity of foreign soldiers. Imperial troops in East Asia and the Pacific had behaved brutally toward women, so the government established “sexual comfort-stations” manned by geisha, bar hostesses, and prostitutes to “satisfy the lust of the Occupation forces,” as the Higashikuni Cabinet put it. A budget of 100 million yen was set aside for these Recreation and Amusement Associations, financed initially with public funds but run as private enterprises under police supervision. Through these, the government hoped to protect the daughters of the well-born and middle class by turning to lower-class women to satisfy the soldiers' sexual appetites. By the end of 1945, brothel operators had rounded up an estimated 20,000 young women and herded them into RAA establishments nationwide. Eventually, as many as 70,000 are said to have ended up in the state-run sex industry. Thankfully, as military discipline took hold and fresh troops replaced the Allied veterans responsible for the early crime wave, violence subsided and the occupier's patronising behavior and the ugly misdeeds of a lawless few were gradually overlooked. However, fraternisation was frowned upon by both sides, and segregation was practiced in principle, with the Japanese excluded from areas reserved for Allied personnel until September 1949, when MacArthur lifted virtually all restrictions on friendly association, stating that he was “establishing the same relations between occupation personnel and the Japanese population as exists between troops stationed in the United States and the American people.” In principle, the Occupation's administrative structure was highly complex. The Far Eastern Commission, based in Washington, included representatives from all 13 countries that had fought against Japan and was established in 1946 to formulate basic principles. The Allied Council for Japan was created in the same year to assist in developing and implementing surrender terms and in administering the country. It consisted of representatives from the USA, the USSR, Nationalist China, and the British Commonwealth. Although both bodies were active at first, they were largely ineffectual due to unwieldy decision-making, disagreements between the national delegations (especially the USA and USSR), and the obstructionism of General Douglas MacArthur. In practice, SCAP, the executive authority of the occupation, effectively ruled Japan from 1945 to 1952. And since it took orders only from the US government, the Occupation became primarily an American affair. The US occupation program, effectively carried out by SCAP, was revolutionary and rested on a two-pronged approach. To ensure Japan would never again become a menace to the United States or to world peace, SCAP pursued disarmament and demilitarization, with continuing control over Japan's capacity to make war. This involved destroying military supplies and installations, demobilizing more than five million Japanese soldiers, and thoroughly discrediting the military establishment. Accordingly, SCAP ordered the purge of tens of thousands of designated persons from public service positions, including accused war criminals, military officers, leaders of ultranationalist societies, leaders in the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, business leaders tied to overseas expansion, governors of former Japanese colonies, and national leaders who had steered Japan into war. In addition, MacArthur's International Military Tribunal for the Far East established a military court in Tokyo. It had jurisdiction over those charged with Class A crimes, top leaders who had planned and directed the war. Also considered were Class B charges, covering conventional war crimes, and Class C charges, covering crimes against humanity. Yet the military court in Tokyo wouldn't be the only one. More than 5,700 lower-ranking personnel were charged with conventional war crimes in separate trials convened by Australia, China, France, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. Among these, many, like General Ando Rikichi and Lieutenant-General Nomi Toshio, chose to commit suicide before facing prosecution. Notable cases include Lieutenant-General Tani Hisao, who was sentenced to death by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal for his role in the Nanjing Massacre; Lieutenant-General Sakai Takashi, who was executed in Nanjing for the murder of British and Chinese civilians during the occupation of Hong Kong. General Okamura Yasuji was convicted of war crimes by the Tribunal, yet he was immediately protected by the personal order of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who kept him as a military adviser for the Kuomintang. In the Manila trials, General Yamashita Tomoyuki was sentenced to death as he was in overall command during the Sook Ching massacre, the Rape of Manila, and other atrocities. Lieutenant-General Homma Masaharu was likewise executed in Manila for atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bataan Death March. General Imamura Hitoshi was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he considered the punishment too light and even had a replica of the prison built in his garden, remaining there until his death in 1968. Lieutenant-General Kanda Masatane received a 14-year sentence for war crimes on Bougainville, though he served only four years. Lieutenant-General Adachi Hatazo was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in New Guinea and subsequently committed suicide on September 10, 1947. Lieutenant-General Teshima Fusataro received three years of forced labour for using a hospital ship to transport troops. Lieutenant-General Baba Masao was sentenced to death for ordering the Sandakan Death Marches, during which over 2,200 Australian and British prisoners of war perished. Lieutenant-General Tanabe Moritake was sentenced to death by a Dutch military tribunal for unspecified war crimes. Rear-Admiral Sakaibara Shigematsu was executed in Guam for ordering the Wake Island massacre, in which 98 American civilians were murdered. Lieutenant-General Inoue Sadae was condemned to death in Guam for permitting subordinates to execute three downed American airmen captured in Palau, though his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1951 and he was released in 1953. Lieutenant-General Tachibana Yoshio was sentenced to death in Guam for his role in the Chichijima Incident, in which eight American airmen were cannibalized. By mid-1945, due to the Allied naval blockade, the 25,000 Japanese troops on Chichijima had run low on supplies. However, although the daily rice ration had been reduced from 400 grams per person per day to 240 grams, the troops were not at risk of starvation. In February and March 1945, in what would later be called the Chichijima incident, Tachibana Yoshio's senior staff turned to cannibalism. Nine American airmen had escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichijima, eight of whom were captured. The ninth, the only one to evade capture, was future US President George H. W. Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot. Over several months, the prisoners were executed, and reportedly by the order of Major Matoba Sueyo, their bodies were butchered by the division's medical orderlies, with the livers and other organs consumed by the senior staff, including Matoba's superior Tachibana. In the Yokohama War Crimes Trials, Lieutenant-Generals Inada Masazumi and Yokoyama Isamu were convicted for their complicity in vivisection and other human medical experiments performed at Kyushu Imperial University on downed Allied airmen. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, which began in May 1946 and lasted two and a half years, resulted in the execution by hanging of Generals Doihara Kenji and Itagaki Seishiro, and former Prime Ministers Hirota Koki and Tojo Hideki, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, specifically for the escalation of the Pacific War and for permitting the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Also sentenced to death were Lieutenant-General Muto Akira for his role in the Nanjing and Manila massacres; General Kimura Heitaro for planning the war strategy in China and Southeast Asia and for laxity in preventing atrocities against prisoners of war in Burma; and General Matsui Iwane for his involvement in the Rape of Nanjing. The seven defendants who were sentenced to death were executed at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on December 23, 1948. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, including the last Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Generals Araki Sadao, Minami Hiro, and Umezu Shojiro, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, former Prime Ministers Hiranuma Kiichiro and Koiso Kuniaki, Marquis Kido Koichi, and Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, a major instigator of the second Sino-Japanese War. Additionally, former Foreign Ministers Togo Shigenori and Shigemitsu Mamoru received seven- and twenty-year sentences, respectively. The Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces also held trials of Japanese war criminals, including the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, which tried and found guilty some members of Japan's bacteriological and chemical warfare unit known as Unit 731. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial, as MacArthur granted immunity to Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro and all members of the bacteriological research units in exchange for germ-w warfare data derived from human experimentation. If you would like to learn more about what I like to call Japan's Operation Paper clip, whereupon the US grabbed many scientists from Unit 731, check out my exclusive podcast. The SCAP-turn to democratization began with the drafting of a new constitution in 1947, addressing Japan's enduring feudal social structure. In the charter, sovereignty was vested in the people, and the emperor was designated a “symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people in whom resides sovereign power.” Because the emperor now possessed fewer powers than European constitutional monarchs, some have gone so far as to say that Japan became “a republic in fact if not in name.” Yet the retention of the emperor was, in fact, a compromise that suited both those who wanted to preserve the essence of the nation for stability and those who demanded that the emperor system, though not necessarily the emperor, should be expunged. In line with the democratic spirit of the new constitution, the peerage was abolished and the two-chamber Diet, to which the cabinet was now responsible, became the highest organ of state. The judiciary was made independent and local autonomy was granted in vital areas of jurisdiction such as education and the police. Moreover, the constitution stipulated that “the people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights,” that they “shall be respected as individuals,” and that “their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall … be the supreme consideration in legislation.” Its 29 articles guaranteed basic human rights: equality, freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin, freedom of thought and freedom of religion. Finally, in its most controversial section, Article 9, the “peace clause,” Japan “renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation” and vowed not to maintain any military forces and “other war potential.” To instill a thoroughly democratic ethos, reforms touched every facet of society. The dissolution of the zaibatsu decentralised economic power; the 1945 Labour Union Law and the 1946 Labour Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to collective action; the 1947 Labour Standards Law established basic working standards for men and women; and the revised Civil Code of 1948 abolished the patriarchal household and enshrined sexual equality. Reflecting core American principles, SCAP introduced a 6-3-3 schooling system, six years of compulsory elementary education, three years of junior high, and an optional three years of senior high, along with the aim of secular, locally controlled education. More crucially, ideological reform followed: censorship of feudal material in media, revision of textbooks, and prohibition of ideas glorifying war, dying for the emperor, or venerating war heroes. With women enfranchised and young people shaped to counter militarism and ultranationalism, rural Japan was transformed to undermine lingering class divisions. The land reform program provided for the purchase of all land held by absentee landlords, allowed resident landlords and owner-farmers to retain a set amount of land, and required that the remaining land be sold to the government so it could be offered to existing tenants. In 1948, amid the intensifying tensions of the Cold War that would soon culminate in the Korean War, the occupation's focus shifted from demilitarization and democratization toward economic rehabilitation and, ultimately, the remilitarization of Japan, an shift now known as the “Reverse Course.” The country was thus rebuilt as the Pacific region's primary bulwark against the spread of Communism. An Economic Stabilisation Programme was introduced, including a five-year plan to coordinate production and target capital through the Reconstruction Finance Bank. In 1949, the anti-inflationary Dodge Plan was adopted, advocating balanced budgets, fixing the exchange rate at 360 yen to the dollar, and ending broad government intervention. Additionally, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was formed and supported the formation of conglomerates centered around banks, which encouraged the reemergence of a somewhat weakened set of zaibatsu, including Mitsui and Mitsubishi. By the end of the Occupation era, Japan was on the verge of surpassing its 1934–1936 levels of economic growth. Equally important was Japan's rearmament in alignment with American foreign policy: a National Police Reserve of about 75,000 was created with the outbreak of the Korean War; by 1952 it had expanded to 110,000 and was renamed the Self-Defense Force after the inclusion of an air force. However, the Reverse Course also facilitated the reestablishment of conservative politics and the rollback of gains made by women and the reforms of local autonomy and education. As the Occupation progressed, the Americans permitted greater Japanese initiative, and power gradually shifted from the reformers to the moderates. By 1949, the purge of the right came under review, and many who had been condemned began returning to influence, if not to the Diet, then to behind-the-scenes power. At the same time, Japanese authorities, with MacArthur's support, began purging left-wing activists. In June 1950, for example, the central office of the Japan Communist Party and the editorial board of The Red Flag were purged. The gains made by women also seemed to be reversed. Women were elected to 8% of available seats in the first lower-house election in 1946, but to only 2% in 1952, a trend not reversed until the so-called Madonna Boom of the 1980s. Although the number of women voting continued to rise, female politicisation remained more superficial than might be imagined. Women's employment also appeared little affected by labour legislation: though women formed nearly 40% of the labor force in 1952, they earned only 45% as much as men. Indeed, women's attitudes toward labor were influenced less by the new ethos of fulfilling individual potential than by traditional views of family and workplace responsibilities. In the areas of local autonomy and education, substantial modifications were made to the reforms. Because local authorities lacked sufficient power to tax, they were unable to realise their extensive powers, and, as a result, key responsibilities were transferred back to national jurisdiction. In 1951, for example, 90% of villages and towns placed their police forces under the control of the newly formed National Police Agency. Central control over education was also gradually reasserted; in 1951, the Yoshida government attempted to reintroduce ethics classes, proposed tighter central oversight of textbooks, and recommended abolishing local school board elections. By the end of the decade, all these changes had been implemented. The Soviet occupation of the Kurile Islands and the Habomai Islets was completed with Russian troops fully deployed by September 5. Immediately after the onset of the occupation, amid a climate of insecurity and fear marked by reports of sporadic rape and physical assault and widespread looting by occupying troops, an estimated 4,000 islanders fled to Hokkaido rather than face an uncertain repatriation. As Soviet forces moved in, they seized or destroyed telephone and telegraph installations and halted ship movements into and out of the islands, leaving residents without adequate food and other winter provisions. Yet, unlike Manchuria, where Japanese civilians faced widespread sexual violence and pillage, systematic violence against the civilian population on the Kuriles appears to have been exceptional. A series of military government proclamations assured islanders of safety so long as they did not resist Soviet rule and carried on normally; however, these orders also prohibited activities not explicitly authorized by the Red Army, which imposed many hardships on civilians. Residents endured harsh conditions under Soviet rule until late 1948, when Japanese repatriation out of the Kurils was completed. The Kuriles posed a special diplomatic problem, as the occupation of the southernmost islands—the Northern Territories—ignited a long-standing dispute between Tokyo and Moscow that continues to impede the normalisation of relations today. Although the Kuriles were promised to the Soviet Union in the Yalta agreement, Japan and the United States argued that this did not apply to the Northern Territories, since they were not part of the Kurile Islands. A substantial dispute regarding the status of the Kurile Islands arose between the United States and the Soviet Union during the preparation of the Treaty of San Francisco, which was intended as a permanent peace treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers of World War II. The treaty was ultimately signed by 49 nations in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, and came into force on April 28, 1952. It ended Japan's role as an imperial power, allocated compensation to Allied nations and former prisoners of war who had suffered Japanese war crimes, ended the Allied post-war occupation of Japan, and returned full sovereignty to Japan. Effectively, the document officially renounced Japan's treaty rights derived from the Boxer Protocol of 1901 and its rights to Korea, Formosa and the Pescadores, the Kurile Islands, the Spratly Islands, Antarctica, and South Sakhalin. Japan's South Seas Mandate, namely the Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, and Caroline Islands, had already been formally revoked by the United Nations on July 18, 1947, making the United States responsible for administration of those islands under a UN trusteeship agreement that established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In turn, the Bonin, Volcano, and Ryukyu Islands were progressively restored to Japan between 1953 and 1972, along with the Senkaku Islands, which were disputed by both Communist and Nationalist China. In addition, alongside the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan and the United States signed a Security Treaty that established a long-lasting military alliance between them. Although Japan renounced its rights to the Kuriles, the U.S. State Department later clarified that “the Habomai Islands and Shikotan ... are properly part of Hokkaido and that Japan is entitled to sovereignty over them,” hence why the Soviets refused to sign the treaty. Britain and the United States agreed that territorial rights would not be granted to nations that did not sign the Treaty of San Francisco, and as a result the Kurile Islands were not formally recognized as Soviet territory. A separate peace treaty, the Treaty of Taipei (formally the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty), was signed in Taipei on April 28, 1952 between Japan and the Kuomintang, and on June 9 of that year the Treaty of Peace Between Japan and India followed. Finally, Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, though this did not settle the Kurile Islands dispute. Even after these formal steps, Japan as a nation was not in a formal state of war, and many Japanese continued to believe the war was ongoing; those who held out after the surrender came to be known as Japanese holdouts.  