Dead Reckoning: War, Crime and Justice from WW2 to the War on Terror

Dead Reckoning is an unprecedented series about the evolution of postwar justice over the past seven decades -- and the failure to investigate war crimes and prosecute the perpetrators.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the international community ratified a revised Geneva Convention and a new Convention to End Genocide. Both conventions obliged signatory countries to investigate war crimes -- and to prosecute the perpetrators.

Throughout the Cold War, conflicts and human rights violations often defeated campaigns for postwar justice. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, what once seemed quixotic began to appear possible. Government leaders around the world began talking openly about what former President George H. W. Bush called A New World Order.