''Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress'' is a 1944 book by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin that is best known for introducing the concept of

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

, which Lemkin coined from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

word (, "race, people") with the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

("act of killing"). Lemkin wrote the book in 1941 and 1942 and submitted it for publication in early 1942. Due to a contract dispute, its publication was delayed to 1944. This contributed to

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

's centrality in the conception of genocide, as some parts of the book date to 1943 or 1944. In the book, Lemkin argued that Hitler's main goal was not the conquest of Europe, but its demographic restructuring such that Germany could still dominate the continent in the event of military defeat. Lemkin at the time worked at the

United States government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...

's Board of Economic Warfare (later merged into the Foreign Economic Administration), which granted him insight into Germany's economic exploitation of occupied areas, which shaped his thinking. He also focused on law more than policy, hoping to avoid accusations of war propaganda by identifying violations of the current occupation law provided by the 1907 Hague Convention, and using these legal violations to generate proposals for redress in the last part of the book. The first part of the book was written last and summarizes the techniques of German occupation, organized by subject. Part II details occupations by which country was affected—including occupations by Germany's allies Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria. The longest part of the book, Part III, is devoted to translations of various laws and decrees issued in Axis-occupied Europe. Lemkin began his collection in early 1940, when he had escaped to Sweden and found work at the

Stockholm University Stockholm University (SU) () is a public university, public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, social ...

. He brought it with him when he accepted an offer to teach at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

in the United States in April 1941. The librarian at Duke University helped Lemkin expand his collection. Lemkin used the collection to teach classes at Duke as well as the War Department's School of Military Government; many of them were reprinted in ''Axis Rule''. The most widely read sections of the book are Lemkin's preface and Chapter 9 of Part I, titled "Genocide", which summarizes the previous chapters in that part. Lemkin's definition of genocide is much broader than that eventually adopted by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

as the Genocide Convention in 1948. For Lemkin, genocide was a colonial phenomenon that consisted of the replacement of the national pattern of the victim with that of the perpetrator—for example, enforced changes in culture and language (known as

cultural genocide Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term ''genocide''. The destruction of culture was a central component in Lemkin's formulation of genocide ...

), economic exploitation, forced labor, and population replacement via

ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...

, which Lemkin called

colonization 475px, Map of the year each country achieved List of sovereign states by date of formation, independence. Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples f ...

References

Further reading