Below is a curated set of readings that document crimes against humanity between 1900-1945.  These are prioritized public domain or freely accessible primary sources, eyewitness accounts, trial records, and government documents.

Objective:  Students will recognize the need to define crimes against humanity as delineated by the Nuremberg Charter (Charter of the International Military Tribunal)
Full Text (Public Domain):
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtconst.asp
Key Definition (Article 6(c))
This is the first formal legal definition of crimes against humanity:
“Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population… or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds…”
It followed the Nazi atrocities but relates to many crimes that preceded the Holocaust.

VERIFIED PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS (1900–1945)
Armenian Genocide

• The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (1916)

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69630

• Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55344
Belgian Civilian Massacres (WWI)

• Bryce Report (1915)

https://archive.org/details/reportofcommiss00grea
Chemical Warfare (WWI)

• Chemical Warfare (WWI-era text, full PDF)

https://archive.org/download/chemicalwarfare00frieuoft/chemicalwarfare00frieuoft.pdf

• Wilfred Owen – “Dulce et Decorum Est”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est
Italian Atrocities in Ethiopia

• Haile Selassie – League of Nations Speech (1936)

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Appeal_to_The_League_of_Nations
Nanjing Massacre

• John Rabe Letter (1937)

https://adhoc.yalepages.org/Media/PDFs/Nanking/NMP0159.pdf

• Minnie Vautrin Papers (Diary + documents)

https://adhoc.yalepages.org/Media/PDFs/Nanking/Vautrin.pdf
Unit 731 Experiments

• Tokyo War Crimes Trial (full proceedings)

https://archive.org/details/tokyowarcrimetrial
The Holocaust

• Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/imt.asp
Einsatzgruppen Killings

• Einsatzgruppen Reports (translated documents)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/einsatzgruppen-reports
Soviet POW Starvation

• Nuremberg Trials evidence database

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/
Bataan Death March

• U.S. War Department Report (1945)

https://archive.org/details/bataandeathmarch00unit
Comfort Women System

• Tokyo Trial Records (testimony included)

https://archive.org/details/tokyowarcrimetrial
Biological Warfare in China

• Tokyo Trial Evidence (Unit 731 / BW operations)

https://archive.org/details/tokyowarcrimetrial
Strategic Bombing of Civilians

• U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (1945)

https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesstra00unit
Atomic Bombings (Hiroshima & Nagasaki)

• U.S. Government Report (1946)

https://archive.org/details/atomicbombreport

• Hiroshima

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
Katyn Massacre

• Polish Government Report (1943)

https://archive.org/details/katynmassacre