Customer Reviews

Hitler and the Holocaust (Modern Library Chronicles)

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Wistrich does a wonderful job of condensing information about a huge topic into a very useful small volume. It doesn't go into a huge amount of detail about every aspect of the Holocaust or the anti-semitism leading up to it, but it is a great book for beginners, particularly high school or college undergraduates looking for an introduction to this horrible subject.
As the previous reviewer said, Wistrich does do a wonderful job of documenting his sources and I too got a lot of further reading and research ideas from this book.

What makes this fine book such an outstanding achievement is that it combines two qualities that rarely go together: a) an authoritative introduction to a complex subject, suitable for a beginner; and b) a summary of the most current technical findings, suitable for the expert. This book can confidently be given to a high school student, whose knowledge of modern history will, with this book alone, take a qualitative leap forward. And it should be read by those who have already read everything else on the subject, whose knowledge will be brought up-to-date. As always, Professor Wistrich's style is fluent and engaging, and the Modern Library has done its part by producing a physically attractive object.
I do have just two little quibbles. It would have been useful, particularly for the beginner, to include suggestions for further readings in a special section. Professor Wistrich does make such suggestions, but they are somewhat buried in his Notes. And for the serious student, an alphabetic list of all the cited references would have made life just a little easier.

This is a nice little volume. A small book with a lot of information. I consider myself well read on this subject and ended up learning a lot from this book. It was so easy to read I finished it in a little over a week. Wistrich has some great endnotes too. He has documented everything and I got some great suggestions for further reading from the notes. The cover and the type font make this a very attractive volume as well. As stated in previous reviews this is a very good volume for the learned person. Wistrich will bring you up to date and refresh your memory of past details. However, I disagree with it being for the absolute beginner. You still need to be familiar with the non-fiction format and have some subject knowledge in order to get the most out of this book. It also looks great on a bookshelf.

In the introduction, Wistrich provides an overview asking the big Why. He disagrees with Daniel Goldhagen, pointing out that prior to 1933 antisemitism had been worse in countries like Russia, Romania, Poland and Austria and that the rule of law applied in Germany until that year. The Holocaust was a pan-European event in which millions of people participated. The times were evil; even Britain and the USA experienced a rising tide of antisemitism. Unimaginable horror results when a society does not distinguish between good & evil. The lessons of this abyss are that evil must be resisted in its early stage and that individuals are responsible for their actions.

The first chapter briefly reviews Jewish history from the Hasmoneans to the Roman yoke in which era a new religion was born. Its foundational documents contain calumnies and demonizations of the Jewish People. The "Church Fathers" perpetuated this hostility in their writings; the victory of Constantine Christianity ensured ever increasing oppression. Martin Luther amplified the hatred in his writings. This chapter also covers Europe in the 1930s as night was coming on. Wistrich also considers various atrocities and genocides like that of the Armenians, the Gulags of Stalinist Russia and the suffering of the Roma.

Disillusionment in Europe after the First World War was profound. The pointless death & destruction spurred the growth of revolutionary movements like fascism and communism. The history of Austria and Germany in the 1920s & 1930s, Mein Kampf, the political parties & the reaction to Jewish refugees arriving from Eastern Europe are discussed. The depression hit Germany in 1930; that year the Nazi vote increased dramatically. In 1933 Hitler took power and German Jews started leaving.

The destruction of Crystal Night followed, the most violent attack on Jews since the crusades; 100 people were murdered. The international conference held at Evian in France encouraged Hitler since he noticed it was all talk; no country was prepared to welcome Jewish refugees. The discriminatory racial laws did not encounter resistance from any sector of German society. The German annexation of half of Poland in 1939 and the later invasion of Russia placed millions more Jews under Nazi rule. Terrible massacres occurred on the front.

Hitler's apocalypticism was a blend of Christian and anti-Christian Judeophobia, a secular salvationist ideology. He referred to New Testament passages during his speeches in Catholic Bavaria, saw himself as a messianic figure and claimed that Christ had pioneered the struggle against the Jews. Thus in the early years the Nazis mined the ancient vein of Christian Antisemitism. Only the Confessional Church openly defied the Nazis and in the 1937 Encyclical "Mit Brennende Sorge" Pope Pius XI objected to Nazi supremacism and paganism. Nazism co-existed with the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches but its bestial heart harbored contempt for Judeo-Christian values and ethics. Leading Nazis were fanatically anti-Christian. As the evidence of atrocities accumulated, including reports from Croatia & Slovakia, the Vatican's reaction was muted. It still viewed Jews as representing its modernist enemies like liberalism, freemasonry, secularism, etc.

Chapter 6 was almost unbearable, were it not for the exceptions where the Angel of the Lord must have drawn his sword or the Spirit moved the hearts of the people. Collaboration - particularly cruel in countries like Ukraine, Romania and Slovakia - occurred throughout Europe. Jews were safe in Hungary until March 1944 when the Germans invaded. Despite the efforts of especially Calvinists, more than 80% of Holland's Jews were deported to Poland. Belgium fared better - people deliberately undermined the German efforts but 44% was lost. In the areas controlled by the collaborationist Vichy Regime, French Jews were protected to an extent but not recent arrivals. In 1942 the Germans occupied all of France. I'm not sure if Wistrich mentions it, but General Franco of Spain accepted refugees.

