Other authors before me have observed the close yet uncanny correspondence between German history and the evolution of modern international humanitarian law. Although numerous studies have tackled this phenomenon, very few attempted to investigate it from a transnational and longue durée perspective. To a certain extent, the idea of using German history as a way to tell a discursive history of modern humanitarian law in the twentieth century followed logically from my prior work. During my past two decades at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and other institutions, my academic interest has focused on issues of transitional justice, humanitarian law, and human rights, mainly during the period after World War II. In particular, I have written about international attempts to respond to German state violence through new legal processes and systems, from the Nuremberg trials to the efforts to prosecute leaders of the former East German regime. Over time, through my monographs and my participation in team research projects—most recently on the history of the Federal Foreign Office under the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic of Germany—I gained access to a large body of new sources that comprise much of the foundation for the present book. My interest was also awakened in taking the story further back, not just to the charges and countercharges raised during World War I and the creation of the “Versailles system” in its aftermath, but also to the origins of humanitarian law in the late nineteenth century and the German reception of it at that time.