Military Ethics Education and the Holocaust: Opportunities, Challenges and Moral Imperatives

This book examines the nature of military ethics education after the Holocaust, using a range of national case studies.The volume examines educational opportunities offered by a range of militaries, including the USA, Australia, Lithuania, Austria and Israel, and addresses substantive and contextual problems for ethical reflection on the basis of Holocaust history. The first half of the work indicates how the particular educational gains sought from courses on the Holocaust and military ethics provide grounds for wider discussions of the normative consequences of engagement with the Holocaust. The chapters in the second half of the book turn to a variety of historical contexts before and during the Holocaust which raise substantive ethical issues: the formation of military professionals; treatment of prisoners; exercise of responsibilities in the face of institutional pressure; the relationship between ethical outcomes and organisational ideology; and the values of rescuers and resisters, including those organising their resistance in divergent Jewish and Christian communities.This volume will be of interest to students of military ethics, peace and conflict studies, defence studies, Holocaust and genocide studies and World War II history.

About the Author

Michael Dobkowski is Professor of Religious Studies, Hobart and William Smith College, Geneva, New York, USA, and author or editor of over a dozen books.

George R. Wilkes is a visiting research fellow, Centre for Military Ethics, King's College London, UK.