The Nazi Holocaust

The Nazi Holocaust is one of the most momentous events in human history. Yet, it remains on many levels a baffling and unfathomable mystery. By shunning simplistic 'explanations' Ronnie Landau has set out, in a clear, thought-provoking and enlightened fashion, to mediate betweeen this vast, often unapproachable subject and the reader who wrestles with its meaning. Locating the Holocaust within a number of different contexts - Jewish history, German history, genocide in the modern age, the larger story of human bigotry and the triumph of ideology over conscience - Landau penetrates to the very heart of its moral and historical significance. Deeply concerned lest the Holocaust, as a 'unique' phenomenon, be cordoned off from the rest of human history and ghettoized within the highly charged realm of 'Jewish experience', he is at pains to show that transmitting understanding of the Holocaust is about connecting with all humanity.Intended both for the general reader and for students and academics (especially in history, psychology, literature and the humanities), this work is an important breakthrough in the struggle to perpetuate the memory of a tragedy which the world is all too ready to forget.

This complete history incorporates the 'voices' of the Holocaust, not only the perspectives of the victims, but also the perpetrators and bystanders. Bergen reveals the common misunderstanding that the Holocaust was aimed solely at Jews. In actual fact the Holocaust claimed the lives of 12 million people and incorporated many different social and ethnic groups. The Nazi program of destruction not only focused on Jews, but the disabled, Gypsies, Poles, Soviet POWs, homosexual men, Afro-Germans and Jehovah's Witnesses. The Second World War enabled this carnage by conquering territories and people, turning soldiers and doctors into trained killers, and creating a veneer of legitimacy around vicious acts of 'ethnic cleansing' and genocide. Bergen's pathbreaking study uses cutting-edge and original research to reveal how these attacks were linked in a terrifying web of violence and brings to light the real extent of the most notorious and far reaching campaign of genocide in modern history.

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

A popularly written and illustrated history of the Holocaust. Deals with all of the victims of the Nazis' genocidal campaign: communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles and other Slavs, and Soviet POWs, as well as the "racial enemies" - Afro-Germans, the mentally and physically disabled, Gypsies, and Jews. Jews were regarded by the Nazis as the foremost "racial enemy". Pp. 110-156, "The Holocaust", deal specifically with the destruction of the Jews - from the first Nazi anti-Jewish measures in Germany, through the "Kristallnacht" pogrom and murders of Jews in Poland and the USSR, to the total mass murder in the death camps.

This edition is the first of its kind to offer a basic collection of facsimile, English language, historical articles on all aspects of the extermination of the European Jews. A total of 300 articles from 84 journals and collections allows the reader to gain an overview of this field. The edition both provides access to the immense, rich array of scholarly articles published after 1960 on the history of the Holocaust and encourages critical assessment of conflicting interpretations of these horrifying events. The series traces Nazi persecution of Jews before the implementation of the "Final Solution", demonstrates how the Germans coordinated anti-Jewish activities in conquered territories, and sheds light on the victims in concentration camps, ending with the liberation of the concentration camp victims and articles on the trials of war criminals. The publications covered originate from the years 1950 to 1987. Included are authors such as Jakob Katz, Saul Friedländer, Eberhard Jäckel, Bruno Bettelheim and Herbert A. Strauss.

The sheer magnitude of the Holocaust has commanded our attention for the past sixty years. The extent of atrocities, however, has overshadowed the calculus Nazis used to justify their deeds. According to German wartime media, it was German citizens who were targeted for extinction by a vast international conspiracy. Leading the assault was an insidious, belligerent Jewish clique, so crafty and powerful that it managed to manipulate the actions of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Hitler portrayed the Holocaust as a defensive act, a necessary move to destroy the Jews before they destroyed Germany. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, and Otto Dietrich’s Press Office translated this fanatical vision into a coherent cautionary narrative, which the Nazi propaganda machine disseminated into the recesses of everyday life. Calling on impressive archival research, Jeffrey Herf recreates the wall posters that Germans saw while waiting for the streetcar, the radio speeches they heard at home or on the street, the headlines that blared from newsstands. The Jewish Enemy is the first extensive study of how anti-Semitism pervaded and shaped Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, and how it pulled together the diverse elements of a delusionary Nazi worldview. Here we find an original and haunting exposition of the ways in which Hitler legitimized war and genocide to his own people, as necessary to destroy an allegedly omnipotent Jewish foe. In an era when both anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories continue to influence world politics, Herf offers a timely reminder of their dangers along with a fresh interpretation of the paranoia underlying the ideology of the Third Reich.

A reexamination of the narrative of genocide. Personal stories help audiences consider the cause, course, and consequences of this seminal period in world history. In Holocaust, historian James Bulgin presents a wealth of archival material--including emotive objects, newly commissioned photography, and previously unpublished personal testimony from those who were there--to examine the role of ideology and individual decision-making in the course of World War II and the Holocaust. The book is published to coincide with the opening of Imperial War Museums's groundbreaking new Second World War and Holocaust Galleries.

A thoughtful and age-appropriate introduction to an unimaginable event—the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a genocide on a scale never before seen, with as many as twelve million people killed in Nazi death camps—six million of them Jews. Gail Herman traces the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, whose rabid anti-Semitism led first to humiliating anti-Jewish laws, then to ghettos all over Eastern Europe, and ultimately to the Final Solution. She presents just enough information for an elementary-school audience in a readable, well-researched book that covers one of the most horrible times in history. This entry in the New York Times best-selling series contains eighty carefully chosen illustrations and sixteen pages of black and white photographs suitable for young readers.

Hitler and the Holocaust is the product of a lifetime’s work by one of the world’s foremost authorities on the history of anti-Semitism and modern Jewry. Robert S. Wistrich begins by reckoning with Europe’s long history of violence against the Jews, and how that tradition manifested itself in Germany and Austria in the early twentieth century. He looks at the forces that shaped Hitler’s belief in a "Jewish menace" that must be eradicated, and the process by which, once Hitler gained power, the Nazi regime tightened the noose around Germany’s Jews. He deals with many crucial questions, such as when Hitler’s plans for mass genocide were finalized, the relationship between the Holocaust and the larger war, and the mechanism of authority by which power–and guilt–flowed out from the Nazi inner circle to "ordinary Germans," and other Europeans. He explains the infernal workings of the death machine, the nature of Jewish and other resistance, and the sad story of collaboration and indifference across Europe and America, and in the Church. Finally, Wistrich discusses the abiding legacy of the Nazi genocide, and the lessons that must be drawn from it. A work of commanding authority and insight, Hitler and the Holocaust is an indelible contribution to the literature of history.