The Holocaust

Starred review from April 1, 2017
A magnificent new history that tracks the gradual evolution of the Final Solution.In this orderly, horrifying study, former BBC creative director Rees (Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss, 2013, etc.) emphasizes that the creation and implementation of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps did not occur overnight as a solution to the "Jewish problem." Instead, the Nazi resolution to annihilate the Jewish population developed after a long process of ideological propaganda emerging from the top of the Nazi leadership--Hitler was making anti-Semitic declarations as early as 1919--and led to the trial-and-error installation of killing methods, beginning with the experimental gassing of disabled people in early 1940. Rees moves through these stages chronologically, building the "origins of hate" through the early Christian world and culminating in the "eugenics" movement of the turn of the 20th century. At the same time, the author warns against drawing "a straight line from the pre-First World War hatreds of the Jews to the Third Reich and the Holocaust." Other factors compounding the toxic mix began to convince the German public that the Jews were an "enemy" and to blame for the loss of the war, the communist uprising, and the Weimar government and misery of hyperinflation. The early chapters, which delineate the conditions in which Nazism took root among a vulnerable people (beaten down by social and economic conditions), are especially instructive and chilling. The consolidation of Nazi power moved from public humiliation of Jews to the Nuremberg Laws, while political empire-building via the Anschluss resulted in an efficient "conveyor belt" of persecution and expulsion by Heinrich Himmler's SS. The Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939 inaugurated the "racial war" Hitler had prophesied, leading to more pragmatic solutions to "containing" the Jews, from ghettos to deportation to mass murder. Over the course of this increasingly grim narrative, Rees employs first-person accounts--from interviews he conducted during the past 25 years--to render palpable senses of humanity and context. A thorough, concise, evenhanded work, essential for libraries and schools.

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Starred review from April 1, 2017

Historian Rees (former head of BBC TV History Programmes; Auschwitz: A New History) combines thorough scholarship of the Nazi era with his own vast archive of interviews with survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders to create a comprehensive, chilling, and readable history of the Holocaust. As the Third Reich rose and conquered European countries, methods of solving the "Jewish problem" evolved. Extermination of the Jews remained a primary Nazi battlefront even as loss to the Allies was imminent. Exploring the processes and choices that resulted in mass murder, Rees convincingly shows that although Nazi ideology was based on many twisted and hateful racial theories, Jews were especially targeted for eradication. Similar to Martin Gilbert's The Holocaust, survivor testimony is compelling, especially since it is shadowed by the inability of millions of victims to speak for themselves. The Holocaust was a horrible crime against humanity that sadly continues to be denied and perpetrated in different forms around the world. VERDICT Rees's ability to weave parallel global and personal histories makes this an outstanding, necessary, and timely book that should engage all readers of high school age or above.--Laurie Unger Skinner, Coll. of Lake Cty., Waukegan, IL

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