The Unwritten Order: Hitler's Role in the Final Solution (History of Nazism)

The Holocaust differs from other genocides in recent history for one main reason - there is no other example in which a minority was annihilated so systematically on the orders of a head of state and through the apparatus of government. Through the recent discovery of documents, the central role that Hitler played in the persecution and murder of the European Jews can be proved much more conclusively than was possible just a few years ago. "The Holocaust differs from other genocides in recent history for one main reason: there is no other example in which a minority was annihilated systematically and as completely as possible on the orders of a head of state and through the apparatus of government." "The fact that the murder of the European Jews was the result of conscious decisions made at the highest levels of the Third Reich has been under-emphasized in the research on the Holocaust. Through the discovery of new documents, the central role that Hitler played in the persecution and murder of the European Jews can be proved much more conclusively than was possible just a few years ago. Although it would be a mistake to put the murder of the Jews down to Hitler's will alone (especially as numerous studies have brought out the shared responsibility and active involvement of a large number of accomplices), it is time to make clear once again that Hitler was the driving force behind the radicalisation of the National Socialist policy of extermination. To put it simply: without Hitler there would have been no Holocaust." "The aim of the book is to offer documentary proof of Hitler's central role in the murder of the European Jews. In order to achieve this aim, various documents and fragments of documents have been pieced together and the codified language of the dictator deciphered."-- Book jacket The definitive study of Hitler's role in the greatest act of genocide of the twentieth century. Hitler treated the murder of the Jews as a matter of the utmost secrecy and was careful wherever possible not to leave behind any written orders.