Nazi Germany and the Jews I.

Fülszöveg

How did one of the most culturally and industrially advanced nations in the world embark on a path leading to one of the most erimina] enterprises in history-the extermination of Europe's Jews? As the century ends, a major histórián crowns a lifetime of thought and research in this first of two volumes (the second will be The Years of Extermination) by responding to the challenge of that perplexing question with intense humanity and a great rangé and depth of serupulous yet eminently readable scholarship. Giving considerable einphasis to an immense array of recently published material and a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander describes and interprets the steadily increasing anti-Jewish persecution in Germany after the 1933 Nazi accession to power. He demonstrates the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and changing circumstances. Friedlander shows how Nazi ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another... Tovább

Fülszöveg

How did one of the most culturally and industrially advanced nations in the world embark on a path leading to one of the most erimina] enterprises in history-the extermination of Europe's Jews? As the century ends, a major histórián crowns a lifetime of thought and research in this first of two volumes (the second will be The Years of Extermination) by responding to the challenge of that perplexing question with intense humanity and a great rangé and depth of serupulous yet eminently readable scholarship. Giving considerable einphasis to an immense array of recently published material and a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander describes and interprets the steadily increasing anti-Jewish persecution in Germany after the 1933 Nazi accession to power. He demonstrates the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and changing circumstances. Friedlander shows how Nazi ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always left an opening for ever more radical moves. The author's extensive use of new documentation brings us the ongoing deliberations of the Nazi party leadership and alsó of numerous lowerranking party functionaries, and gives us insight into the mentality of the university and other cultural and professional elites; of leaders of the business and financial world; and of members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies. We alsó encounter ordinary Germán citizens, who, in the main, passively accepted the waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence that reached a prewar peak in November 1938 with the organized nationwide Kristallnacht pogrom. As for the victims' attitudes Vissza