Captain Oba Sakae and his medical company participated in the Saipan campaign beginning on July 7, 1944, and took part in what would become the largest banzai charge of the Pacific War. After 15 hours of intense hand-to-hand combat, almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers were dead, and Oba and his men were presumed among them. In reality, however, he survived the battle and gradually assumed command of over a hundred additional soldiers. Only five men from his original unit survived the battle, two of whom died in the following months. Oba then led over 200 Japanese civilians deeper into the jungles to evade capture, organizing them into mountain caves and hidden jungle villages. When the soldiers were not assisting the civilians with survival tasks, Oba and his men continued their battle against the garrison of US Marines. He used the 1,552‑ft Mount Tapochau as their primary base, which offered an unobstructed 360-degree view of the island. From their base camp on the western slope of the mountain, Oba and his men occasionally conducted guerrilla-style raids on American positions. Due to the speed and stealth of these operations, and the Marines' frustrated attempts to find him, the Saipan Marines eventually referred to Oba as “The Fox.” Oba and his men held out on the island for 512 days, or about 16 months. On November 27, 1945, former Major-General Amo Umahachi was able to draw out some of the Japanese in hiding by singing the anthem of the Japanese infantry branch. Amo was then able to present documents from the defunct IGHQ to Oba ordering him and his 46 remaining men to surrender themselves to the Americans. On December 1, the Japanese soldiers gathered on Tapochau and sang a song of departure to the spirits of the war dead; Oba led his people out of the jungle and they presented themselves to the Marines of the 18th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Company. With great formality and commensurate dignity, Oba surrendered his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Kirgis, and his men surrendered their arms and colors. On January 2, 1946, 20 Japanese soldiers hiding in a tunnel at Corregidor Island surrendered after learning the war had ended from a newspaper found while collecting water. In that same month, 120 Japanese were routed after a battle in the mountains 150 miles south of Manila. In April, during a seven-week campaign to clear Lubang Island, 41 more Japanese emerged from the jungle, unaware that the war had ended; however, a group of four Japanese continued to resist. In early 1947, Lieutenant Yamaguchi Ei and his band of 33 soldiers renewed fighting with the small Marine garrison on Peleliu, prompting reinforcements under Rear-Admiral Charles Pownall to be brought to the island to hunt down the guerrilla group. Along with them came former Rear-Admiral Sumikawa Michio, who ultimately convinced Yamaguchi to surrender in April after almost three years of guerrilla warfare. Also in April, seven Japanese emerged from Palawan Island and fifteen armed stragglers emerged from Luzon. In January 1948, 200 troops surrendered on Mindanao; and on May 12, the Associated Press reported that two unnamed Japanese soldiers had surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam the day before. On January 6, 1949, two former IJN soldiers, machine gunners Matsudo Rikio and Yamakage Kufuku, were discovered on Iwo Jima and surrendered peacefully. In March 1950, Private Akatsu Yūichi surrendered in the village of Looc, leaving only three Japanese still resisting on Lubang. By 1951 a group of Japanese on Anatahan Island refused to believe that the war was over and resisted every attempt by the Navy to remove them. This group was first discovered in February 1945, when several Chamorros from Saipan were sent to the island to recover the bodies of a Saipan-based B-29. The Chamorros reported that there were about thirty Japanese survivors from three ships sunk in June 1944, one of which was an Okinawan woman. Personal aggravations developed from the close confines of a small group on a small island and from tuba drinking; among the holdouts, 6 of 11 deaths were the result of violence, and one man displayed 13 knife wounds. The presence of only one woman, Higa Kazuko, caused considerable difficulty as she would transfer her affections among at least four men after each of them mysteriously disappeared, purportedly “swallowed by the waves while fishing.” According to the more sensational versions of the Anatahan tale, 11 of the 30 navy sailors stranded on the island died due to violent struggles over her affections. In July 1950, Higa went to the beach when an American vessel appeared offshore and finally asked to be removed from the island. She was taken to Saipan aboard the Miss Susie and, upon arrival, told authorities that the men on the island did not believe the war was over. As the Japanese government showed interest in the situation on Anatahan, the families of the holdouts were contacted in Japan and urged by the Navy to write letters stating that the war was over and that the holdouts should surrender. The letters were dropped by air on June 26 and ultimately convinced the holdouts to give themselves up. Thus, six years after the end of World War II, “Operation Removal” commenced from Saipan under the command of Lt. Commander James B. Johnson, USNR, aboard the Navy Tug USS Cocopa. Johnson and an interpreter went ashore by rubber boat and formally accepted the surrender on the morning of June 30, 1951. The Anatahan femme fatale story later inspired the 1953 Japanese film Anatahan and the 1998 novel Cage on the Sea. In 1953, Murata Susumu, the last holdout on Tinian, was finally captured. The next year, on May 7, Corporal Sumada Shoichi was killed in a clash with Filipino soldiers, leaving only two Japanese still resisting on Lubang. In November 1955, Seaman Kinoshita Noboru was captured in the Luzon jungle but soon after committed suicide rather than “return to Japan in defeat.” That same year, four Japanese airmen surrendered at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea; and in 1956, nine soldiers were located and sent home from Morotai, while four men surrendered on Mindoro. In May 1960, Sergeant Ito Masashi became one of the last Japanese to surrender at Guam after the capture of his comrade Private Minagawa Bunzo, but the final surrender at Guam would come later with Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi. Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi survived in the jungles of Guam by living for years in an elaborately dug hole, subsisting on snails and lizards, a fate that, while undignified, showcased his ingenuity and resilience and earned him a warm welcome on his return to Japan. His capture was not heroic in the traditional sense: he was found half-starving by a group of villagers while foraging for shrimp in a stream, and the broader context included his awareness as early as 1952 that the war had ended. He explained that the wartime bushido code, emphasizing self-sacrifice or suicide rather than self-preservation, had left him fearing that repatriation would label him a deserter and likely lead to execution. Emerging from the jungle, Yokoi also became a vocal critic of Japan's wartime leadership, including Emperor Hirohito, which fits a view of him as a product of, and a prisoner within, his own education, military training, and the censorship and propaganda of the era. When asked by a young nephew how he survived so long on an island just a short distance from a major American airbase, he replied simply, “I was really good at hide and seek.”  That same year, Private Kozuka Kinshichi was killed in a shootout with Philippine police in October, leaving Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo still resisting on Lubang. Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo had been on Lubang since 1944, a few months before the Americans retook the Philippines. The last instructions he had received from his immediate superior ordered him to retreat to the interior of the island and harass the Allied occupying forces until the IJA eventually returned. Despite efforts by the Philippine Army, letters and newspapers left for him, radio broadcasts, and even a plea from Onoda's brother, he did not believe the war was over. On February 20, 1974, Onoda encountered a young Japanese university dropout named Suzuki Norio, who was traveling the world and had told friends that he planned to “look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order.” The two became friends, but Onoda stated that he was waiting for orders from one of his commanders. On March 9, 1974, Onoda went to an agreed-upon place and found a note left by Suzuki. Suzuki had brought along Onoda's former commander, Major Taniguchi, who delivered the oral orders for Onoda to surrender. Intelligence Officer 2nd Lt. Onoda Hiroo thus emerged from Lubang's jungle with his .25 caliber rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades. He surrendered 29 years after Japan's formal surrender, and 15 years after being declared legally dead in Japan. When he accepted that the war was over, he wept openly. He received a hero's welcome upon his return to Japan in 1974. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. When money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to Yasukuni Shrine. Onoda was reportedly unhappy with the attention and what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values. He wrote No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography published in 1974. Yet the last Japanese to surrender would be Private Nakamura Teruo, an Amis aborigine from Formosa and a member of the Takasago Volunteers. Private Nakamura Teruo spent the tail end of World War II with a dwindling band on Morotai, repeatedly dispersing and reassembling in the jungle as they hunted for food. The group suffered continuous losses to starvation and disease, and survivors described Nakamura as highly self-sufficient. He left to live alone somewhere in the Morotai highlands between 1946 and 1947, rejoined the main group in 1950, and then disappeared again a few years later. Nakamura hinted in print that he fled into the jungle because he feared the other holdouts might murder him. He survives for decades beyond the war, eventually being found by 11 Indonesian soldiers. The emergence of an indigenous Taiwanese soldier among the search party embarrassed Japan as it sought to move past its imperial past. Many Japanese felt Nakamura deserved compensation for decades of loyalty, only to learn that his back pay for three decades of service amounted to 68,000 yen.   Nakamura's experience of peace was complex. When a journalist asked how he felt about “wasting” three decades of his life on Morotai, he replied that the years had not been wasted; he had been serving his country. Yet the country he returned to was Taiwan, and upon disembarking in Taipei in early January 1975, he learned that his wife had a son he had never met and that she had remarried a decade after his official death. Nakamura eventually lived with a daughter, and his story concluded with a bittersweet note when his wife reconsidered and reconciled with him. Several Japanese soldiers joined local Communist and insurgent groups after the war to avoid surrender. Notably, in 1956 and 1958, two soldiers returned to Japan after service in China's People's Liberation Army. Two others who defected with a larger group to the Malayan Communist Party around 1945 laid down their arms in 1989 and repatriated the next year, becoming among the last to return home. That is all for today, but fear not I will provide a few more goodies over the next few weeks. I will be releasing some of my exclusive podcast episodes from my youtube membership and patreon that are about pacific war subjects. Like I promised the first one will be on why Emperor Hirohito surrendered. Until then if you need your fix you know where to find me: eastern front week by week, fall and rise of china, echoes of war or on my Youtube membership of patreon at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel.

While the Nuremberg trials echo widely in our collective pasts, much fewer remember its lesser-known twin, the Tokyo Trials. Even fewer still recall the lone voice of dissent that emerged from them: Justice Radhabinod Pal. His judgment at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East was radical, scathing, and - depending on who you ask - either deeply principled or dangerously flawed. In post-war Japan, he's a hero. In the West, his legal reasoning has been picked apart for decades. And yet, Pal's dissent continues to echo—raising urgent questions about how we write the history of justice, who gets to decide what counts as a war crime, and whether international law has ever really escaped its colonial roots. Joining us this episode is Partha Chatterjee - acclaimed anthropologist, historian of the empire, and author of ‘I Am the People' - to explore what Pal's dissent tells us about the global South's search for sovereignty in a world shaped by imperial legality. #Justify #Podcast #LegalPodcast #Imperialism #Law #LawStudents #colonialresistance

This week on CounterSpin: Prosecutors at the 1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared: “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” After the Trump administration dropped bombs on Iran last weekend, without congressional approval, the media debate wasn't about legality, much less humanity. The Wall Street Journal offered a video series on The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “The 30,000-Pound U.S. Bomb That Could Destroy Iran's Nuclear Bunkers.” But it's not just boys excited by toys; the very important Wall Street Journal is “examining military innovation and tactics emerging around the world, breaking down the tech behind the weaponry and its potential impact.” Most big media are consumed right now with whether those bunker busters did their bunker busting or maybe the U.S. needs to buy bigger, better bombs to … do what, exactly? Well, now you're asking too many questions. Things you should not question? Statements like that of Sen. John Fetterman that Iran is the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror. U.S. corporate media in war mode are a force to reckon with. We do some reckoning with media analyst Adam Johnson, co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, Substack author at the Column, and co-author, with In These Times contributing editor Sarah Lazare, of some relevant pieces at InTheseTimes.com.   The post Adam Johnson on Media in War Mode appeared first on KPFA.

1995-1997: The Freedom Fight (https://thankskenpenders.tumblr.com/readingorder)Albert Speer was a German architect who served as Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. After the war, Speer was among the 24 "major war criminals" charged by the International Military Tribunal for Nazi atrocities. Speer had carefully constructed an image of himself as an apolitical technocrat who deeply regretted having failed to discover the monstrous crimes of the Third Reich. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for the use of slave labor, narrowly avoiding a death sentence. Having served his full term, Speer was released in 1966.Archie Comics Sonic The Hedgehog #3000:00 Intro04:56 The Return of Uncle Chuck Part I21:15 The Return of Uncle Chuck Part II37:56 The Return of Uncle Chuck Part III57:07 Who Keeps Stealing My Chaos Emeralds ?!01:05:04 Outro-----Gotta Talk Fast is an oral review of Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog. Way past cool.LINKS: https://gottatalkfast.com/

pWotD Episode 2906: Schutzstaffel Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 7,919,078 views on Wednesday, 16 April 2025 our article of the day is Schutzstaffel.The Schutzstaffel (German: [ˈʃʊtsˌʃtafl̩] ; lit. 'Protection Squadron'; SS; also stylised with SS runes as ᛋᛋ) was a major paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–1945) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organisations in Nazi Germany. From the time of the Nazi Party's rise to power until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, mass surveillance, and state terrorism within Germany and German-occupied Europe.The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of the combat units of the SS, with a sworn allegiance to Hitler. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV; "Death's Head Units"), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organisations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralisation of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.The SS was the organisation most responsible for the genocidal murder of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labour. After Nazi Germany's defeat, the SS and the Nazi Party were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organisations. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS main department chief, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 07:34 UTC on Thursday, 17 April 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Schutzstaffel on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Emma.

