Nazi Germany and the Jews . Volume 1 , the years of persecution, 1933-1939

A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe's Jews? Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence. Giving considerable emphasis to an immense array of recently published material and a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander describes and interprets the steadily increasing anti-Jewish persecution in Germany after the 1933 Nazi accession to power. He demonstrates the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and changing circumstances. Friedlander shows how Nazi ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always left an opening for ever more radical moves. The years of persecution describes and interprets the steadily increasing anti-Jewish bigotry in Germany after the 1933 Nazi accession to power. The years of extermination describes and interprets the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe Examines the anti-Semitism that led to Nazi Germany's attempts to exterminate Europe's Jewish population, focusing on the people and events from the Nazi accession to power in 1933 to the onset of World War II v. 1. The years of persecution, 1933-1939