The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945

Overview

The enactment of the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews depended upon many factors, including the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. Necessary also was the victims' willingness to submit, often with the hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise. The Years of Extermination, the completion of Saul Friedl�nder's major historical opus on Nazi Germany and the Jews, explores the convergence of the various aspects of this most systematic and sustained of modern genocides. In this unparalleled work--based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices from diaries, letters, and memoirs--the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review. In the second volume of his essential history of Nazi Germany and the Jews, one of the great historians of the Holocaust provides a rich, vivid depiction of Jewish life from France to Ukraine, Greece to Norway, in its most tragic period, drawing especially on hundreds of diaries written by Jews during their ordeal, depicting a world collapsing on its inhabitants, along with the thousands of humiliating persecutions that Jews suffered on their way to extermination. Friedl�nder also provides insightful discussions of the many interpretive controversies that still surround the history of Nazi Germany. He has been party to many of the debates, and he remains attuned to the most recent historical research. Friedl�nder knows the bureaucratic workings of the Third Reich as well as anyone, but refuses to see in that alone the explanation for the Holocaust. Instead, he focuses largely on cultural and ideological factors. He considers other factors, such as "the crisis of liberalism," but these were not the essential motives for the Holocaust, which, Friedl�nder says, was driven by sheer hatred of Jews, by "a redemptive anti-Semitism" espoused by Hitler, a belief that Germans could thrive only through the utter destruction of Jews. This is a masterful synthesis that draws on a lifetime of learning and research. (Apr. 10)Copyright (c) Reed Business Information.

Author Information

Bio of Joe Eszterhas

Joe Eszterhas was born in Hungary, spent his first six years in Austrian refugee camps, and came to the United States in 1950. He lives in Point Dume, California, with his wife Naomi and their three children. He has two grown children from his first marriage.He has been awarded the Emanuel Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award for work dedicated to the memory of the holocaust in Hungary. He has also won awards for attending every one of his son's Little League games and for writing Showgirls (the Hollywood Women's Press Association's Sour Apple Award).

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins e-books

Filesize

2.26 MB

Number of Pages

896

eBook ISBN

9780061777097

Awards

• Pulitzer Prize