This Day in Legal History: Nazi War Criminals HangedOn October 16, 1946, ten high-ranking Nazi war criminals were executed by hanging after being convicted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. This landmark trial held key figures of Adolf Hitler's regime accountable for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide committed during World War II. Among those executed was Joachim von Ribbentrop, the former German Foreign Minister, who had played a significant role in Nazi diplomacy, including the negotiation of the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. Others included Wilhelm Keitel, head of the German Armed Forces, and Alfred Jodl, a top military strategist.The Nuremberg trials were a historic moment in international law, establishing the precedent that individuals—even heads of state and military leaders—could be held criminally responsible for war crimes. The tribunal addressed the atrocities of the Holocaust, the invasion of neighboring countries, and the brutal treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. The executions followed months of legal proceedings and were seen as a step toward justice for millions of victims. Two of the condemned, Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann, avoided the gallows—Göring by committing suicide the night before the executions, and Bormann being sentenced in absentia, as he was never captured. These trials helped shape modern principles of international law, including the concepts of crimes against humanity and the rule of law in war. Meta Platforms Inc. must face claims by 34 state attorneys general accusing the company of contributing to a youth mental health crisis by getting children hooked on Facebook and Instagram. A federal judge in California ruled that some claims in the lawsuit could proceed, while others were dismissed under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields internet companies from liability over user-generated content. The states allege Meta's platforms cause mental health issues, like depression, in young users and that the company unlawfully collected data from children under 13. The lawsuit is part of a broader legal push against social media companies like TikTok, YouTube, and Snap, all of which are accused of profiting from the addiction of young users. Meta's spokesperson defended the company's actions, pointing to tools for parental controls and recent changes to Instagram's teen accounts. However, the judge noted that Meta's alleged “public campaign of deception” about the dangers of social media addiction could violate state and federal laws. The ruling also allows claims challenging features like “appearance-altering filters” but limits challenges to infinite scroll and likes. The decision comes alongside similar lawsuits by public school districts alleging social media companies create a public nuisance.Meta Can't Escape States' Claims It Hooked Kids on Platforms (4)The US Supreme Court declined to revive a challenge by Uber and Postmates to California's employment classification law, AB 5, leaving in place a Ninth Circuit ruling. AB 5 requires most workers to be classified as employees, giving them broader protections and benefits compared to independent contractors. Although Uber and other app-based companies are exempt from AB 5 under Proposition 22, which voters approved in 2020, they faced penalties for alleged violations before Prop 22 took effect.Uber and Postmates argued that AB 5 unfairly targeted their industries, claiming the law violated their equal protection rights by exempting other sectors. However, the Ninth Circuit ruled that lawmakers had rational reasons for distinguishing between industries, suggesting that ride-hailing companies were perceived as larger contributors to worker misclassification. The companies petitioned the Supreme Court, but the justices allowed the lower court's decision to stand, effectively ending their constitutional challenge to the law.Supreme Court Stymies Uber's Challenge to California Labor LawCourts in key battleground states are implementing procedures to expedite election-related lawsuits ahead of the November 2024 election to avoid delays in finalizing results. Arizona's Supreme Court recently ordered trial courts to prioritize election disputes, ensuring any challenges, such as those concerning recounts or presidential electors, are resolved quickly. This comes as both Republicans and Democrats have filed numerous lawsuits ahead of the election, and experts predict more legal battles on Election Day over vote counting and certification.Similar measures have been adopted in other battleground states, including Pennsylvania, which shortened the timeframe for appeals to three days, and Michigan, which introduced protocols for handling emergency election-related rulings. These actions are seen as a proactive response to the legal chaos of the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump and his allies unsuccessfully challenged results with claims of widespread voter fraud. Courts are also preparing for potential security risks, with warnings of increased threats to judges during periods of national tension. Legal experts praise these steps as a way to ensure smooth and timely election litigation.Courts in US battleground states move to swiftly decide election cases | ReutersMy column for Bloomberg this week discusses how the IRS can solve the issue of stolen tax-refund checks, increasingly a major issue, by embracing technology. Despite the availability of direct deposit, many taxpayers still rely on paper checks, which are vulnerable to theft. I argue that the IRS should offer secure digital refund cards, similar to the electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards used in welfare programs, for taxpayers without bank accounts. These cards can be mailed securely, with separate deliveries for the card and its PIN, reducing theft risks.For those who prefer physical checks, I suggest allowing taxpayers to pick them up at secure locations like post offices, where the checks could be activated upon identity verification. This method would work like a software kill switch for smartphones, rendering checks useless if stolen before activation. Additionally, an optional mobile app could provide tracking, security, and refund management features for tech-savvy taxpayers.These solutions would enhance refund security while ensuring flexibility and accessibility. The IRS should also collaborate with local organizations to help taxpayers navigate these new systems, ensuring no one is left behind in the transition to a more secure refund process.Secure Digital Tax Refund System Can Solve Stolen Check Problem This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Nazi Leaders Convicted at NurembergOn September 30, 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg delivered its final verdicts, marking a pivotal moment in legal history. The tribunal, established by the Allied powers after World War II, tried 24 high-ranking Nazi officials for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Of those tried, 22 were found guilty. These included prominent Nazi figures such as Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. The Nuremberg Trials were the first of their kind to hold government officials individually accountable for atrocities committed under state authority, laying the groundwork for modern international criminal law.The court sentenced 12 of the defendants to death by hanging, while others received long prison sentences. Three were acquitted. These proceedings also set legal precedents, defining acts like genocide and war crimes more clearly in the context of international law. Nuremberg solidified the principle that following orders is not a defense for committing atrocities, a key doctrine in future human rights cases. The trials emphasized accountability, no matter how high the official's rank, and underscored the need for justice following war and genocide.Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Republicans have launched a wide-ranging legal campaign to challenge voting processes, with particular focus on states like Arizona, where the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is extremely tight. A lawsuit by the America First Legal Foundation, founded by Trump advisor Stephen Miller, seeks to empower courts to nullify election results due to procedural errors by local officials and order new rounds of voting. This case, which legal experts view as a long shot, reflects a broader Republican strategy to sow doubts about the election's legitimacy before votes are cast. The Republican National Committee is involved in over 120 lawsuits across 26 states, aiming to impose stricter voting rules, which they argue will restore faith in election integrity.Republicans, still asserting widespread fraud in the 2020 election despite court rejections, are pursuing these challenges earlier than in 2020, attempting to preemptively influence election outcomes. Legal experts warn that these lawsuits could cause chaos and confusion, potentially opening doors for political intervention in election results. Democrats argue the efforts are designed to undermine trust in the election system in case of Republican losses, while both sides are gearing up for further legal battles over voting restrictions and access.Republicans lay legal groundwork for election challenges | ReutersEpic Games has accused Google and Samsung of conspiring to limit competition in the app market, filing a lawsuit in U.S. federal court. The suit centers around Samsung's Auto Blocker, a mobile security feature that Epic claims discourages users from downloading apps outside of Google's Play Store and Samsung's Galaxy Store. Epic argues this reduces consumer choice and violates U.S. antitrust laws by making it harder for users to access potentially cheaper apps from rival sources. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said Google falsely positions itself as protecting users by blocking apps from “unknown sources,” despite previously distributing "Fortnite" itself.Samsung, which introduced Auto Blocker in late 2023 as a security measure, denies the allegations and claims the feature is designed for user safety. The company stated that users can disable Auto Blocker if desired. Epic believes the feature undermines a U.S. court ruling in December 2023, which was expected to increase app availability from third-party sources. Epic plans to raise these concerns with EU regulators, citing Google's long-standing scrutiny over anticompetitive practices. This follows Epic's earlier legal battles with Google and Apple over high app store commissions, which led to "Fortnite" being temporarily banned from both platforms.Epic Games accuses Samsung, Google of scheme to block app rivals | ReutersJudge Colm F. Connolly recently criticized lawyers in a patent-funding investigation, suggesting they were not truly representing their client, Lori LaPray, a Texas paralegal who owns Backertop Licensing LLC. LaPray owes a $53,000 contempt fine for failing to appear in court, linked to Connolly's probe into patent-monetization firm IP Edge LLC. The judge maintained the fine but implied LaPray was a pawn in a larger scheme orchestrated by IP Edge and advised her to seek independent legal counsel. Connolly's actions are rare, with legal experts noting that questioning an attorney's loyalty to a client in open court could lead to wider scrutiny of their conduct. The investigation focuses on whether IP Edge and related entities, like Mavexar LLC, have violated court disclosure requirements designed to ensure transparency about who benefits from patent litigation. Connolly has already sanctioned multiple attorneys involved in IP Edge cases and warned that reducing LaPray's fine would signal tolerance for deception. The judge has referred several cases to the Justice Department, reflecting his broader effort to address misconduct in patent litigation, which critics say often obscures the real parties behind lawsuits. Connolly's approach contrasts with other judges who may not prioritize uncovering the true interests in litigation, despite concerns over transparency.Judge's Rare Rebuke of Lawyers Shakes Up Patent-Funding Probe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In December 1948, a panel of 12 judges sentenced 23 Japanese officials for war crimes. Seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death. The sentencing ended the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, an over-two-year-long trial over Imperial Japan's atrocities in China and its decision to attack the U.S. But unlike the trials at Nuremberg, now seen as one of the touchstones of modern international law, the trials at Tokyo were a messy affair. The ruling wasn't unanimous, with two judges dissenting. Indian judge Radhabinod Pal even chose to acquit everybody. The judges couldn't agree on anything, the prosecution made significant mistakes, and the defense constantly complained about not having enough time and resources. Gary Bass tells the entire story of the trials at Tokyo—from their formulation at the end of a long World War by a triumphant yet weary U.S., to the eventual decision to let many sentenced defendants out on parole as Japan became a close Cold War ally of Washington—in his book Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf: 2023) Gary Bass is also the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissenger and a Forgotten Genocide (Vintage: 2014), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction and won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, among other awards. He is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: 2008) and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press: 2002). A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and other publications. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Judgment at Tokyo. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beginning on November 20, 1945, the International Military Tribunal consisting of representatives from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—the four major Allied powers—worked together to bring 22 former Nazi leaders and their organizations to justice. Written by Francine Hirsch. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/nuremberg-judgment. Audio production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger. This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf, 2023), a book ten years in the making, is the definitive account of the postwar trial of Japan's leaders as war criminals, and the impact it had on the modern history of Asia. Written by Gary Bass, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, the book shines a much-needed spotlight on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the criminal process historically overshadowed by its namesake in Nuremberg for the senior leaders of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. Professor Bass tells a meticulously-researched compelling story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the meaning and morality of international justice, in all its messy complexity and contradiction. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, and a former barrister and UN war crimes prosecutor, with teaching and research interests in international criminal law, cause lawyering and the legal profession, and law and emotion. LInkedIn. Twitter: @batesmith His recent publications include: “‘Poetic Justice Products': International Justice, Victim Counter-Aesthetics, and the Spectre of the Show Trial” in Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Rob Knox (eds) Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice (Counterpress, forthcoming 2023, ISBN 978-1-910761-17-5) "Lawyers who want to make the world a better place – Scheingold and Sarat's Something to Believe In: Politics, Professionalism, and Cause Lawyering" in D. Newman (ed.) Leading Works on the Legal Profession (Routledge, July 2023), ISBN 978-1-032182-80-3) “International Prosecutors as Cause Lawyers" (2021) Journal of International Criminal Justice 19(4) 803-830 (ISSN 1478-1387) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

This Day in Legal History: The Attack on Pearl HarborOn this day, December 7, in legal history, the focus often turns to a pivotal event in United States history: the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii led to the United States' formal entry into World War II. While primarily a military event, the attack had significant legal and political repercussions that reshaped the global legal landscape.The aftermath of Pearl Harbor saw a swift response from the U.S. government. On December 8, 1941, the United States Congress declared war on Japan, marking the nation's official entry into World War II. This decision not only changed the course of the war but also had far-reaching legal implications for international relations and the conduct of war.One of the most controversial legal outcomes of Pearl Harbor was the internment of Japanese Americans. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forcible relocation and internment of about 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. This order, rooted in wartime fear and prejudice, is now widely viewed as one of the most egregious violations of American civil liberties in the 20th century.The repercussions of Pearl Harbor extended to the international legal arena as well. The attack prompted a reevaluation of international laws concerning warfare, leading to the development of new standards and practices. After the war, the Tokyo Trials, formally known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, were convened to prosecute Japanese leaders for war crimes, including those committed during the Pearl Harbor attack.In recent years, Pearl Harbor Day has been a time not only of remembrance for those who lost their lives but also a moment to reflect on the legal and moral challenges faced during times of crisis. It serves as a reminder of the impact that pivotal events can have on the law, civil liberties, and international relations.Murray Fisher, a former employee of Airgas USA LLC who was diagnosed with liver cancer, is challenging his termination over a positive cannabis test result in the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Fisher, who used legal hemp to manage his cancer-related pain, alleges that the positive test was false and that his firing constituted disability discrimination. The case centers around the "honest belief rule," which protects employers from liability for employment actions based on incorrect information they reasonably trusted at the time. The lower court dismissed Fisher's discrimination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act, citing insufficient evidence to prove that Airgas knew the test was incorrect or unreasonably relied on the results.Fisher's case raises questions about the application of the honest belief rule and whether judges are encroaching on factual determinations that should be left to juries. He argues that Airgas was indifferent to the accuracy of its drug testing and that there's evidence of "purposeful ignorance" on the company's part. Airgas, on the other hand, maintains that it made a reasonably informed decision to terminate Fisher and that he has failed to demonstrate his disability was a factor in his firing or to discredit the company's rationale for his termination.The case, which is being heard by a panel including Judges Karen Nelson Moore, David McKeague, and Raymond Kethledge, will provide the Sixth Circuit an opportunity to clarify the scope and application of the honest belief rule in employment discrimination cases. Fisher's argument hinges on the assertion that the evidence of his positive test result for THCA, not illegal THC, and the company's alleged indifference to test accuracy, should preclude summary judgment in favor of Airgas.Airgas to Defend Firing Worker With Cancer Over Cannabis TestTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with conservative media companies The Daily Wire and The Federalist, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State. The lawsuit alleges that the State Department funded technology through grants to the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard, which the plaintiffs claim censors conservative news outlets. The lawsuit accuses these organizations of rendering "disfavored press outlets unprofitable" by using technologies that categorize them as high-risk for disinformation, thereby impacting their revenue and social media visibility.The lawsuit challenges the State Department's statutory authority to fund such tools and argues that this funding infringes upon the media outlets' First Amendment rights. Paxton, who has filed numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration, claims the State Department is illegally attempting to silence dissenting voices. The case, assigned to Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, reflects ongoing tensions between Republican state attorneys general and the Biden administration regarding the alleged censorship of conservative viewpoints online.NewsGuard responded by stating that their work with the department's Global Engagement Center, which accounted for less than 1% of its revenue, was limited to tracking false claims in state-sponsored media in Russia, China, and Venezuela and unrelated to the plaintiffs. They also emphasized that their website reliability ratings are developed through an apolitical process. The case adds to a broader debate about the role of government in regulating online disinformation and the impact on free speech and media revenues.Texas claims US State Department funds tech that censors conservative news | ReutersIn my column this week, I discuss the IRS's recent decision to revert the 1099-K reporting threshold from $600 to $20,000 for the current tax year, with a plan to lower it to $5,000 in 2024. I argue that this approach, aimed at reducing taxpayer confusion and administrative backlog, merely postpones the problem. The central issue lies in a widespread public misconception about taxable income, particularly the belief that income is only taxable if the IRS is aware of it.By way of very brief background, Form 1099-K is a tax document used to report payments received through payment card transactions and third-party network transactions. This form is particularly relevant for businesses and individuals who receive payments through platforms like PayPal and Venmo. When payments for goods or services are received through these platforms, the platform is required to report the transactions to the IRS if they exceed a certain threshold. The 1099-K form provides a detailed summary of these transactions, helping taxpayers accurately report their income. It's an essential tool for ensuring compliance with tax laws, especially for those who engage in significant e-commerce or provide services where payments are frequently processed through these digital platforms. Importantly, receiving it does not impact whether taxes are owed – it is merely informational. Income tax is owed on all income, from whatever source derived. I highlight the importance of educating the public on what constitutes taxable income, especially with the growth of the gig economy and online marketplaces. The 1099-K form, introduced in 2012, is designed as a reminder of existing tax obligations, not as an indication of new liabilities. The form's thresholds, such as the initial 200 transactions and $20,000 limit, are informational and do not determine when tax is due.To improve tax literacy, I suggest the IRS should adopt more proactive educational methods, such as creating informative videos, social media campaigns, and advertisements explaining taxable income. Additionally, introducing tax-related curricula in schools could inform young people about tax revenue uses and personal tax obligations. These measures could help address the knowledge gap, particularly among younger taxpayers and those in the gig economy.I also emphasize the need for the IRS to demonstrate its commitment to ensuring high-income earners pay their fair share of taxes, as public perception of tax fairness is crucial. The IRS should focus on promoting an understanding of tax obligations, fairness in the tax system, and the shared responsibility of tax compliance. I critique the pattern of policy changes followed by public backlash and retraction as inefficient and ineffective in informing the public about tax policy updates. Properly addressing tax compliance and effectively communicating with taxpayers is vital for maintaining public trust and compliance in the tax system.Better Education Will Help Taxpayers Understand Telltale 1099-Ks Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

In 1965, five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, one of his Mossad abductors was sent back to South America to kill another fugitive Nazi, the so-called “butcher of Riga,” Latvian Herberts Cukurs. Cukurs was shot. On his corpse, the assassins left pages from the closing speech of the chief British prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg: “After this ordeal to which mankind has been submitted, mankind itself . . . comes to this Court and cries: ‘These are our laws—let them prevail!'” Years later, the Latvian prosecutor general began investigating the possibility of redeeming Cukurs for his past actions. Researching the case, Dr. Linda Kinstler discovered that her grandfather, Boris, had served in Cukurs's killing unit and was rumored to be a double agent for the KGB. The proceedings, which might have resulted in Cukurs's pardon, threw into question supposed “facts” about the Holocaust at the precise moment its last living survivors—the last legal witnesses—were dying. Rich with scholarly detective work and personal reflection, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends (PublicAffairs, 2023) (Public Affairs, 2023) is a fearlessly brave examination of how history can become distorted over time, how easily the innocent are forgotten, and how carelessly the guilty are sometimes reprieved. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

On today's episode, Major Keoni Medici interviews Mr. Fred Borch on his remarks for the symposium commemorating the 75th anniversary of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg on 19 November 2020 at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School.