In this demonic darkness of indifference, hostility & complicity with the Nazis, there were three areas where the divine light was not extinguished. Protection was provided in the north, east & south of Europe. Bulgaria was a German ally but the people, never antisemitic, stood firm: King, government, civil society and church! Orthodox Metropolitan Stephan of Sofia declared that men had no right to persecute Jews, whilst the King supplied many reasons why its citizens could not leave. Denmark saved almost its entire Jewish community by ferrying them across to Sweden. Of course the proximity & willingness of Sweden made it possible. In their absence, Danes tended their homes & gardens and cared for their pets. Finland flatly refused German demands. Italians openly sabotaged the Holocaust; the Italian army shielded and protected Jews in places like France, Croatia, Albania and Greece. Later when the Germans invaded, Italians hid and protected Jews to a degree unseen anywhere else but in the aforementioned countries.

One recognizes the sacrifice of Britain & Americans whose soldiers fought and died, but these countries do not have clean hands. First, they instituted restrictive immigration policies. At that time, the American Jewish community was weak, divided and afraid of antagonizing its fellow citizens. The worst action of Roosevelt was turning away the ocean liner St Louis with its Jewish refugees. Back in Germany they were all murdered. Perhaps even worse from the quantity angle, the UK established quotas for Jewish immigration to the Levant. Not only that, but the British navy intercepted refugee ships en route to the homeland, and that under Churchill! It is incomprehensible. Moron me who thought the Prime Minister had more authority than the State Department. So in the Atlantic Anglo-Saxon sphere political hypocrisy and heartless bureaucracy triumphed over mercy.

Sensitive people beware! The final chapter, on modernity and genocide, evaluates various theories and provides examples of sadism and torture in the death camps. One can skip it, just reading the last two pages which are safe. Wistrich concludes that the Holocaust was inspired by a millenarian apocalyptic ideology of annihilation that cannot be separated from the dominant religious tradition of Western Europe. But unlike Christianity, Nazism was a death cult that saw human sacrifice as the road to redemption. The book contains maps, notes arranged by chapter, 3 timeline charts covering 1933 - 1945, and an index.

Although some might say this is good for introduction to Holocaust study, I'm not convinced it succeeds on that level as it should. First, the title was a bit misleading. I expected it to focus on Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust, yet there is little discussion of Hitler compared to what other angles the book delves into. I also thought that jumping to different issues, it is not focused enough to be effective as a whole as compared to other books that might be longer in reading but you come away with much more understanding. Too much is just touched upon, but not conveyed. I found "Auschwitz" by Deborah Dwork and Robert Van Pelt to give a much clearer perspective than what I read here, and it's not that much longer than this.

And I think, contrary to the author, that the entire extermination of the slavic population was practical for the Nazi's and it did serve a major ideological agenda. From reading Hitler's "table talk," it seemed to me like that was the future plan.

Also, the author says that "When Himmler instructed Rudolf Hoss to establish the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the reason given was expressly ideological; the need to extirpate the biological roots of Jewry." In something as serious as this, I think it's important that every fact is presented where there can be no confusion- otherwise, if they learn otherwise, it can cause problems. This would lead me to believe that Auschwitz was erected at the time of this talk with Himmler, when actually, the talk with Himmler happened in 1941, and Hoss had been camp commandant since 1940- and that Auschwitz was first established as a labor camp and turned INTO a death camp for the purpose of extirpating the biological roots of Jewry." that might be nitpicking on my part and it could be said that the Birkenau addition implies the time, but since the Nazi's crime is so terrible, every word is important, every sentence is a voice from the Holocaust crying out, so you have to make sure everything is clearly said. That's what I think, anyway.

This is a good book, but something like "Never Again" by Martin Gilbert might be a better introduction than this,

Robert S. Wistrich's Hitler and the Holocaust is a fine addition to the Modern Library Chronicles Series (all of which are highly recommended). This one sticks tightly to its title subject and will makes an effective beginning to future volumes which examine World War II in Europe and Nazi Germany. The author examines the ideological origins of anti-Semitism and the Final Solution, the Holocaust as it was first established by Germany in Eastern Europe and its effects and results in the various countries involved (providing much needed glimpses of hope for humanity in such places as Denmark and, somewhat surprisingly, Italy amidst the unending horror). The author looks at the response (non-response, really) of Britain and America, as well as various Jewish organizations outside of Europe, including Palestine. It is slightly longer than the usual volumes in the series, at 240 pages of text, and this extra space is put to effective use. This is good introduction to the subject before venturing in any deeper. A great addition to a wonderful series.

