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Going beyond the fanatical anti-Semitism of Hitler and his chiefs, Schleunes analyzes "the internal structure of the [Nazi] regime, the role of its bureaucracies, and the rivalries between competing power groups ... to trace the early stages of discrimination against Jews and their exclusion from public life that led ultimately to their deaths."--p.vii.
Since the publication of Karl Schleunes' The Twisted Road To Auschwitz in 1970 an almost inconceivably broad variety of scholarly books and articles has dealt with why and how the Holocaust came into being and what kind of mechanisms lay at the bottom of the unimaginable cruelties committed by the Nazi regime against the Jews.
On November 7, 1938, a Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, fatally shot a German diplomat in Paris. Within three days anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout Germany, initially incited by local Nazi officials, and ultimately sanctioned by the decisions of Hitler and Goebbels at the pinnacle of the Third Reich. As synagogues burned and Jews were beaten in the streets, police stood aside. Men, women, and children—many neighbors of the victims—participated enthusiastically in acts of violence, rituals of humiliation, and looting. By the night of November 10, a nationwide antisemitic pogrom had inflicted massive destruction on synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish-owned businesses. During ...
In this fascinating volume, renowned historian Howard M. Sachar relates the tragedy of twentieth-century Europe through an innovative, riveting account of the continent's political assassinations between 1918 and 1939 and beyond. By tracing the violent deaths of key public figures during an exceptionally fraught time period—the aftermath of World War I—Sachar lays bare a much larger history: the gradual moral and political demise of European civilization and its descent into World War II. In his famously arresting prose, Sachar traces the assassinations of Rosa Luxemburg, Kurt Eisner, Matthias Erzberger, and Walther Rathenau in Germany—a lethal chain reaction that contributed to the Weimar Republic's eventual collapse and Hitler's rise to power. Sachar's exploration of political fragility in Italy, Austria, the successor states of Eastern Europe, and France completes a mordant yet intriguing exposure of the Old World's lethal vulnerability. The final chapter, which chronicles the deaths of Stefan and Lotte Zweig, serves as a thought-provoking metaphor for the assassination of the Old World itself.
From April 1933 to early 1943, Bernard Loesener served as the official “Jewish Expert” in the German Third Reich's Ministry of the Interior, the government body responsible for the Nazi's legislative assault on German Jewry. In that role, he personally drafted much of the legislation, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 preeminently, that gradually dispossessed, disenfranchised, and dehumanized the Jews of Nazi Germany. During the first six years of Nazi rule, the seminal period of government-sponsored anti-Semitism, Loesener kept the minutes of many crucial, high-level, inter-ministerial conferences concerned with the “Jewish Question.” As observer and participant, his experiences were virtually unparalleled. In 1950, Loesener penned a memoir that sought to explain, and justify, his actions during the ten-year escalation of Nazi oppression that resulted, to Loesener's professed horror, in the Final Solution. It was published in 1961, in German, by the journal Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte. It has never before appeared in English, until now - in Legislating the Holocaust.
Pp. vii-xxxiii contain Friedländer's introduction, which did not appear in the original German edition.
From April 1933 to early 1943, Bernard Loesener served as the official ?Jewish Expert? in the German Third Reich's Ministry of the Interior, the government body responsible for the Nazi's legislative assault on German Jewry. In that role, he personally drafted much of the legislation, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 preeminently, that gradually dispossessed, disenfranchised, and dehumanized the Jews of Nazi Germany. During the first six years of Nazi rule, the seminal period of government-sponsored anti-Semitism, Loesener kept the minutes of many crucial, high-level, inter-ministerial conferences concerned with the ?Jewish Question.? As observer and participant, his experiences were virtually unparalleled. In 1950, Loesener penned a memoir that sought to explain, and justify, his actions during the ten-year escalation of Nazi oppression that resulted, to Loesener's professed horror, in the Final Solution. It was published in 1961, in German, by the journal Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte. It has never before appeared in English, until now - in Legislating the Holocaust.
Reflecting on the work of one of the field's most influential scholars, the twenty essays in this book explore the evolution and application of Holocaust historiography, identify key insights into genocidal settings and point to gaps in our knowledge of humanity's most haunting problem. Why do they kill? The publication in 1992 of Christopher R. Browning's Ordinary Men raised crucial, previously unasked questions about the Holocaust: what made the members of a German police battalion - middle-aged family men of working- and lower-class background - become mass murderers of Jewish children, women, and men? How does motivation tie in with other factors that prompt participation in the final solution? And what can survivor accounts convey about genocide perpetration? Reflecting on the work of one of the field's most influential scholars, the twenty essays in this book explore the evolution and application of Holocaust historiography, identify key insights into genocidal settings and point to gaps in our knowledge of humanity's most haunting problem.
"In the courtroom and the classroom, in popular media, public policy, and scholarly pursuits, the Holocaust-its origins, its nature, and its implications-remains very much a matter of interest, debate, and controversy. Arriving at a time when a new generation must come to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust or forever lose the benefit of its historical, social, and moral lessons, this volume offers a richly varied, deeply informed perspective on the practice, interpretation, and direction of Holocaust research now and in the future. In their essays the authors-an international group including eminent senior scholars as well those who represent the future of the field-set the agenda for Ho...