Bill Shoop served as a teletype operator during the latter stages of World War II in Europe, first during the Battle of Bulge and later from the International Military Tribunal known as the Nuremburg Trials. Though he claims no special role in the Trials -- "I just happened to be there," he says -- Bill Shoop was quite literally a witness to history and we are proud to tell his story.

Audio Transcript: Heavenly father, we glorify you. We focus our full attention upon you right now. Help us remove any distractions, any worries, any anxiety and help us focus only on you. We glorify you often in our lives. You're just too small because we aren't glorifying you. We're glorifying things ourselves. We pray, remove all of that and help us focus on Jesus Christ on his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection. And because of all of everything he's done, we have access to the presence of God with a righteousness that is not our own. That's the prerequisite to be in the family of God to have a righteousness that is perfect.We thank you that when we repent of sin, believe in you, Jesus, you give us that righteousness as a gift. And we thank you, Holy Spirit that you are with us today. And I pray Holy Spirit, minister to us, minister to our souls. If there's any heartache or heartbreak, I pray today. Send healing and help us revel in this truth and help us go deeper into it. What does it mean that I'm justified by grace through faith? Holy Spirit ignite our hearts to then live out this incredible, incredible calling and identity. And we pray, all this in Christ holy name. Amen.So I'm walking down the street today on the way to church and I'm in the zone. If you know me, when I'm in the zone, I don't really notice anything else. I'm in the zone. And then these two ladies are walking in my direction and one of the ladies points at me and says, "That guy is definitely going to church."I broke lots of categories. I've seen the nice lady from the park. My wife knows her and she knows our daughters. And then she's with her friend. She's like, "That guy is a priest." And says, "You're a priest. Right?" And I was like, "Close enough. Priest, rabbi, pastor, whatever." I'm just telling people about God. And then her friend goes, "Where's your church?" And I said, "Mosaic Boston, right there on Beacon Street." She said, "Can I come?" I was like, "Of course you can come."And then I realized a lot of people don't go to church because no one's invited them. So it's just a reminder that we should be inviting people into the house of prayer. Today, the title of sermon is believing against hope in Romans 4:13 through 25. How are we saved by grace through faith? That's the only way we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.But often we put too much of emphasis on our own faith because faith is how you grow in knowledge of God. We want our faith strength about how do you strengthen your faith? That's the question before us. Especially when everything is hopeless. I'll start with the quote by BB Warfield, tremendous theologian. He says, "The saving power of faith, resides thus not in itself, but in the almighty savior on whom it rests. It is not strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but that Christ saves through faith." Christ saves through faith.Faith is the instrument by which God saves us and by which we enter into a saving relationship with him. But faith is not our own. Saving faith is not our own. Saving faith is a gift from God. You can't muster saving faith. You can only ask. And when you ask, receive it with humility and exercise that faith. If we could muster our faith, if we're going to even muster an ounce of faith on our own, then we would still get credit a little bit for our salvation.But this is the beauty of Christianity. There is nothing. There is nothing that you can take credit for when it comes to being safe. Salvation is all grace. 100%. You can do absolutely nothing to save yourself. So that gets us into a position of incredible helplessness and hopelessness. I can't do a thing to save myself. And now we have ears to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. We can hear about grace.The context Paul has made clear, whenever any anyone got saved, or get saved, or will get saved, it's only by justification through faith. And he points to the example of Abraham. We talked about that last week. That Abraham, before he offered up Isaac on the altar, even before he obeyed God with circumcision, before all of that, God made him a promise that you will be blessed and I will send you a son.God made that promise. And Abraham believed the promise. And Genesis 15 says, "God counted righteousness to Abraham. Mercy did not eclipse justice. God saves us by satisfying his divine justice on the cross." So the today we're Romans 4:13 through 25. Would you look at the text with me. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. Not only to the adherent of the law, but also to one who shares the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. As it is written, I've made you the father of many nations. And the presence of the God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations as he had been told, "So shall you offspring be." He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the bareness of Sarah's womb. No distress made him waiver earning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but four ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. And usually at this point in the sermon, I say those three points, the frame of our time together are one, two, three. I have no points today. The reason why I do the points is number one. So you don't think I'm making stuff up on the fly. That actually did work during the week, which I do because I met a guy this week. He's like, "Oh, you're a pastor. So you only work one day a week." I said, "Actually, only 45 minutes. That's it." And he laughed, I laughed. We all laughed. I went home and cried.And then also I do the points, so you can track in your mind how much more do I need to pay attention? Like how much more brain energy. Just follow the verses. We're going to frame up our time with the verses, versus 13 through 25. Verse 13, would you look at the text. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.So God made a promise to Abraham that he would be the heir of the world, and that promise wasn't just given to him, it was given to his progeny, his heirs, everyone that came after him. And earlier in the text, he said, "Everyone who believes Abraham is our father." He continues that same stream of thought here. So God goes to Abraham and he promises, "You're going to be the heir of the world." Heir of what? Heir of everything.What is an heir. An heir is someone who inherits something incredible. So if your grandfather, great uncle died and he was wealthy and he was generous, he includes you in the will. And then you get inheritance. I come from a family of immigrants. My parents came here with $700 in their pocket. My grandfather, who was the only grandparent I had when we immigrated, he came here with nothing. So he saved up over the course of years. And when he died, he had $6,000 in his bank and he wrote out a will. And he is like, "This is what I want you to do with the $6,000. I want you to make an album with pictures of me and my family. And I want you to give one of those albums to every single member of the family."That's a treasured inheritance I got from my grandfather. But if you grew up here and your family has been here for generations, perhaps there's inheritance coming. And that's exciting. We get excited about inheritance. But God promises Abraham and not just money. He promised him that you will inherit or your heirs will inherit everything. Obviously, the only true and proper heir of God the father is God the son. Jesus alone is worthy to inherit the kingdom that God has promised. But through the gift of faith, the righteousness that is imputed by faith, the righteousness of Christ, we're adopted into the family of God. And because we're adopted into the family of God, we're now sons and daughters of God the father with Jesus Christ as our older brother.So thanks to this adoption. Apart from this adoption, we're spiritual orphans. And not just spiritual orphans, we're not children of God, the father. Apart from Jesus Christ, you need to know this is important. Apart from Jesus Christ, you're not a child of God. Jesus makes it clear in the gospel of John that apart from faith in Christ, you are a child of Satan. So we need to believe in Jesus Christ, get the prerequisite righteousness to be adopted into the family of God the father. And when we are adopted, we become co-heirs of the world with Christ.Verse 5 of Matthew 5, this is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus Christ said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. With the coming of the Messiah, the promise of a land in Canaan, God promised to Abraham, "You're going to get land in Canaan. That's the promised land." Jesus Christ comes and he said, "The meek shall inherit the earth.Canaan So the promise has been universalized to the entire earth and thus, the notion held by contemporary dispensationalist.Do you know what those are? Any Christian that has a lot of charts that loves charts, probably dispensationalist. Just out of nowhere they get a chart and they can timeline, and they can tell you when Jesus is coming back, et cetera, et cetera. The contemporary dispensation, they believe that Israel, because modern day Israel was established that that is the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to Abraham which isn't true.As we shall see, when we get to Romans 9 through 11, the return of the Jews to their Homeland, while in amazing act of God's providence, and perhaps it's related to the conversion that will come of Israel before the end of the age. But the land promise has nothing to do whatsoever with the promise given to Abraham when God made a covenant with him.So Paul follows the lead of the prophets. He follows the lead of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and he universalizes the promise to extend to the ends of the earth. Way, way beyond the original boundaries of the promised land, the Nile and Euphrates.So what does it mean that Christians, followers of God will inherit the earth. And here we want details. We want all the details, Lord. Give me some details. What kind of land am I getting an inheritance? Lord, can I have some waterfront property, in a very warm location? If you don't like the ocean, Lord, can I have some mountains? I've been living in the city for 13 years. I'm like, Lord, can I just have a parking spot?And when I inherit, whatever, can I just get a park? But we don't get details. It should be enough that God promises that when you believe in Jesus is great, you will live forever in the presence of God and you will inherit the world.My daughters when they were younger, I'd say, "Get in the car. We're going on a trip." And no questions, no questions ever, they're like, "Let's go. Let's go." And now that they're older, they're like, "I need a detailed itinerary. I need to know if this trip is worth it." This past week, our family got invited to go... My friend is a minister at Brown University, Athletes in Action, and they were doing a senior sendoff where he's like, "Can you come give them a charge?" And I gave them a charge. I said, "You're going to need to tremble before God's word." It was tremendous.I brought my daughters. I was like, "Little ladies, let's go. I want you to meet these college athlete, men and women. They're scholars. They're athletes. They're Christians. They work hard. They love the Lord. They've got a tremendous pain tolerance. They're doing great." And then my girls are like, "Well, who's going to be there? What kind of food are we going to have? Will there be any children? "And Milana is like, "Will there be any toys?" Because apparently when you're four and you go to someone else's house, all the toys are brand new. They're all brand new.And that's what we want. I'm like, "We're going to have fun. We're going to be together. We're going to make it..." And it was good. Details don't matter as much with the Lord. I promised you eternal life. I promised you an inheritance. The more important question isn't the details of the inheritance, the more important question is can I lose my inheritance or can I get more of the inheritance?Well, first, no, you can't lose the inheritance because the inheritance doesn't depend on your performance. The inheritance that God is offering isn't based on your perfection., It's based on the direction of your life. Are you following Jesus Christ? The moment you repent of your sins and you turn to Jesus Christ, you're justified by grace through faith.Now you are son, a daughter of God. You will get an inheritance. You can't lose that inheritance, but you can get more of that inheritance. And this is 1 Corinthians 3, one of the classic sermons ever preached at Mosaic. It's in the app. Pastor Andy Davis preached a sermon called how much heaven do you want? I go back to that sermon all the time. One of the most powerful. He's like, how much do you want? How much heaven do you want to inherit? And he talks about the capacity to experience the presence of God. That's expanded here in this life and the next life.Once that capacity expands, you get to experience more of God. So yes, it's only by faith that we're save. It's only by faith that we get an inheritance, but that faith needs to be authenticated with obedience or else it's not true faith. I say the direction of life, because I think of Christianity like this because Jesus Christ talked about this in the Sermon of the Mount. He said, "Look, the way that leads to destruction is broad, and there's a lot of people going down that path. But the way that leads to life is narrow. It's straight and narrow."So it's like you're going through life, going through life, going from broadened path. And the God just stops you. He stops you. He elects you. He saves you. He gives you the gift of faith, gift of repentance. All of a sudden you're sealed with the Holy Spirit and he turns you around. And that's what repentance is, a change of mind, change of heart, change of direction. And then he puts you on the straight and narrow and he says, "Follow me."He locks you into this path. Another way to think about it is I think about it like a rollercoaster. Like you were on a roller coaster going to hell. You were on that. And then God takes you off that ride. It's terrible. It feels like fun, but you're on hell. And then he puts you on the ride going straight to heaven. You sit down. He locks you in with grace. You can't get out. The teaching of grace and salvation. You can't get out.And if you want to get out, you should tell me, and then I'll point you to Hebrew 6 and Hebrews 10, which is like, "No, no, you don't want to get out." It locks you in. And on the rollercoaster, sometimes there are highs and you're like, "Christianity is the best. Jesus is coming back soon. People are getting saved. And then sometimes, the rollercoaster goes down and you're like, "Jesus, could you please come back? Got it ready. Ready to go." It's up and down. But the obedience needs to authenticate the faith.So Abraham gets saved by grace through faith. That's Genesis 15 and then comes the sign of the covenant, the sign of circumcision. And then in Genesis 22, he calls Abraham to sacrifice his son on the altar. We talked about that last week and then the angel of the Lord stops him and he says, "Now, I know that you fear the Lord." And then the angel continues the verse 15 of Genesis 22. And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, "By myself, I have sworn." Why? Because there's nothing higher by which God can swear than by himself."By myself I have sworn," declares the Lord, "because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that's in the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." I thought it was by grace through faith? Yeah, it is by grace. That's how it starts. That's how you get justified. But then begins the hard work of sanctification of following God on a daily basis. And then God said, "Okay, you believed it was grace and now your faith is authenticated with your obedience." And Paul will elaborate more on this later in the letter. But for now, he wants to emphasize the heirs of Abraham and his seed do not receive the promise inheritance through the law. It's not through performance, but through faith. And it's not through performance because Abraham lived.God made that promise 430 years before the 10 commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Galatians 3:17 through 18. This is what I mean, the law, which came 430 years afterward does not know a covenant previously ratified by God. So as to make the promise void for if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. God promises Abraham and inheritance before the law. So it was all by faith. Abraham believes that he was justified by faith.And Paul's point is of course he wasn't justified by works. There was no law yet. In Galatians 2:16, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified. He continues in verse 14 for if it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, plural, faith is null. And the promise is void.The way you're saying is you can't earn your inheritance by keeping the law. That's not how inheritance works. Why do you get inheritance from anybody? You didn't earn the inheritance. Someone else worked for years to get whatever the stuff that you're inheriting. You're only gifted it because you're part of the family or you were treated like family. So how do you become part of the family of God to make sure that you get this inheritance by keeping the law? No, of course not.Only by grasping onto the promise. God, you promised. God, you promised me that when I repented my sins and I believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior, you promise me that all my sins are forgiven. I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. I will live for eternity in the presence of God, and I get an inheritance. And God has given us this promise. All we have to do is believe in the promise.You mean there's nothing I can do to make myself righteous before God? No. Even if today you got this incredible resolve and you say, "You know what? I have sinned. I've sinned. And I feel a weight of my sin. All right, from here on out, the church inspired me today. From here on out, I will live a sinless life. No more sin. I will love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind. I will love my neighbor as myself. I will do it."See, the loving God part, it's easy because he is perfect. But then you go home and you're like, "I got to love God. I Got to love my neighbor. Got to love God. Got to love my neighbor." And then all of a sudden you realize, "Yeah, I have neighbors on every single side of me." And then they turn on their music and you're like, "I got to keep loving them." And then they start cooking and you're, "What's that smell?" And then you open the window because of the cooking, and then a smell of skunk begins to waft in. My daughter think it's a skunk because that's why I keep telling her. I was like, "That's skunk. There's a lot of skunks in Boston." They're just stories full of skunks all around us.You just got to keep low. You got to keep low then after you're like, "Yeah, I'll start tomorrow. I'll start tomorrow." Every good diet starts on a Monday. Every righteous path starts tomorrow. No, you can't. Even if you try, you can't, you can't, you can't. Why? Because the law brings wrath. That's verse 15. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. The law brings wrath. What does it mean? He means that the law does not affect salvation.It can't save you. It does not affect justification or forgiveness. If you trust in your keeping of the law in your performance, all you're doing is keeping up wrath for the day of judgment. But there is a law and we've all transgressed that law. If God didn't tell us how to live, we could live anywhere we want. We'd be autonomous. We'd be absolutely independent. We can define reality as we want to define reality. And that's how most Americans live. And that's why the wrath of God is being poured out.Even on this country, we're not free. There is a law. People think we're free. Dostoevsky said, "If there is no God, then all things are permissible." That's how most people live. I'm a law to myself. I'm a God of my own life. I'm lure to myself until things get hard, and then people start crying out to God. And once you start thinking about God, you're like, "Oh, maybe he does have obligations upon me that are written on my heart."There's no way. There's nothing we can do to justify for our sins. One of the things I've been noticing now that I'm a soccer dad, we have three practices and three games every week. It's a 20-hour commitment by the way. But my girls are tremendous at it. One of my girls scored three goals yesterday. She wasn't even trying. She wasn't even trying. Coach called her secret weapon. He said, "Protect the secret weapon." But one of the things I noticed with the parents, they're really good parents. They're really nice people. Really nice.I love meeting them. Really nice people. Just tremendous, tremendous people. And I invited this one guy to church and then he's like, "You're a pastor?" Oh, that's the guy that said, "You only work a day a week." So I invited him to church and he's like, "They let you be a pastor?" I was like, "For now. You should come." Such a good dad. Just a good dad. Had a little birthday party for his daughters and he invited all the kids cup. Just good. How can I tell this guy he's on his way to hell?I realized be being a good parent is not virtuous. That doesn't add any virtue. You're just doing the bare minimum. It's just expected of you that you're going to be a good parent. Just because you're human, it's not virtuous to be a good parent. No, the standard is so much higher. The standard is perfection. The standard is absolute untainted love. There is a law and we've transgressed that law. We've transgressed it with sins of commission. That's doing bad things. And sins of omission. That's not doing the good things that we know we're supposed to do. We failed to do them.We have debts accruing against us in God's economy. So we do pray to forgive us our debts. "Lord, forgive us our trespass and our transgressions. Lord, please forgive me because I know I deserve your wrath." And the wrath he's talking as punitive wrath. It's not corrective wrath. There's a difference. In Hebrews 12, there is a corrective wrath. God the father loves his children and when his children disobey, he does discipline us. That's Hebrews 12. And here he's talking about punitive wrath that God takes our law breaking personally.Because God is the law giver. When we sin, we're not sinning against some abstract norm or piece of legislation some people somewhere. Now, we're sitting against the law giver himself who is good and loving. And that's why you gave the law, and he wrote the law on our hearts. It's for our good. It's for human universal flourishing. So when we break that law, we break God's heart. And when we break God's heart, what we deserve in response is wrath. It's a personal affront against God every time we sin. That's why sin is so egregious. It's a personal attack against a great God, a holy God. A God who's been nothing but good and loving to us.And then the only time that he became a human, we mocked him and ridiculed him, scorned him and crucified him instead of glorifying him. Romans 4:16. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. Not only to the adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all.He says, "That's why it depends on faith." In the reformation there's the five solas. Sola fide, that's one of them. That's only by faith we're saved. Sola gratia, only by grace. Solus Christus, only by the work of Christ. Our justification is by grace through faith only because of Christ. But why is it by justification by faith? Because it rests on the promise of grace. Since you didn't earn it, your salvation, you can't lose it.That's why he uses the word guarantee. Guaranteed to all his offspring. So if God saves you, that's a gift. And if you didn't earn it, if you receive the gift, you can't lose it. When God adopt someone into his family, you're adopted forever. God is a good father who never loses a child. Once saved, always saved because you're always persevering. You're always following. And look, this is what scripture teaches. And I grew up in a church that did not teach this. They were very Armenian.In that, they're like, "You know what? You never know." You ask anyone and they're like, "Hey, are you going to heaven today if you die?" And they're like, "I hope so." And that was kind of like the culture of the church where it's like... Before communion Sunday, I used to dread communion Sunday, because they're like, "If you sin this week, you don't take part in communion."I was like, "Sin this week? I sin this morning. I sin on the way to church. I love everyone like 100%. No, they're sin, they're sin, they're sin." That's the sanctification part. No, but the justification part, that's all the work of Christ. Therefore, we're saved for all eternity. The doctrine of assurance, of salvation, you can be sure. So this is a very important question. Today, are you sure that you are going to spend eternity with God? Are you sure? Do you have that assurance right now?Are you 100% sure? And if there any hesitation in your mind, you need to go back to the doctor and justification by grace through faith. I am not saved because of my performance. I'm saved because of Christ's performance. I believe in Christ therefore I'm justified by grace through faith. You can be sure. You should be sure.And then of course we're called to make our election sure, but our salvation doesn't depend on our obedience of the law. Because our righteousness depends on faith, rest on grace is guaranteed to everyone who follows in the footsteps of faith of Abraham. Everyone who shares in this faith that righteousness, alien righteous, not ours can be imputed, gifted to us because of Christ.Verse 17, "As it is written, I've made you the father of many nations in the presence of the God in whom he believed. Who gives life to the dead and calls into existence to things that do not exist." Abraham here is called the father of many nation. So he is not just the father of Isaac. He's not just the father of his progeny. He's not just the father of the Jews. Abraham here is considered the father of anyone who trusts in the same promise that he embraced that there's a righteousness that can be counted to us from God.We're the seed of Abraham by faith in Christ. Abraham believed God. Abraham believed God and he got God's presence. That's what it says in verse 17. And the presence of God in whom he believed. So he got a promise from God and he got the presence of God. And that's the only thing he had to sustain him for 25 years. 25 years, from the day God promised him, "Hey, I'm going to give you a son." For 25 years he woke up, nothing. Woke up, nothing. God reaffirmed a few times. Nothing, nothing, nothing. But he believed, and he believed that God is a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.God is a creator. He's the only creator. He's the creator who creates ex nihilo, something out of nothing. No one else can do that. Not even Satan. Satan can't create a thing. Satan counterfeits and he ruins everything else that God creates. So it's convenient that God can create something out of nothing, life out of death because of verse 18. In hope, he believed against hope. In hope, Abraham believed against hope that he should be the father of many nations as he had been told, so shall your offspring be.So there's two hopes here and then there's a faith. In hope, he believed against hope. What's the hope that he's believing against? That's just normal hope. This is what normal people feel like that you wake up and you're like, "I could be negative or I could be positive. All right, I should be positive. I could be a pessimist or I could be an optimist. I want to be a glass half full kind of person, so I'm going to be an optimist today."It's natural. You muster it up, this hope and you... People say this all the time. I trust everything will work out. I think everything will work out for the good. And usually they say that because they look past at their track record in their life and they're like, "You know what, things have always kind of worked out, so I think they kind of work out." But if you study investment, you know that past results don't guarantee future performance.Everything could be great and everything could have been working out, and then you just die. Oh, it didn't work out. So there's normal hope and then there's a hope that goes beyond, a transcended hope. That's hope and faith together in hope he believed. And he believed against all of the evidence. All of the evidence that he is accruing about his circumstances. This point to the fact that God lied.And then he goes back to the promise of God, and he looks beyond his circumstances. This is why in prayer, it's so helpful to close your eyes. And by the way, in worship, it's so helpful to close your eyes. That's why you should memorize the worship songs. Every newsletter I sent out at the bottom of the newsletter is a list of all of the worship songs for Sunday. I'm telling you, worship could be so much more powerful if everyone just closed their eyes and sang the song as memorized.By the way, you can anytime just sing and you just glorify God. You can close your eyes. You can't see your circumstances. You just focus on God and then all of a sudden you're like, "My circumstances, aren't that important? My circumstances are not sovereign." God is sovereign. "My circumstances even when they're hopeless, even when they're helpless, they're not God."And I trust in the God for whom nothing is impossible. Do you believe that? Do you believe that for God, nothing is impossible. Nothing. And if you do, that changes everything. What is the hope that Abraham was beyond? He was beyond that humanly speaking, God's promise could have. If God came to Abraham when Abraham was in his 20s and like, "Hey man, you're going to have a kid." He's like, "You know what? I could see that. I could see that, Sarah. Yeah, we're still young." God comes to Abraham when he's 75. He's like, "You're going to have a kid." He's like, "Are you sure?" And he goes and tells his wife, Sarah, she's like, "I'm 65. We're going to have a kid?"And they believed, and then God waits another 25 years. So then Sarah is 90. Abraham is 100 and God is like, "Yep, you're going to have a kid". And then Abraham and Sarah hears... And Sarah, all she can do is she just laughs because the absurdity of it. She's like, "I'm 90. I'm going to have a kid at 90? That's crazy." She's like, "Abraham, you're in a wheelchair. What are you going to have a stroller? This is nuts. This is crazy. We're not going to..." Circumstances, no reason for hope. He's hopeless. He's helpless. But he continues to trust in God when humanly speaking hope had reached a limit. It hope he believed against hope. And this is the true faith, vibrant faith. A faith that saves.And the same way that Abraham was helpless, and the same way that his wife's womb, there was no life in it. And that same way, our souls are in need of resurrection. Our hearts are in need of resurrection. This is what the connection between Paul and Abraham. So what is true hope? What is this true faith? Well, it consists of three parts. First, you need the information. If you are going to get saved by grace through faith, what's the information about God that I need to know? You learn the information. God is holy. We have transgressed his law. There's a chasm between us. We are on our way to hell.Jesus Christ, the son of God, second person of the Trinity comes lives a perfect life, no sin, and then takes that moral record to the cross, pays our debt, absorbs the wrath of God for our transgression. He absorbs the curse that we deserve to extend to us the blessing that he earned. And then he dies. And because of resurrection from the dead, everything that he did and everything he taught is obviously true. God accepts his sacrifice. Now by grace through faith, we can be saved. That's the info.After the info, you need to ask, is it true? Is this true? Is it verifiable? And it is verifiable. These are all historic things that happened. Jesus Christ's historical figure. He had disciples. People knew him. 500 people saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It transformed world history like no event. We literally stopped time and all of a sudden started recounting. Your birthday is measured from his birthday. Obviously it's true. Now the question is, info is it true? Do I commit?Do I commit? Can I entrust myself to Jesus Christ? We're justified by faith and trusting in Christ alone for our salvation. Abraham didn't just believe in God. Even Satan believes in God. No, he entrusted himself to God. He knew the person of God. He knew that God doesn't lie. Faith isn't blind. It's just a different kind of sight. And he saw that this was true with the eyes of a soul.Faith isn't absurd. It's not foolishness. It's not baseless. Faith is ultimately trusting what is preeminently trustworthy and that's God in hope he believed against hope. Is it reasonable to believe in situations like this? No. Look at your situation. That's not reasonable to believe. You ever feel like that in your Christian walk? Is it reasonable to keep following Jesus? Especially when things get hard, especially when you suffer. Is it reasonable?For all intents and purposes Abraham's body was as good as dead. That's what it says in verse 19. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old or when he considered the bareness of Sarah's womb. Looked at himself, looked at his wife. All he saw was hopeless and he had to close his eyes and looked beyond. How could I possibly believe even the promise? Well, because of the promise giver. The promise giver is the promise keeper. Because he's God and God can't lie. It's against his nature.The only hopeless thing is the idea that the promise would not come to pass. And in Romans 4:20, I love this verse so much. No unbelief made him waiver. Concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. Fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. When doubt came, Abraham fought off the doubt with the promises of God. And not just with the promises of God, but the presence of God. How did he do that? How did he strengthen his faith?Tremendous question. How do you strengthen your faith? Through Bible study, helpful and necessary. Studying theology, helpful and necessary. Time and prayer, helpful and necessary. Worshiping God on your own, helpful and necessary. That's not what it says. He did not strengthen his faith by focusing on his faith because when you're focusing on your faith, you're focusing on yourself. And when you're focusing on yourself...That could be discouraging, especially when life is hard. No, that's not what he did. He didn't do any of that. When he felt most hopeless and most helpless, it says that he gave glory to God. He gave glory to God. "God, I glorify you for everything that you are and everything that you have done in the past and everything you will do in the future. God, I glorify you."You know what that means? That means you recognize God for who he is. He's the great God of the universe. You glorify him. And also the word assumes that there is a magnification that happens, where as you're glorifying God, he gets so much bigger. Your problems get so much smaller and that's why your faith grows. Glorify God when you're happy, but also glorify God when you're sad. That's what really grows faith. It's easy to glorify God when everything's tremendous. Isn't it? That's why I think in these churches where the pastors have their own airplanes, it's just kind of easier to believe and it's easier to preach because the guy is like, "Of course God loves me. Look at my plane. Does it anyone want to go for a trip. I'm going to Cancun on a mission trip this weekend." Of course, God loves me. Why wouldn't you want to become a Christian? You can be tremendous like me. Look at me. Look at my plane.That doesn't grow my faith. I mean, God gave me a plane. You know what grows my faith, when everything is terrible. Like humanly speaking. And when you're suffering. And when there is a despondent, a sadness of the soul and you can still say, "Praise be to God. Glory to God." That right there will grow your faith like nothing else. And this is absolutely biblical. This is a story of Job. He had nothing because he lost everything. God allows Satan to take his children and to take his wealth and to take his health.In Job 1:20 through 21, then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return?" The Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Does your theology allow for a verse like this? It has to. We all experience seasons like this. If not, you will. And then finally, he still had his health and then he lost his children, lost his wealth and then Satan is like, "Can I take his health?" And God is like, "Okay."And Job 2:9 through 10. Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil?" In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. Can you say, "God, I glorify you" when you're experiencing evil? Well, that's the only way to have a faith that really saves and to exercise that faith.Romans 8:26 through 30, "Likewise the spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Have you ever prayed like that? Where you're in prayer and you're praying, and you're praying, you're out of words, but you know prayer isn't over. And all you can do is just groan. And you say to Holy Spirit, "Pray for me. Jesus, pray for me." As the Holy Spirit just begins to groan with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called. And those whom he called he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified in the past tense. It's all in the past tense.He justified, that's past tense. Sanctifies us. And then he's like glorification, this is in heaven. When we get the new body, completely no sin, no imperfections, just absolutely healthy. He's like, "Your glorification is so sure it's in the past tense." Faith grows just like Jesus said it would. If you have faith as tiny as the grain of a mustard seed, you can move mountains because it's not about the faith. It's about the object of your faith.That's why St. Paul wants to move. Yes, you're saved by grace through faith. You have faith in Christ, in Christ. All the focus is on Christ. And then with that faith, he exercised and Abraham believed and he obeyed, and he was strengthened in his faith, and he gave glory to God.Isaiah 46:38 says, "A voice says cry and I said, 'What shall I cry?' All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass Withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. God has given us his promises. We can trust in them. And he also offers us his presence and his presence by the power of the spirit is what in encourages and edifies, helps us persevere.Romans 4:22 through 25. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. There's so much in what he said. Jesus died for our trespasses, but he was raised for our justification.Because Christ was raised, he conquered this triumphal sign that Christ's death removes the curse of sin because his resurrection undoes the final consequences of sin, which is death. Christ's resurrection marks the dawn of the new creation because his resurrection reverses the curse.Yeah, we still die, but not really as Christians because it's just a transition. We will live forever with Christ. Abraham, by the way, didn't have the resurrection. He didn't have the Bible. He didn't have the Torah. He didn't have the Old testament. He didn't have the Hebrew scripture. He didn't have the prophets. He didn't have anything. And he also didn't have Christ. He didn't have the teaching of Christ. The life of Christ, the eyewitnesses who saw Christ. And he didn't know that Christ came back from the dead.All he had was faith in the God who imputed righteousness. But he did believe intuitively in the resurrection. Hebrews 11:17 through 19. "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offing be named. He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back." He's like, "Even if I make the ultimate sacrifice of sacrificing my son because God told me to, God can always raise him from the day he believed in a God who has that power."Last week, I did this thought experiment to talk about the scandal of grace. Justification of my grace through faith. The moment you believe in Christ, repent in your sin, and you're saved. And I asked the question, I said, "Who is the most evil man in the world that if we just sniped this guy, everything would get better." And most everyone agreed it was Putin. And then I was like, "What if Putin repents of his sin and trust in Jesus Christ? And it's true, it's genuine repentance. Could you call him brother?"A brother sent me a real example of something similar. So in 1946, there was a pastor from Missouri named, Henry Gerecke of the Lutheran Synod. He was an army chaplain. He served in the army. One of his sons died. Another one of his sons was injured. And then afterwards, after fighting, he was transitioned to army chaplain. He was sent to minister in the Nuremberg prisons during the trials. And he asked the army, "Hey, can I write about this?" And the army told him, "You got to wait five years." And then he wrote about this in an article called, "I Walked to the Gallows with Nazi Chiefs".It appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in September 1st, 1951. He says, "It was the duty of the chaplain of Nuremberg prison to offer Christian comfort to Hitler's gang. Now, after five years under a bond of silence, I can tell my story of how many repented before the hangman's trap fell." In the beginning, he kind of explains what he wants to say and then he tells a story. He says, "I particularly want to emphasize that when stripped of all they had held important."So this is Nazi brass. This is the SS, like the top of the top he's ministering to. He said, "I particularly want to emphasize that when stripped of all that they had held important, and when offered the eternal verities, most of the 21 defendants were able to come to their moral senses and repent." This is what happened in Nuremberg prison. More than half of the Nazis there before going to the gallows or their long imprisonment and spawned out, ask God for forgiveness of their sins against him and against humanity.They did so in a spirit that convinced me that their repentance was genuine. I've had many years of experience as a prison chaplain do not believe I'm easily diluted by phony reformations at the 11th hour. And then he talks about when he was sent there, he had excuses. The Nazis took one of his sons. And then he finally said the following. He said, "The next few days, I prayed harder than I've ever had in my life. And slowly the men at Nuremberg became to me, just lost souls, whom I was being asked to help. If, as never before, I could hate the sin, but love the sinner, I'll go," he said.Early in the morning on October 16th, 1946, an hour past midnight, the first Nazi war criminal to be hanged at Nuremberg began his final walk to the scaffold. Accompanying him was the US Army chaplain who had been his spiritual counselor for the past year. After the prisoner climbed the steps and stood on the trap door, he was asked for his last words. I placed all my confidence in the lamb who made atonement for my sins. May God have mercy on my soul. And then turning to the chaplain, he added, "I'll see you again."With that, a hood was pulled over his face. The rope fixed around his neck and he dropped through the trap door into eternity. The prisoner was Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister in one of the highest profile Nazis to stand trial before the International Military Tribunal. That's all it takes to cry out, "Lord have mercy on my soul." Have mercy on my soul. If you're not yet a Christian, you're welcome today. We plead with you.Don't put it off. Today, pray this prayer. Cry out to God to save your soul. Put your trust in Jesus Christ. And the gift of faith will be given to you. The gift of repentance, the gift of justification, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of a guaranteed inheritance in heaven. It's a scandal of grace. Believe it and receive it.That said we're going to transition to holy communion. We celebrate holy communion once a month at Mosaic for whom is holy communion for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you are not a Christian, you're not sure where you are in your faith, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service instead meditate on the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if you do repent and trust in Jesus today, you're welcome to partake.And if you are a Christian, this is for repentant Christians. If there's any sin in your life that you haven't yet repented of, we welcome you to do that. And if you don't refrain, if you do, you're welcome to partake. If you haven't receive the bread and the cup, the elements, please raise your hand. And one of the ushers will give you one as I pray.Heavenly father, we thank you for grace. