Hitler and the Jews

The Genesis of the Holocaust
Burrin, Philippe
Date published: 
February 1994

The extermination of the European Jews by the Nazis has been researched so intensively by historians that much about the organization of the crime, the methods employed, the number of victims is now common knowledge. But what do we know of the processes that, one day, led to sending the first train down the track to death? Do we really know how the slaughter came about? Such an enquiry exposes the fragility of knowledge that we take for granted, raising again seemingly elementary questions. Did the policy of the Nazi regime inevitably lead to the Final Solution? Was the Final Solution a foregone conclusion, even for Hitler? Philippe Burrin's book offers bold new insights into the web of decisions and events that led eventually to a genocide unprecedented in character, unparalleled in scale.