This volume comprises 11 essays--most of them revised versions of lectures given 1996-1997 at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg--by German historians of the younger generation (all born since 1951). The purpose of the lecture series was to "leave behind the stale and rigid terms of Holocaust scholarship and public discussion of the issue" (from the editor's foreword). The essays, focusing on Poland, the Soviet Union, Serbia, and France, aim to identify the impulses that drove German activities in each area and to identify how various political goals and ideological convictions combined to produce policy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume comprises 11 essays--most of them revised versions of lectures given 1996-1997 at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg--by German historians of the younger generation (all born since 1951). The purpose of the lecture series was to "leave behind the stale and rigid terms of Holocaust scholarship and public discussion of the issue" (from the editor's foreword). The essays, focusing on Poland, the Soviet Union, Serbia, and France, aim to identify the impulses that drove German activities in each area and to identify how various political goals and ideological convictions combined to produce policy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The second and concluding volume of the definitive two-volume account of the Holocaust With THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION, Friedlander completes his work on Nazi Germany and the Jews. The book describes and interprets the history of the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe. The implementation of German extermination policies and measures depended on the submissiveness of political authorities, the assistance of local police forces and the passivity or co-operation of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. The implementation also depended on the readiness of the victimes to submit to orders, often with the hope of modifying them or surviving long enough to escape the German vice. This multifaceted representation - at all levels and in all different places - enhances the perception of the magnitude, complexity and interrelatedness of the multiple components of this history. Based on a vast variety of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices, Friedlander manages to avoid domesticating the memory of unparalleled and horrific events. The convergence of these various aspects gives THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION its unique aulity. In this work the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.

Since the 1990s scholars have focused heavily on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and have presented a complex and diverse picture of perpetrators. This book provides a unique overview of the current state of research on perpetrators. The overall focus is on the key question that it still disputed: How do ordinary people become mass murderers?

By employing new 'optics' and a comparative approach, this book helps us recognize the unexpected and unsettling connections between America's 'western' empire and Nazi Germany's 'eastern' empire, linking histories previously thought of as totally unrelated and leading readers towards a deep revisioning of the 'American West' and the 'Nazi East'.

This collection of essays by leading scholars in their fields provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Holocaust historiography available. Covering both long-established historical disputes as well as research questions and methodologies that have developed in the last decade's massive growth in Holocaust Studies, this collection will be of enormous benefit to students and scholars alike.

From the years leading up to the First World War to the aftermath of the Second, Europe experienced an era of genocide. As well as the Holocaust, this period also witnessed the Armenian genocide in 1915, mass killings in Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia, and a host of further ethnic cleansings in Anatolia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Crisis of Genocide seeks to integrate these genocidal events into a single, coherent history. Over two volumes, Mark Levene demonstrates how the relationship between geography, nation, and power came to play a key role in the emergence of genocide in a collapsed or collapsing European imperial zone - the Rimlands - and how the continuing geopolitical contest for control of these Eastern European or near-European regions destabilised relationships between diverse and multifaceted ethnic communities who traditionally had lived side by side. An emergent pattern of toxicity can also be seen in the struggles for regional dominance as pursued by post-imperial states, nation-states, and would-be states. Volume I: Devastation covers the period from 1912 to 1938. It is divided into two parts, the first associated with the prelude to, actuality of, and aftermath of the Great War and imperial collapse, the second the period of provisional 'New Europe' reformulation as well as post-imperial Stalinist, Nazi - and Kemalist - consolidation up to 1938. Levene also explores the crystallisation of truly toxic anti-Jewish hostilities, the implication being that the immediate origins of the Jewish genocides in the Second World War are to be found in the First.

On June 22, 1941, Germany launched the greatest land assault in history on the Soviet Union, an attack that Adolf Hitler deemed crucial to ensure German economic and political survival. As the key theater of the war for the Germans, the eastern front consumed enormous levels of resources and accounted for 75 percent of all German casualties. Despite the significance of this campaign to Germany and to the war as a whole, few English-language publications of the last thirty-five years have addressed these pivotal events. In Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East, Stephen G. Fritz bridges the gap in scholarship by incorporating historical research from the last several decades into an accessible, comprehensive, and coherent narrative. His analysis of the Russo-German War from a German perspective covers all aspects of the eastern front, demonstrating the interrelation of military events, economic policy, resource exploitation, and racial policy that first motivated the invasion. This in-depth account challenges accepted notions about World War II and promotes greater understanding of a topic that has been neglected by historians.

Empathy, suffering, and Holocaust "pornography" -- Goldhagen's celebrity, numbness, and writing history -- Indifference and the language of victimization -- Who was the "real" Hitler?