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You've suffered, Lord and today we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now and focus our attention on the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.Take off the top layer. Take the bread. And then the second layer. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus Christ took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat and do this in remembrance of me."Then proceed to take the cup. He said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me."Lord God, we glorify you. And Holy Spirit, lead us in glorifying God. Help us as we sing now as we worship. Help us cast off all our burdens, all our anxiety, all of our stress, cast it off from us to you and help us focus on you, on your greatness, on your majesty, on your preeminence, on your holiness, on your righteousness, on the perfection of your plans and your sovereignty.Now, help us sing with everything we got because you are worthy of all worship, of all praise, of all glory. And we pray all this in the name of the father, of the son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly father, we glorify you. We focus our full attention upon you right now. Help us remove any distractions, any worries, any anxiety and help us focus only on you. We glorify you often in our lives. You're just too small because we aren't glorifying you. We're glorifying things ourselves. We pray, remove all of that and help us focus on Jesus Christ on his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection. And because of all of everything he's done, we have access to the presence of God with a righteousness that is not our own. That's the prerequisite to be in the family of God to have a righteousness that is perfect. We thank you that when we repent of sin, believe in you, Jesus, you give us that righteousness as a gift. And we thank you, Holy Spirit that you are with us today. And I pray Holy Spirit, minister to us, minister to our souls. If there's any heartache or heartbreak, I pray today. Send healing and help us revel in this truth and help us go deeper into it. What does it mean that I'm justified by grace through faith? Holy Spirit ignite our hearts to then live out this incredible, incredible calling and identity. And we pray, all this in Christ holy name. Amen. So I'm walking down the street today on the way to church and I'm in the zone. If you know me, when I'm in the zone, I don't really notice anything else. I'm in the zone. And then these two ladies are walking in my direction and one of the ladies points at me and says, "That guy is definitely going to church." I broke lots of categories. I've seen the nice lady from the park. My wife knows her and she knows our daughters. And then she's with her friend. She's like, "That guy is a priest." And says, "You're a priest. Right?" And I was like, "Close enough. Priest, rabbi, pastor, whatever." I'm just telling people about God. And then her friend goes, "Where's your church?" And I said, "Mosaic Boston, right there on Beacon Street." She said, "Can I come?" I was like, "Of course you can come." And then I realized a lot of people don't go to church because no one's invited them. So it's just a reminder that we should be inviting people into the house of prayer. Today, the title of sermon is believing against hope in Romans 4:13 through 25. How are we saved by grace through faith? That's the only way we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But often we put too much of emphasis on our own faith because faith is how you grow in knowledge of God. We want our faith strength about how do you strengthen your faith? That's the question before us. Especially when everything is hopeless. I'll start with the quote by BB Warfield, tremendous theologian. He says, "The saving power of faith, resides thus not in itself, but in the almighty savior on whom it rests. It is not strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but that Christ saves through faith." Christ saves through faith. Faith is the instrument by which God saves us and by which we enter into a saving relationship with him. But faith is not our own. Saving faith is not our own. Saving faith is a gift from God. You can't muster saving faith. You can only ask. And when you ask, receive it with humility and exercise that faith. If we could muster our faith, if we're going to even muster an ounce of faith on our own, then we would still get credit a little bit for our salvation. But this is the beauty of Christianity. There is nothing. There is nothing that you can take credit for when it comes to being safe. Salvation is all grace. 100%. You can do absolutely nothing to save yourself. So that gets us into a position of incredible helplessness and hopelessness. I can't do a thing to save myself. And now we have ears to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. We can hear about grace. The context Paul has made clear, whenever any anyone got saved, or get saved, or will get saved, it's only by justification through faith. And he points to the example of Abraham. We talked about that last week. That Abraham, before he offered up Isaac on the altar, even before he obeyed God with circumcision, before all of that, God made him a promise that you will be blessed and I will send you a son. God made that promise. And Abraham believed the promise. And Genesis 15 says, "God counted righteousness to Abraham. Mercy did not eclipse justice. God saves us by satisfying his divine justice on the cross." So the today we're Romans 4:13 through 25. Would you look at the text with me. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. Not only to the adherent of the law, but also to one who shares the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. As it is written, I've made you the father of many nations. And the presence of the God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations as he had been told, "So shall you offspring be." He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the bareness of Sarah's womb. No distress made him waiver earning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but four ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead, Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. This is the reading of God's holy inerrant, infallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. And usually at this point in the sermon, I say those three points, the frame of our time together are one, two, three. I have no points today. The reason why I do the points is number one. So you don't think I'm making stuff up on the fly. That actually did work during the week, which I do because I met a guy this week. He's like, "Oh, you're a pastor. So you only work one day a week." I said, "Actually, only 45 minutes. That's it." And he laughed, I laughed. We all laughed. I went home and cried. And then also I do the points, so you can track in your mind how much more do I need to pay attention? Like how much more brain energy. Just follow the verses. We're going to frame up our time with the verses, versus 13 through 25. Verse 13, would you look at the text. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. So God made a promise to Abraham that he would be the heir of the world, and that promise wasn't just given to him, it was given to his progeny, his heirs, everyone that came after him. And earlier in the text, he said, "Everyone who believes Abraham is our father." He continues that same stream of thought here. So God goes to Abraham and he promises, "You're going to be the heir of the world." Heir of what? Heir of everything. What is an heir. An heir is someone who inherits something incredible. So if your grandfather, great uncle died and he was wealthy and he was generous, he includes you in the will. And then you get inheritance. I come from a family of immigrants. My parents came here with $700 in their pocket. My grandfather, who was the only grandparent I had when we immigrated, he came here with nothing. So he saved up over the course of years. And when he died, he had $6,000 in his bank and he wrote out a will. And he is like, "This is what I want you to do with the $6,000. I want you to make an album with pictures of me and my family. And I want you to give one of those albums to every single member of the family." That's a treasured inheritance I got from my grandfather. But if you grew up here and your family has been here for generations, perhaps there's inheritance coming. And that's exciting. We get excited about inheritance. But God promises Abraham and not just money. He promised him that you will inherit or your heirs will inherit everything. Obviously, the only true and proper heir of God the father is God the son. Jesus alone is worthy to inherit the kingdom that God has promised. But through the gift of faith, the righteousness that is imputed by faith, the righteousness of Christ, we're adopted into the family of God. And because we're adopted into the family of God, we're now sons and daughters of God the father with Jesus Christ as our older brother. So thanks to this adoption. Apart from this adoption, we're spiritual orphans. And not just spiritual orphans, we're not children of God, the father. Apart from Jesus Christ, you need to know this is important. Apart from Jesus Christ, you're not a child of God. Jesus makes it clear in the gospel of John that apart from faith in Christ, you are a child of Satan. So we need to believe in Jesus Christ, get the prerequisite righteousness to be adopted into the family of God the father. And when we are adopted, we become co-heirs of the world with Christ. Verse 5 of Matthew 5, this is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus Christ said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. With the coming of the Messiah, the promise of a land in Canaan, God promised to Abraham, "You're going to get land in Canaan. That's the promised land." Jesus Christ comes and he said, "The meek shall inherit the earth.Canaan So the promise has been universalized to the entire earth and thus, the notion held by contemporary dispensationalist. Do you know what those are? Any Christian that has a lot of charts that loves charts, probably dispensationalist. Just out of nowhere they get a chart and they can timeline, and they can tell you when Jesus is coming back, et cetera, et cetera. The contemporary dispensation, they believe that Israel, because modern day Israel was established that that is the fulfillment of the promise that God gave to Abraham which isn't true. As we shall see, when we get to Romans 9 through 11, the return of the Jews to their Homeland, while in amazing act of God's providence, and perhaps it's related to the conversion that will come of Israel before the end of the age. But the land promise has nothing to do whatsoever with the promise given to Abraham when God made a covenant with him. So Paul follows the lead of the prophets. He follows the lead of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and he universalizes the promise to extend to the ends of the earth. Way, way beyond the original boundaries of the promised land, the Nile and Euphrates. So what does it mean that Christians, followers of God will inherit the earth. And here we want details. We want all the details, Lord. Give me some details. What kind of land am I getting an inheritance? Lord, can I have some waterfront property, in a very warm location? If you don't like the ocean, Lord, can I have some mountains? I've been living in the city for 13 years. I'm like, Lord, can I just have a parking spot? And when I inherit, whatever, can I just get a park? But we don't get details. It should be enough that God promises that when you believe in Jesus is great, you will live forever in the presence of God and you will inherit the world. My daughters when they were younger, I'd say, "Get in the car. We're going on a trip." And no questions, no questions ever, they're like, "Let's go. Let's go." And now that they're older, they're like, "I need a detailed itinerary. I need to know if this trip is worth it." This past week, our family got invited to go... My friend is a minister at Brown University, Athletes in Action, and they were doing a senior sendoff where he's like, "Can you come give them a charge?" And I gave them a charge. I said, "You're going to need to tremble before God's word." It was tremendous. I brought my daughters. I was like, "Little ladies, let's go. I want you to meet these college athlete, men and women. They're scholars. They're athletes. They're Christians. They work hard. They love the Lord. They've got a tremendous pain tolerance. They're doing great." And then my girls are like, "Well, who's going to be there? What kind of food are we going to have? Will there be any children? "And Milana is like, "Will there be any toys?" Because apparently when you're four and you go to someone else's house, all the toys are brand new. They're all brand new. And that's what we want. I'm like, "We're going to have fun. We're going to be together. We're going to make it..." And it was good. Details don't matter as much with the Lord. I promised you eternal life. I promised you an inheritance. The more important question isn't the details of the inheritance, the more important question is can I lose my inheritance or can I get more of the inheritance? Well, first, no, you can't lose the inheritance because the inheritance doesn't depend on your performance. The inheritance that God is offering isn't based on your perfection., It's based on the direction of your life. Are you following Jesus Christ? The moment you repent of your sins and you turn to Jesus Christ, you're justified by grace through faith. Now you are son, a daughter of God. You will get an inheritance. You can't lose that inheritance, but you can get more of that inheritance. And this is 1 Corinthians 3, one of the classic sermons ever preached at Mosaic. It's in the app. Pastor Andy Davis preached a sermon called how much heaven do you want? I go back to that sermon all the time. One of the most powerful. He's like, how much do you want? How much heaven do you want to inherit? And he talks about the capacity to experience the presence of God. That's expanded here in this life and the next life. Once that capacity expands, you get to experience more of God. So yes, it's only by faith that we're save. It's only by faith that we get an inheritance, but that faith needs to be authenticated with obedience or else it's not true faith. I say the direction of life, because I think of Christianity like this because Jesus Christ talked about this in the Sermon of the Mount. He said, "Look, the way that leads to destruction is broad, and there's a lot of people going down that path. But the way that leads to life is narrow. It's straight and narrow." So it's like you're going through life, going through life, going from broadened path. And the God just stops you. He stops you. He elects you. He saves you. He gives you the gift of faith, gift of repentance. All of a sudden you're sealed with the Holy Spirit and he turns you around. And that's what repentance is, a change of mind, change of heart, change of direction. And then he puts you on the straight and narrow and he says, "Follow me." He locks you into this path. Another way to think about it is I think about it like a rollercoaster. Like you were on a roller coaster going to hell. You were on that. And then God takes you off that ride. It's terrible. It feels like fun, but you're on hell. And then he puts you on the ride going straight to heaven. You sit down. He locks you in with grace. You can't get out. The teaching of grace and salvation. You can't get out. And if you want to get out, you should tell me, and then I'll point you to Hebrew 6 and Hebrews 10, which is like, "No, no, you don't want to get out." It locks you in. And on the rollercoaster, sometimes there are highs and you're like, "Christianity is the best. Jesus is coming back soon. People are getting saved. And then sometimes, the rollercoaster goes down and you're like, "Jesus, could you please come back? Got it ready. Ready to go." It's up and down. But the obedience needs to authenticate the faith. So Abraham gets saved by grace through faith. That's Genesis 15 and then comes the sign of the covenant, the sign of circumcision. And then in Genesis 22, he calls Abraham to sacrifice his son on the altar. We talked about that last week and then the angel of the Lord stops him and he says, "Now, I know that you fear the Lord." And then the angel continues the verse 15 of Genesis 22. And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, "By myself, I have sworn." Why? Because there's nothing higher by which God can swear than by himself. "By myself I have sworn," declares the Lord, "because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that's in the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." I thought it was by grace through faith? Yeah, it is by grace. That's how it starts. That's how you get justified. But then begins the hard work of sanctification of following God on a daily basis. And then God said, "Okay, you believed it was grace and now your faith is authenticated with your obedience." And Paul will elaborate more on this later in the letter. But for now, he wants to emphasize the heirs of Abraham and his seed do not receive the promise inheritance through the law. It's not through performance, but through faith. And it's not through performance because Abraham lived. God made that promise 430 years before the 10 commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Galatians 3:17 through 18. This is what I mean, the law, which came 430 years afterward does not know a covenant previously ratified by God. So as to make the promise void for if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. God promises Abraham and inheritance before the law. So it was all by faith. Abraham believes that he was justified by faith. And Paul's point is of course he wasn't justified by works. There was no law yet. In Galatians 2:16, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified. He continues in verse 14 for if it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, plural, faith is null. And the promise is void. The way you're saying is you can't earn your inheritance by keeping the law. That's not how inheritance works. Why do you get inheritance from anybody? You didn't earn the inheritance. Someone else worked for years to get whatever the stuff that you're inheriting. You're only gifted it because you're part of the family or you were treated like family. So how do you become part of the family of God to make sure that you get this inheritance by keeping the law? No, of course not. Only by grasping onto the promise. God, you promised. God, you promised me that when I repented my sins and I believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior, you promise me that all my sins are forgiven. I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. I will live for eternity in the presence of God, and I get an inheritance. And God has given us this promise. All we have to do is believe in the promise. You mean there's nothing I can do to make myself righteous before God? No. Even if today you got this incredible resolve and you say, "You know what? I have sinned. I've sinned. And I feel a weight of my sin. All right, from here on out, the church inspired me today. From here on out, I will live a sinless life. No more sin. I will love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind. I will love my neighbor as myself. I will do it." See, the loving God part, it's easy because he is perfect. But then you go home and you're like, "I got to love God. I Got to love my neighbor. Got to love God. Got to love my neighbor." And then all of a sudden you realize, "Yeah, I have neighbors on every single side of me." And then they turn on their music and you're like, "I got to keep loving them." And then they start cooking and you're, "What's that smell?" And then you open the window because of the cooking, and then a smell of skunk begins to waft in. My daughter think it's a skunk because that's why I keep telling her. I was like, "That's skunk. There's a lot of skunks in Boston." They're just stories full of skunks all around us. You just got to keep low. You got to keep low then after you're like, "Yeah, I'll start tomorrow. I'll start tomorrow." Every good diet starts on a Monday. Every righteous path starts tomorrow. No, you can't. Even if you try, you can't, you can't, you can't. Why? Because the law brings wrath. That's verse 15. