2008-04-22 Remarkable piece of historiography

Comprehensive summary of the Nazi extermination program, its beginnings, development, and full-scale execution. Friedländer links the usual Nazi bureaucratic-organizational perspective with the major events of the war, the actions of the collaborationist regimes, of the Catholic church and of the Allies, of all major actors affecting the progression of events, together with letters from perpetrators and diaries of the victims into one terrifying and gripping tale about the plight of European Jewry during WWII. It is at times hard to go on reading, especially when you reach one of the many final diary entries in the book before the victim's deportation and death. Friedländer's explanation as to the ultimate source of the Holocaust, the superstitious view of Hitler and his associates that they Jew was the world historical enemy of civilization and culture, an idea which they quite successfully disseminated among the German population through relentless propaganda, is ultimately more convincing than for instance the ones given in Browning's study of Police Battalion 101, or Goldhagen's thesis in Hitler's Willing Executioners. It explains why the extermination program (up to the point where the Reich collapsed) continued unabated. The book is a remarkable piece of historiography.

Noteworthy points: Don't dismiss conspiracy theorists as merely harmless cranks--the animating idea behind the Holocaust was a conspiracy theory. The exterminations were widely known among the Germans relatively early and in the East where they took place. It wasn't just the Germans--the age-old hatred was all over Europe.