This new addition to the Modern Library's 'Chronicles' series confronts many issues inherent in Holocaust history, from Hitler's plans for mass genocide to the relationship between his efforts and the larger war. Hitler And The Holocaust is an excellent survey of the underlying social and political beliefs which helped shape the world Hitler changed.

As the previous reviewers have already noted, this is a great book defining how the Holocaust happened in one of the most civilized nations in Europe. Wistrich notes the rise of anti Semitism in Germany and the rest of Europe during the ninetenth and twentieth centuries. Even though thousands of German Jews gave their lives in the trench warfare on the Western Front during World War II, the Nazis blamed the Jews for the stab in the back.
In this book, Hitler's main aim was to rid Eurpe of all its Jews. His goal continued despite setbacks on the fighting fronts. Hungarian Jews were murdered up to the closing months of the war, even though Germany was in the process of being defeated. Germany's loss was also blamed on the Jews.
Wistrich gives us a scholarly analysis of why the Jews were selected, how the lack of solidarity in the Jewish population helped the Nazis kill their victims, and why the Western Allies did little to stop the killing. As Wistich states, other genocides in later years just shows how little has changed in the history of genocide. A minority group is selected for the blame of something, and revenge is exacted.
This is a great scholarly read for why the Holocaust happened. It places Hitler front and center in one of the greatest crimes of all time.

This interesting book by Robert Wistrich is an attempt to concentrate on the question as to why the Nazis placed so much emphasis on the extermination of the European Jews, often when doing so meant endangering the other goals they were surging toward during the conduct of the war. The author, of course, understands that the whole of the national Socialist movement sprang from the discontent and absurd racism of the Volkist history of the Reich, much of it dating back centuries. From the time Germany was forged out of the crucible of Prussia and its environs, the collection of Germanic peoples looked for those unifying themes that would untie them as distinct people and extend to them the greatness that had so eluded them and their culture. Given their history of cultural insecurity, it seems as no surprise that an entity like the Jews had to found and scapegoated to justify their grandiloquent dreams.

As the author points out (and as others such as Lucy Dawidowicz so famously in "The War Against The Jews'), this scapegoating effort was no only an expediency arising from the discontent and chaos of the Weimar years after World War One, but also a deep-seated cultural tradition extending back hundreds if not thousands of years. Indeed, questions regarding Jewish claims to citizenship had been hotly debated both officially and unofficially every place from the many legislative forums to the floors of the local pubs as long as anyone could recall. There was nothing new or novel about German prejudice against and antipathy for the Jews. And as he adds so succinctly, this was (and indeed is) a problem extending far beyond German borders. After all, we do well to remember that most European countries turned their backs on the problems of the Jewish émigrés attempting by the thousands to flee the coming horror in Nazi Germany. Indeed, many such as the Swiss and the French cooperated in handing over indigenous Jews to the German authorities during the war.

Moreover, the climate of blind indifference extended to the pulpits of the clergy, as well, and persistent rumors claim that the Pope himself was cognizant of the plight of the German and other European Jews and did little if anything to intercede. In fat, this book provides a yeoman's service by articulating and discussing a number of salient and competing interpretations, ranging from Daniel Goldhagen's controversial thesis enunciated in "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" to Christopher Browning's thesis as expounded in several recent books (see my reviews of both authors' works). Wistrich also recapitulates the differences between the so-called "intentionalist' and "functionalist' theories of the Holocaust, and as I have written elsewhere, I believe that while the evidence indicates a functional approach, I also believe that the same evidence is consistent with the idea that Hitler and the Nazis always intended to exterminate the Jews (along with all of the indigenous populations of the conquered territories to the east). All the functional argument really proves, as far as I can see, is that existential circumstances played into the execution of a standing policy which was a virtual cornerstone of Nazi social policy.

As someone professionally educated as a sociologist, I was fascinated by the author's discussion of the meaning of the Holocaust in terms of history, and the question as to whether or not it represented the "antithesis of Western Civilization" or its realization. This treads very close to a searing indictment made by sociologist Max Weber of the eventual drift of rationalism as practiced in western societies toward a kind of non-thinking and non-substantive form of the rational impulse, a shadow which contented itself with the forms and practices of rationalism but none of its intent and rigor. To the extent he was correct that such a society would become an "iron cage" imprisoning man and endangering everything good that he stood for, perhaps Mr. Wistrich is onto something here. Enjoy!

This book is an excellent survey of the Holocaust, both as to its origins and its aftermath as well as the event itself. The author pulls no punches in examining how this event was allowed to happen (it was the culmination of a thousand or more years of prejudice, bigotry, and persecution) and who allowed it to happen (it could not have happened on the scale it did without a wide assortment of collaborators, not just in Germany but all over Europe, although some nations were more historically predisposed to anti-Semitism and this led to their more active collaboration).

The author also does a masterful job of putting the Holocaust into its historical context with the slaughters of other innocent peoples and provides a cogent analysis of the simmering dispute on why the Holocaust occurred (was it a result, or awful byproduct, of the wars launched by Hitler as so-called functionalists claim, or was it the raison d'etre for the wars, as the intentionalists argue).