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. The law brings wrath. What does it mean? He means that the law does not affect salvation. It can't save you. It does not affect justification or forgiveness. If you trust in your keeping of the law in your performance, all you're doing is keeping up wrath for the day of judgment. But there is a law and we've all transgressed that law. If God didn't tell us how to live, we could live anywhere we want. We'd be autonomous. We'd be absolutely independent. We can define reality as we want to define reality. And that's how most Americans live. And that's why the wrath of God is being poured out. Even on this country, we're not free. There is a law. People think we're free. Dostoevsky said, "If there is no God, then all things are permissible." That's how most people live. I'm a law to myself. I'm a God of my own life. I'm lure to myself until things get hard, and then people start crying out to God. And once you start thinking about God, you're like, "Oh, maybe he does have obligations upon me that are written on my heart." There's no way. There's nothing we can do to justify for our sins. One of the things I've been noticing now that I'm a soccer dad, we have three practices and three games every week. It's a 20-hour commitment by the way. But my girls are tremendous at it. One of my girls scored three goals yesterday. She wasn't even trying. She wasn't even trying. Coach called her secret weapon. He said, "Protect the secret weapon." But one of the things I noticed with the parents, they're really good parents. They're really nice people. Really nice. I love meeting them. Really nice people. Just tremendous, tremendous people. And I invited this one guy to church and then he's like, "You're a pastor?" Oh, that's the guy that said, "You only work a day a week." So I invited him to church and he's like, "They let you be a pastor?" I was like, "For now. You should come." Such a good dad. Just a good dad. Had a little birthday party for his daughters and he invited all the kids cup. Just good. How can I tell this guy he's on his way to hell? I realized be being a good parent is not virtuous. That doesn't add any virtue. You're just doing the bare minimum. It's just expected of you that you're going to be a good parent. Just because you're human, it's not virtuous to be a good parent. No, the standard is so much higher. The standard is perfection. The standard is absolute untainted love. There is a law and we've transgressed that law. We've transgressed it with sins of commission. That's doing bad things. And sins of omission. That's not doing the good things that we know we're supposed to do. We failed to do them. We have debts accruing against us in God's economy. So we do pray to forgive us our debts. "Lord, forgive us our trespass and our transgressions. Lord, please forgive me because I know I deserve your wrath." And the wrath he's talking as punitive wrath. It's not corrective wrath. There's a difference. In Hebrews 12, there is a corrective wrath. God the father loves his children and when his children disobey, he does discipline us. That's Hebrews 12. And here he's talking about punitive wrath that God takes our law breaking personally. Because God is the law giver. When we sin, we're not sinning against some abstract norm or piece of legislation some people somewhere. Now, we're sitting against the law giver himself who is good and loving. And that's why you gave the law, and he wrote the law on our hearts. It's for our good. It's for human universal flourishing. So when we break that law, we break God's heart. And when we break God's heart, what we deserve in response is wrath. It's a personal affront against God every time we sin. That's why sin is so egregious. It's a personal attack against a great God, a holy God. A God who's been nothing but good and loving to us. And then the only time that he became a human, we mocked him and ridiculed him, scorned him and crucified him instead of glorifying him. Romans 4:16. That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. Not only to the adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. He says, "That's why it depends on faith." In the reformation there's the five solas. Sola fide, that's one of them. That's only by faith we're saved. Sola gratia, only by grace. Solus Christus, only by the work of Christ. Our justification is by grace through faith only because of Christ. But why is it by justification by faith? Because it rests on the promise of grace. Since you didn't earn it, your salvation, you can't lose it. That's why he uses the word guarantee. Guaranteed to all his offspring. So if God saves you, that's a gift. And if you didn't earn it, if you receive the gift, you can't lose it. When God adopt someone into his family, you're adopted forever. God is a good father who never loses a child. Once saved, always saved because you're always persevering. You're always following. And look, this is what scripture teaches. And I grew up in a church that did not teach this. They were very Armenian. In that, they're like, "You know what? You never know." You ask anyone and they're like, "Hey, are you going to heaven today if you die?" And they're like, "I hope so." And that was kind of like the culture of the church where it's like... Before communion Sunday, I used to dread communion Sunday, because they're like, "If you sin this week, you don't take part in communion." I was like, "Sin this week? I sin this morning. I sin on the way to church. I love everyone like 100%. No, they're sin, they're sin, they're sin." That's the sanctification part. No, but the justification part, that's all the work of Christ. Therefore, we're saved for all eternity. The doctrine of assurance, of salvation, you can be sure. So this is a very important question. Today, are you sure that you are going to spend eternity with God? Are you sure? Do you have that assurance right now? Are you 100% sure? And if there any hesitation in your mind, you need to go back to the doctor and justification by grace through faith. I am not saved because of my performance. I'm saved because of Christ's performance. I believe in Christ therefore I'm justified by grace through faith. You can be sure. You should be sure. And then of course we're called to make our election sure, but our salvation doesn't depend on our obedience of the law. Because our righteousness depends on faith, rest on grace is guaranteed to everyone who follows in the footsteps of faith of Abraham. Everyone who shares in this faith that righteousness, alien righteous, not ours can be imputed, gifted to us because of Christ. Verse 17, "As it is written, I've made you the father of many nations in the presence of the God in whom he believed. Who gives life to the dead and calls into existence to things that do not exist." Abraham here is called the father of many nation. So he is not just the father of Isaac. He's not just the father of his progeny. He's not just the father of the Jews. Abraham here is considered the father of anyone who trusts in the same promise that he embraced that there's a righteousness that can be counted to us from God. We're the seed of Abraham by faith in Christ. Abraham believed God. Abraham believed God and he got God's presence. That's what it says in verse 17. And the presence of God in whom he believed. So he got a promise from God and he got the presence of God. And that's the only thing he had to sustain him for 25 years. 25 years, from the day God promised him, "Hey, I'm going to give you a son." For 25 years he woke up, nothing. Woke up, nothing. God reaffirmed a few times. Nothing, nothing, nothing. But he believed, and he believed that God is a God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. God is a creator. He's the only creator. He's the creator who creates ex nihilo, something out of nothing. No one else can do that. Not even Satan. Satan can't create a thing. Satan counterfeits and he ruins everything else that God creates. So it's convenient that God can create something out of nothing, life out of death because of verse 18. In hope, he believed against hope. In hope, Abraham believed against hope that he should be the father of many nations as he had been told, so shall your offspring be. So there's two hopes here and then there's a faith. In hope, he believed against hope. What's the hope that he's believing against? That's just normal hope. This is what normal people feel like that you wake up and you're like, "I could be negative or I could be positive. All right, I should be positive. I could be a pessimist or I could be an optimist. I want to be a glass half full kind of person, so I'm going to be an optimist today." It's natural. You muster it up, this hope and you... People say this all the time. I trust everything will work out. I think everything will work out for the good. And usually they say that because they look past at their track record in their life and they're like, "You know what, things have always kind of worked out, so I think they kind of work out." But if you study investment, you know that past results don't guarantee future performance. Everything could be great and everything could have been working out, and then you just die. Oh, it didn't work out. So there's normal hope and then there's a hope that goes beyond, a transcended hope. That's hope and faith together in hope he believed. And he believed against all of the evidence. All of the evidence that he is accruing about his circumstances. This point to the fact that God lied. And then he goes back to the promise of God, and he looks beyond his circumstances. This is why in prayer, it's so helpful to close your eyes. And by the way, in worship, it's so helpful to close your eyes. That's why you should memorize the worship songs. Every newsletter I sent out at the bottom of the newsletter is a list of all of the worship songs for Sunday. I'm telling you, worship could be so much more powerful if everyone just closed their eyes and sang the song as memorized. By the way, you can anytime just sing and you just glorify God. You can close your eyes. You can't see your circumstances. You just focus on God and then all of a sudden you're like, "My circumstances, aren't that important? My circumstances are not sovereign." God is sovereign. "My circumstances even when they're hopeless, even when they're helpless, they're not God." And I trust in the God for whom nothing is impossible. Do you believe that? Do you believe that for God, nothing is impossible. Nothing. And if you do, that changes everything. What is the hope that Abraham was beyond? He was beyond that humanly speaking, God's promise could have. If God came to Abraham when Abraham was in his 20s and like, "Hey man, you're going to have a kid." He's like, "You know what? I could see that. I could see that, Sarah. Yeah, we're still young." God comes to Abraham when he's 75. He's like, "You're going to have a kid." He's like, "Are you sure?" And he goes and tells his wife, Sarah, she's like, "I'm 65. We're going to have a kid?" And they believed, and then God waits another 25 years. So then Sarah is 90. Abraham is 100 and God is like, "Yep, you're going to have a kid". And then Abraham and Sarah hears... And Sarah, all she can do is she just laughs because the absurdity of it. She's like, "I'm 90. I'm going to have a kid at 90? That's crazy." She's like, "Abraham, you're in a wheelchair. What are you going to have a stroller? This is nuts. This is crazy. We're not going to..." Circumstances, no reason for hope. He's hopeless. He's helpless. But he continues to trust in God when humanly speaking hope had reached a limit. It hope he believed against hope. And this is the true faith, vibrant faith. A faith that saves. And the same way that Abraham was helpless, and the same way that his wife's womb, there was no life in it. And that same way, our souls are in need of resurrection. Our hearts are in need of resurrection. This is what the connection between Paul and Abraham. So what is true hope? What is this true faith? Well, it consists of three parts. First, you need the information. If you are going to get saved by grace through faith, what's the information about God that I need to know? You learn the information. God is holy. We have transgressed his law. There's a chasm between us. We are on our way to hell. Jesus Christ, the son of God, second person of the Trinity comes lives a perfect life, no sin, and then takes that moral record to the cross, pays our debt, absorbs the wrath of God for our transgression. He absorbs the curse that we deserve to extend to us the blessing that he earned. And then he dies. And because of resurrection from the dead, everything that he did and everything he taught is obviously true. God accepts his sacrifice. Now by grace through faith, we can be saved. That's the info. After the info, you need to ask, is it true? Is this true? Is it verifiable? And it is verifiable. These are all historic things that happened. Jesus Christ's historical figure. He had disciples. People knew him. 500 people saw the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It transformed world history like no event. We literally stopped time and all of a sudden started recounting. Your birthday is measured from his birthday. Obviously it's true. Now the question is, info is it true? Do I commit? Do I commit? Can I entrust myself to Jesus Christ? We're justified by faith and trusting in Christ alone for our salvation. Abraham didn't just believe in God. Even Satan believes in God. No, he entrusted himself to God. He knew the person of God. He knew that God doesn't lie. Faith isn't blind. It's just a different kind of sight. And he saw that this was true with the eyes of a soul. Faith isn't absurd. It's not foolishness. It's not baseless. Faith is ultimately trusting what is preeminently trustworthy and that's God in hope he believed against hope. Is it reasonable to believe in situations like this? No. Look at your situation. That's not reasonable to believe. You ever feel like that in your Christian walk? Is it reasonable to keep following Jesus? Especially when things get hard, especially when you suffer. Is it reasonable? For all intents and purposes Abraham's body was as good as dead. That's what it says in verse 19. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old or when he considered the bareness of Sarah's womb. Looked at himself, looked at his wife. All he saw was hopeless and he had to close his eyes and looked beyond. How could I possibly believe even the promise? Well, because of the promise giver. The promise giver is the promise keeper. Because he's God and God can't lie. It's against his nature. The only hopeless thing is the idea that the promise would not come to pass. And in Romans 4:20, I love this verse so much. No unbelief made him waiver. Concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. Fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. When doubt came, Abraham fought off the doubt with the promises of God. And not just with the promises of God, but the presence of God. How did he do that? How did he strengthen his faith? Tremendous question. How do you strengthen your faith? Through Bible study, helpful and necessary. Studying theology, helpful and necessary. Time and prayer, helpful and necessary. Worshiping God on your own, helpful and necessary. That's not what it says. He did not strengthen his faith by focusing on his faith because when you're focusing on your faith, you're focusing on yourself. And when you're focusing on yourself... That could be discouraging, especially when life is hard. No, that's not what he did. He didn't do any of that. When he felt most hopeless and most helpless, it says that he gave glory to God. He gave glory to God. "God, I glorify you for everything that you are and everything that you have done in the past and everything you will do in the future. God, I glorify you." You know what that means? That means you recognize God for who he is. He's the great God of the universe. You glorify him. And also the word assumes that there is a magnification that happens, where as you're glorifying God, he gets so much bigger. Your problems get so much smaller and that's why your faith grows. Glorify God when you're happy, but also glorify God when you're sad. That's what really grows faith. It's easy to glorify God when everything's tremendous. Isn't it? That's why I think in these churches where the pastors have their own airplanes, it's just kind of easier to believe and it's easier to preach because the guy is like, "Of course God loves me. Look at my plane. Does it anyone want to go for a trip. I'm going to Cancun on a mission trip this weekend." Of course, God loves me. Why wouldn't you want to become a Christian? You can be tremendous like me. Look at me. Look at my plane. That doesn't grow my faith. I mean, God gave me a plane. You know what grows my faith, when everything is terrible. Like humanly speaking. And when you're suffering. And when there is a despondent, a sadness of the soul and you can still say, "Praise be to God. Glory to God." That right there will grow your faith like nothing else. And this is absolutely biblical. This is a story of Job. He had nothing because he lost everything. God allows Satan to take his children and to take his wealth and to take his health. In Job 1:20 through 21, then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return?" The Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Does your theology allow for a verse like this? It has to. We all experience seasons like this. If not, you will. And then finally, he still had his health and then he lost his children, lost his wealth and then Satan is like, "Can I take his health?" And God is like, "Okay." And Job 2:9 through 10. Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil?" In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. Can you say, "God, I glorify you" when you're experiencing evil? Well, that's the only way to have a faith that really saves and to exercise that faith. Romans 8:26 through 30, "Likewise the spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Have you ever prayed like that? Where you're in prayer and you're praying, and you're praying, you're out of words, but you know prayer isn't over. And all you can do is just groan. And you say to Holy Spirit, "Pray for me. Jesus, pray for me." As the Holy Spirit just begins to groan with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit, because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called. And those whom he called he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified in the past tense. It's all in the past tense. He justified, that's past tense. Sanctifies us. And then he's like glorification, this is in heaven. When we get the new body, completely no sin, no imperfections, just absolutely healthy. He's like, "Your glorification is so sure it's in the past tense." Faith grows just like Jesus said it would. If you have faith as tiny as the grain of a mustard seed, you can move mountains because it's not about the faith. It's about the object of your faith. That's why St. Paul wants to move. Yes, you're saved by grace through faith. You have faith in Christ, in Christ. All the focus is on Christ. And then with that faith, he exercised and Abraham believed and he obeyed, and he was strengthened in his faith, and he gave glory to God. Isaiah 46:38 says, "A voice says cry and I said, 'What shall I cry?' All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass Withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. God has given us his promises. We can trust in them. And he also offers us his presence and his presence by the power of the spirit is what in encourages and edifies, helps us persevere. Romans 4:22 through 25. