From war talk to rights talk

Jay Winter

pp. 55-72

in: Menno Spiering, Michael Wintle (eds), European identity and the second world war, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

It is impossible to understand the current human rights regime in Europe without attending to the crucible years of the Second World War and after. In this chapter I shall highlight the way in which exile politics in the Second World War in London provided the framework for the emergence of a new international regime of human rights. Out of protests by governments and individuals in exile over the crimes being committed daily on the Continent from 1939 on, there emerged an approach to war aims that placed human rights at the heart of the post-war international order. The men and women who drafted these documents did so at a time when no one could have predicted an Allied victory in the war. And yet during those desperate hours, during the Blitz, a new human rights regime was born