Book Review: The Occupation of Enemy Territory

Abstract

"Silent enim legs inter arma," wrote Cicero. He could have added -- doubtless in more Ciceronian Latin-sed non iurisconsulti. Long before the end of World War II, scholars of all belligerent and many neutral nations had begun to pour forth a mighty torrent of words on the laws of war, a gloss bearing about the same quantitative relationship to the rather skimpy texts of the Hague and Geneva Conventions that the literature of Christian apologetics, exegesis and hermeneutics bears to the New Testament. Professor von Glahnhas set himself the task of seining in this turbid flood, apparently with the praiseworthy intent of reducing to manageable size the consensus of more or less civilized nations on what the law of belligerent occupation is or ought to be.