The years of extermination

This volume comprises ten chapters, each of which covers a specific time period between September 1939-May 1945. Discusses the historical background of the war, and then the implementation of the Holocaust in Germany and in the German-dominated countries. Focuses on the Nazi decision-making process, Nazi propaganda, and the mass murders, as well as on reactions of the victims and of the outside world (including Church leaders). Quotes extensively from eyewitness accounts, diaries, chronicles, etc. of Jews as well as of bystanders and Nazi perpetrators. Dismissing the view that the Holocaust was a secondary consequence of major German policies with various aims, argues that it was a major goal of German policy. The war waged by Germany was an ideological one; in the Nazi view, the Jews were behind the liberal and communist worldviews against which they fought. Moreover, the Jews were seen as an active threat to Germany, while other enemies (like the Slavs) were considered passive enemies as long as the Jews did not turn them against Germany. The Nazi Final Solution became radicalized along with the radicalization of the regime and the war; it continued until the last days of the Nazi dictatorship. Dismisses theories that the rest of the world was ignorant about the Holocaust and that the Jewish leadership cooperated with the Nazis. Information on the genocide, sometimes in the form of public pronouncements by Nazi leaders, leaked into Germany and abroad. The Jewish leaders were themselves victims of the system. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)