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words, it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus, our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. There's so much in what he said. Jesus died for our trespasses, but he was raised for our justification. Because Christ was raised, he conquered this triumphal sign that Christ's death removes the curse of sin because his resurrection undoes the final consequences of sin, which is death. Christ's resurrection marks the dawn of the new creation because his resurrection reverses the curse. Yeah, we still die, but not really as Christians because it's just a transition. We will live forever with Christ. Abraham, by the way, didn't have the resurrection. He didn't have the Bible. He didn't have the Torah. He didn't have the Old testament. He didn't have the Hebrew scripture. He didn't have the prophets. He didn't have anything. And he also didn't have Christ. He didn't have the teaching of Christ. The life of Christ, the eyewitnesses who saw Christ. And he didn't know that Christ came back from the dead. All he had was faith in the God who imputed righteousness. But he did believe intuitively in the resurrection. Hebrews 11:17 through 19. "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offing be named. He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back." He's like, "Even if I make the ultimate sacrifice of sacrificing my son because God told me to, God can always raise him from the day he believed in a God who has that power." Last week, I did this thought experiment to talk about the scandal of grace. Justification of my grace through faith. The moment you believe in Christ, repent in your sin, and you're saved. And I asked the question, I said, "Who is the most evil man in the world that if we just sniped this guy, everything would get better." And most everyone agreed it was Putin. And then I was like, "What if Putin repents of his sin and trust in Jesus Christ? And it's true, it's genuine repentance. Could you call him brother?" A brother sent me a real example of something similar. So in 1946, there was a pastor from Missouri named, Henry Gerecke of the Lutheran Synod. He was an army chaplain. He served in the army. One of his sons died. Another one of his sons was injured. And then afterwards, after fighting, he was transitioned to army chaplain. He was sent to minister in the Nuremberg prisons during the trials. And he asked the army, "Hey, can I write about this?" And the army told him, "You got to wait five years." And then he wrote about this in an article called, "I Walked to the Gallows with Nazi Chiefs". It appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in September 1st, 1951. He says, "It was the duty of the chaplain of Nuremberg prison to offer Christian comfort to Hitler's gang. Now, after five years under a bond of silence, I can tell my story of how many repented before the hangman's trap fell." In the beginning, he kind of explains what he wants to say and then he tells a story. He says, "I particularly want to emphasize that when stripped of all they had held important." So this is Nazi brass. This is the SS, like the top of the top he's ministering to. He said, "I particularly want to emphasize that when stripped of all that they had held important, and when offered the eternal verities, most of the 21 defendants were able to come to their moral senses and repent." This is what happened in Nuremberg prison. More than half of the Nazis there before going to the gallows or their long imprisonment and spawned out, ask God for forgiveness of their sins against him and against humanity. They did so in a spirit that convinced me that their repentance was genuine. I've had many years of experience as a prison chaplain do not believe I'm easily diluted by phony reformations at the 11th hour. And then he talks about when he was sent there, he had excuses. The Nazis took one of his sons. And then he finally said the following. He said, "The next few days, I prayed harder than I've ever had in my life. And slowly the men at Nuremberg became to me, just lost souls, whom I was being asked to help. If, as never before, I could hate the sin, but love the sinner, I'll go," he said. Early in the morning on October 16th, 1946, an hour past midnight, the first Nazi war criminal to be hanged at Nuremberg began his final walk to the scaffold. Accompanying him was the US Army chaplain who had been his spiritual counselor for the past year. After the prisoner climbed the steps and stood on the trap door, he was asked for his last words. I placed all my confidence in the lamb who made atonement for my sins. May God have mercy on my soul. And then turning to the chaplain, he added, "I'll see you again." With that, a hood was pulled over his face. The rope fixed around his neck and he dropped through the trap door into eternity. The prisoner was Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister in one of the highest profile Nazis to stand trial before the International Military Tribunal. That's all it takes to cry out, "Lord have mercy on my soul." Have mercy on my soul. If you're not yet a Christian, you're welcome today. We plead with you. Don't put it off. Today, pray this prayer. Cry out to God to save your soul. Put your trust in Jesus Christ. And the gift of faith will be given to you. The gift of repentance, the gift of justification, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of a guaranteed inheritance in heaven. It's a scandal of grace. Believe it and receive it. That said we're going to transition to holy communion. We celebrate holy communion once a month at Mosaic for whom is holy communion for repentant Christians, repentant children of God. If you are not a Christian, you're not sure where you are in your faith, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service instead meditate on the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if you do repent and trust in Jesus today, you're welcome to partake. And if you are a Christian, this is for repentant Christians. If there's any sin in your life that you haven't yet repented of, we welcome you to do that. And if you don't refrain, if you do, you're welcome to partake. If you haven't receive the bread and the cup, the elements, please raise your hand. And one of the ushers will give you one as I pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for grace. Jesus, we thank you for procuring salvation for us. You've suffered, Lord and today we remember your suffering. Holy Spirit, I pray that you prepare our hearts now and focus our attention on the cross of Jesus Christ dying for us. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Take off the top layer. Take the bread. And then the second layer. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus Christ took the bread and after breaking it, he said, "This is my body broken for you. Take, eat and do this in remembrance of me." Then proceed to take the cup. He said, "This cup is the cup of the new covenant of my blood, which is poured out for the sins of many. Take, drink, and do this in remembrance of me." Lord God, we glorify you. And Holy Spirit, lead us in glorifying God. Help us as we sing now as we worship. Help us cast off all our burdens, all our anxiety, all of our stress, cast it off from us to you and help us focus on you, on your greatness, on your majesty, on your preeminence, on your holiness, on your righteousness, on the perfection of your plans and your sovereignty. Now, help us sing with everything we got because you are worthy of all worship, of all praise, of all glory. And we pray all this in the name of the father, of the son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

#UnitedNationsGeneralAssembly ( #UNGA ), on January 20, 2022, adopted a resolution regarding the #Holocaust denial and rejected and condemned "without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part." Resolution in its preambular part emphasizes the positive role of exercising the right to freedom of opinion and expression and full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information for strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance. It reaffirms the exercise of the right to freedom of expression. The resolution also states that freedom of expression involves special duties and responsibilities, therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but that these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary for respect of the rights or reputations of others and the protection of national security or public order, or of public health or morals. It further underscores that "all measures taken must be in full compliance with international #humanrights law, per article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." Finally, the resolution reaffirms that the Holocaust resulted in the murder of nearly 6 million #Jews , 1.5 million of whom were children, comprising one-third of the Jewish people, and draws attention to the international legal basis of the #Nuremberg Tribunal judgments regarding the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust as follows: "Reiterating the principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal, and taking note with appreciation of their codification by the International Law Commission in 1950." It should be mentioned that the Charter of the International Military Tribunal is an Annex to the Agreement for the prosecution and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis. Makale Bağlantısı : https://avim.org.tr/en/Analiz/THE-UN-GENERAL-ASSEMBLY-REJECTED-AND-CONDEMNED-HOLOCAUST-DENIAL-AND-RECALLED-THE-INTERNATIONAL-LEGAL-BASIS-OF-ITS-REJECTION Telegram Kanalı: https://t.me/avimtr Twitter: https://twitter.com/AVIMorgtr Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avimorgtr/ VKontakte: https://vk.com/public202374482 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIfEGNM3308QoLbCDJIFuw Dailmotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/dm_0ea263f63bb5aee7d8770d1ec13cfe8b Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/avimorgtr/IntroductionIntroduction YaaY: https://yaay.com.tr/AVIM

Episode #1 of this Nuremberg Trial series sets the stage for our deep dive into the most important international trial in human history. The Allied victors of World War II set up an International Military Tribunal to prosecute Hitler's Nazi henchmen for their heinous crimes.  We will first examine the historical background of the trial, the primary figures involved, profiles on Chief Prosecutor Jackson (USA) and Reichsmarshall Goering (Nazi Germany), the charges laid against the Nazi defendants, the commencement of the proceedings, and the American Delegation's opening remarks (which should be read fully here as referenced in the episode). POD WEBSITE: https://www.smokefilledrooms.net RSS FEED: https://feed.podbean.com/smokefilledrooms/feed.xml EMAIL: smokinggunpod@gmail.com TWITTER: @SmokyRooms & @GregZesq Consider donating to a valuable resource that helped us create these episodes, The Robert H. Jackson Center  To support the podcast please visit the "support" section of our page where there are Patreon, Crypto, and PayPal options. Thank you in advance for your downloads, likes, ratings, and comments. Cheers. 

In honor of season 2 of Euphoria being released on HBO Max this week, and for my cheating, dishonest, liar of a “partner” to not be able to watch it since I logged out of my own Hulu and his other girlfriend's HBO max accounts on both of his tvs per her request upon discovering the extent of said aforementioned dishonesty and manipulation while watching his dog, his “daughter”, for him while he was on vacation in Puerto Rico–a country he might be staying in, but one that was bailed out by the guy whose apartment I stayed in one street away from the Louvre the first year I went to Paris. Suck on my balls. It has been a week, let me tell ya. I really, REALLY, REALLY cannot stress how much I absolutely did not need this character development. But, as just seems to be the case with me and “life”, probably the most unfortunate series of events have begun unraveling and I really regret making so many jokes about being the devil and going down to Georgia, because I am just emotionally getting my ass absolutely demolished and I don't necessarily think I needed to. I feel like anyone who has read enough of the blog can maybe just take some sympathy towards that and all I have to say is that at 28 years old, I understand why so many single old ladies are so content in their old age to share the wisdom that is ignoring men. I get why my parents were so strict with me. The world is not a nice place. Turns out, it hurts even worse when it's from someone who goes above and beyond to emphasize how they choose you, or the way they plan their life with you, the way they phrase things to be inclusive (and point it out). Mu'fuckin diversity consultants. Someone who epitomizes and brings you back to perhaps the only formal community you remain within, the Carolina community, who evokes its presence to make you feel at home, belonged, and appreciated, just to lie to you. Someone who has heard and watched you speak on the things that have impacted you, and still impact you, who asks you to trust them, to believe in them, while being objectively dishonest, and not just to me. It just goes to show that if the value of your words have no meaning, how do you expect anyone to allow you to lead them. When you lie to yourself, for fear of the truth, your version of “honesty” becomes subjective. THIS is my villain origin story (as if we didn't have enough of THOSE already). Thank the gods for Megara, Maleficent, Cruella de Vil at times, all the strong, sassy, Disney women ahead of their time for reminding me how to channel my rage: into disgust and spite for the system that has enabled whatever these “men” are. This is what happens when we have people like Donald Trump avoid the draft, whose parents and lines of financing likely benefited from it extensively, while all the truly good ones went off and died from guerilla warfare tactics because again, we are always the terrorists on foreign land, why would other countries not view us in such a light–the civil affairs emergence in the army is just as stunted as “public health” programs in the USA. It is no WONDER we have such a cultural emphasis on avoiding reality. Which, like, what country doesn't? I mean, if the Japanese government can deny the Nanjing Massacre despite the International Military Tribunal's judgment, the USA denying the lasting impacts of racism and the necessity for public health and progressive legislation seems pretty on par, honestly. I mean, as far as international delusions go, the USA also competes heavily with Russia and China in these Olympics as well, is all I'm saying.

Philp Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian Revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and assisted the waves of refugees arriving in Austria feeling the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War. The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together: The Life of Rev. Fabian Flynn, CP (Catholic U of America Press, 2018) tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the "coming of age" of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times. Carlos Ruiz Martinez is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the Communications Assistant for the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA). His general interest is in American religious history, especially American Catholicism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philp Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian Revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and assisted the waves of refugees arriving in Austria feeling the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War. The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together: The Life of Rev. Fabian Flynn, CP (Catholic U of America Press, 2018) tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the "coming of age" of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times. Carlos Ruiz Martinez is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the Communications Assistant for the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA). His general interest is in American religious history, especially American Catholicism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Philp Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian Revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and assisted the waves of refugees arriving in Austria feeling the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War. The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together: The Life of Rev. Fabian Flynn, CP (Catholic U of America Press, 2018) tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the "coming of age" of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times. Carlos Ruiz Martinez is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the Communications Assistant for the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA). His general interest is in American religious history, especially American Catholicism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Philp Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian Revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and assisted the waves of refugees arriving in Austria feeling the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War. The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together: The Life of Rev. Fabian Flynn, CP (Catholic U of America Press, 2018) tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the "coming of age" of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times. Carlos Ruiz Martinez is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the Communications Assistant for the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA). His general interest is in American religious history, especially American Catholicism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Philp Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian Revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and assisted the waves of refugees arriving in Austria feeling the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War. The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together: The Life of Rev. Fabian Flynn, CP (Catholic U of America Press, 2018) tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the "coming of age" of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times. Carlos Ruiz Martinez is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the Communications Assistant for the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA). His general interest is in American religious history, especially American Catholicism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Philp Fabian Flynn led a remarkable life, bearing witness to some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century. Flynn took part in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, and the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest. He acted as confessor to Nazi War Criminals during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, assisted Hungarian Revolutionaries on the streets of Budapest, and assisted the waves of refugees arriving in Austria feeling the effects of ethnic and political persecution during the Cold War. The Priest Who Put Europe Back Together: The Life of Rev. Fabian Flynn, CP (Catholic U of America Press, 2018) tells the story of this fascinating life. From solidly middle-class beginnings in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Flynn interacted with and occasionally advised some of the major political, military, and religious leaders of his era. His legacy as a Passionist priest, a chaplain in the US Army, and an official in the Catholic Relief Services was both vast and enormously beneficial. His life and career symbolized the "coming of age" of the United States as a global superpower, and the corresponding growth of the American Catholic Church as an international institution. Both helped liberate half of Europe from Fascist rule, and then helped to rebuild its political, economic, and social foundations, which led to an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. His efforts on behalf of both his country and his Church to contain Communist influence, and to assist the refugees of its tyranny, contributed to its collapse. Flynn was one of the hundreds of Americans who put Europe back together after a period of horrendous self-destruction. In a twentieth century filled with villains and despots, Flynn played a heroic and vital role in extraordinary times. Carlos Ruiz Martinez is a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the Communications Assistant for the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA). His general interest is in American religious history, especially American Catholicism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies