The desire to end the mass murder of people in genocidal violence was doubtless a noble struggle for international diplomats and lawyers in the immediate years following the Second World War. The rapidly burgeoning tensions of the Cold War during the early 1950s, however, brought the potential for ideological victories in diplomatic discussions involving the superpowers into the equation. Much like human rights in the 1970s, international discussion of how to prevent genocide from occurring again opened up the opportunity for the United States and the Soviet Union to utilize ideas as weapons, exerting pressure on their counterparts as part of the ideological struggle of the period. Despite the moral desire driving many to seek an end to genocide, politics ruled the day.

It is this arena that Anton Weiss-Wendt has sought to unpick, marshalling an impressive engagement with a breadth of material to assess the international debates surrounding the adoption of the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. While broadly chronological in structure, this book draws on a number of case studies to demonstrate the ways in which the Genocide Convention and the broader discussions surrounding the issue of genocide were used to score political points in the Cold War. Topics range from accusations that the Soviet authorities had detained Yugoslav children against their will, racial discrimination in the United States, and accusations of forced labor—all issues that were variously defined as matters tantamount to genocide. Weiss-Wendt draws on a remarkably deep engagement with primary source material on both sides of the Iron Curtain to construct this piece, ranging from diplomatic and personal papers through to institutional material from the Soviet Union and the United Nations. This breadth of material really shines through in this book, with sustained analytical engagement lending this book a great deal of quality. The author's assertion that neither of the superpowers were particularly keen to have genocide enshrined in international law is a compelling one, and one that is well presented in this piece. It offers an interesting way to consider the notion of genocide in the context of the Cold War, and how often issues of morality were constrained and defined by the ideological struggle. Weiss-Wendt also manages to deftly humanize the discussions surrounding genocide in international relations, particularly in his discussion of the efforts of the lawyer Raphael Lemkin. While the portrayal of Lemkin is anything but flattering, one gets a sense in this book of his struggles to adapt to the new Cold War framework, and the single-minded nature of his efforts to get the international community to adopt agreements on ending genocide.

If one were to be critical, the book does end rather abruptly with the adoption of the Genocide Convention by the Soviet Union, leaving a feeling that it could have gone a little further in time. It would have been interesting to see a slightly broader discussion of the impact of the Genocide Convention in the early years of the Cold War, offering insight into the years following the Convention coming into force. This is especially so given the US delays in ratifying the Convention, which took place in 1988 some forty years after the UN had initially approved it. Was the discussion surrounding genocide and its associated political wrangling solely an issue of the 1940s and 1950s or did it reach further into the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s? A broader engagement here would have drawn some interesting discussion about the positioning of the legal and diplomatic fight against genocide in the broader Cold War.

Overall, this is an impressive piece built upon sustained and detailed source engagement that is recommended to scholars of the Cold War, international relations, and those interested in the impact that ideas can have on international politics. A broader chronological lens would doubtless bring out further interesting discussion, but this should not detract from the quality presented here.