Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews [Hardcover]

Throughout the historiography of Nazi Germany there have been tumultuous and fractious divisions between scholars ascribing to a number of differing views on the development of government sponsored antisemitism, culminating in the Holocaust itself. For the most part those views have been mutually exclusive, hence the fractious nature. These mutually exclusive views and debates initially and most familiarly consisted of those between the 'intentionalist(Hitler's intentions and objectives are the primary focus) vs functionalist (the bureaucratic jumble in the regime led to an erratically radicalization in anti Jewish policy) ' schools of thought. More recently the debate has developed into one of whether the periphery (those at the enforcement level of government) or center (the highest echelons of Nazi officials) were most crucial in driving the radicalization of policy.

In Peter Longerich's new history, the Holocaust, he answers most emphatically that it was all of the above. His analysis, supported throughout with the kind of primary documents critical to a work of this nature, is full of insight and a fresh manner of reporting the march to genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany and those within her sphere of influence. In short, he argues that rather than either the functionalist or intentionalist, periphery or center arguments being correct, they all have merit. None of them exist in exclusion of opposing ideas but rather the periphery and center fed each other and Hitler's intentions and the bureaucratic confusion all contributed to the Holocaust occurring as it did.

Longerich's analysis, going back as far as the early days of the Nazi regime, is superb and adds fresh insight to initial methods used to marginalize and remove Jews from all manners of social and professional life in Germany. Through a methodical and exhaustive use of the extant contemporary documents he convincingly argues that from the beginning those on the periphery and center worked in parallel, using differing methods aimed towards achieving the same goal and both taking encouragement and feeding off of the other's cues. The center gave general directives and those at the periphery increasingly adjusted their rough intimidation and violent methods in an intuitive manner that usually preceded official legal measures. This he recounts with repeated examples in both economic and social life in Germany up to Kristalnacht and its attendant legal restrictions on Jews shortly thereafter. After this action, which represents the last of three periods identified of pre-war intensification of harassment and legal Entjudung (de-Jewification), the author writes that Nazi antisemitic public policy was at a temporary stand-still as the enfeebled position of the Jews in Germany made it nearly impossible to effectively evoke the image of the terrifying and dangerous threat they had been portrayed as, to that point. Furthermore, Longerich's narrative, explaining the box which the regime had painted itself into through its removal of Jews from the national economy and the now impossibility of pursuing the voluntary emigration of a people bankrupted by the regime's own actions is thoroughly convincing.

Longerich's analysis of the intensification of antisemitic measures of the war-time period, beginning with the invasion of Poland, is equally fascinating. This covers the early attempts at population transfers as embodied by the Nisko plan as well as later forced emigration schemes which are described in comprehensive detail. In general, this section alone is a masterpiece within the field of Holocaust studies and could easily fill a 500 page volume of its own. With his in-depth analysis and unrivaled command of the contemporary sources he clearly demonstrates that, once again, those on the periphery and those at the center were not working against each other and neither did one or the other take the lead. Rather he argues for an interpretation that envisions a type of give and take in which radicalization by those in the field, such as members of the SS, Police battalions or even technical experts from the T4 program took cues from those above and interpreted them into concrete actions.

Against this backdrop of increasingly larger scale assaults against Jewish communities in Poland and ever-more-grandiose 'reservation' plans for occupied Poland, Longerich traces the story of how massacres moved from a short-term plan for specific regions of the USSR to a Europe wide extermination plan by mid 1942. Unlike most of his contemporaries in the field of Holocaust studies however, the author eschews the typical search for a date by which a concrete decision to exterminate all the Jews in Europe and perhaps beyond was made. In fact he argues with a great deal of documentation to support it, that the Wannsee conference itself was not the watershed that it has later been made to appear. Longerich's assertion is that although there was a definite agreement that a 'Final Solution' would be implemented, there was no certain plan for implementing it and in fact this only came about gradually throughout the course of the spring and summer of 1942. Painstakingly, he recreates the decisions and events and provides a narrative of the highest quality.

Indeed, Dr. Longerich's narrative suffers from only one drawback and that is readability. This is most certainly not a generalist book meant for the a reader with a moderate level of interest in the subject of the Nazi persecution and attempted extermination of European Jewry. This is a work of analysis however, and was never intended to have the emotional impact of a general narrative or memoir. Those looking for the latter would be well served with something along the lines of Dr Saul Friedlander's excellent two volume history. In any case, for those searching for the comprehensive history of the Nazi march to genocide, 'Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews' will likely be that history for years to come. It is truly a phenomenal work of history.

This book is not for everyone interested in understanding the Holocaust. There are no pictures and no maps. The author makes no attempt to convey the horror of Nazi actions through vivid descriptions or language (beyond using the word "murder" a thousand times or so). He assumes a lot of background knowledge in the reader about the basic story of the Holocaust: the primary methods, locales, and perpetrators. The translation from the original German is pretty good but a little stilted. The text was originally the author's "Habilitation" thesis in Germany. It has lots of footnotes and a big bibliography.

There are pop history books, history textbooks, and scholarly historical works. This book is clearly in the latter category. If you don't like scholarly historical works, this book is not for you. That doesn't make you bad or the book bad; there's just going to be a mismatch between what you want and what this book provides.

What this book provides is a remarkably detailed and insightful look at the evolution of Nazi policy towards the Jews from the time the Nazis took over Germany to the time that the Third Reich collapsed. The author provides ample evidence that the policy evolved substantially throughout this time period, and he gives well-reasoned explanations of why it changed the way it did. Maybe this book ought to have seemed very dry, with the myriad Polish place names and the body counts eventually just becoming a blur in the mind of the reader. Yet I had trouble putting it down, and I feel much better informed for having read it.

This English edition of Peter Longerich's masterful "Holocaust" -- the German version is now thirteen years old -- will in many (but not all) ways make previous scholarship on this topic obsolete. Longerich's Introduction outlines how he proposes to solve the disagreements of earlier scholars; disagreements between "structuralists" and "internationalists," and between those who emphasized central planning as opposed to those emphasized the work of the "periphery." And his Conclusion summarizes his synthesis -- successful, in my view -- of these older partial views of the Nazis' extermination of European Jews.

In between these chapters, there is the great wealth of detail, much of it from previously untapped primary sources, much of it from his mastery of the secondary literature. The result is a much better, much more detailed understanding of how the Nazis planned and carried out this very unique historical deed: the Holocaust of six million European Jews.

There are, to be sure, lacunae and shortcomings.

Among the lacunae, the most painful, to me, is the author's failure to consider the anti-Semitic traditions in the pre-Hitler parties of the Left. He carefully considers the various other anti-Semitic components of Weimar culture -- the parties of the Right and the Center, the two Christian communions -- but avoids all mention of the Marxist parties. The specialized literature on this subject, which discusses the complex relationship of the German left-wing to the Jews, is as absent from Longerich's text as it is from his bibliography.

Shortcomings: the English prose lacks all grace. Many passages are awkward, some ambiguous ("These units were to be made up of Ukrainians, Balts, and Belarussians, but only men who had not been conscripted into the Red Army or non-Communist prisoners of war." p. 239) Fairly formal prose will sometimes contain slang expressions, without regard for unity in the level of discourse.

And in a book that depends so much on historical detail, some of the facts are botched. On page 105 there is a reference to a "state Zionist organization," which leaves us in doubt whether he means the Zionist Organization of Germany or a splinter group, the State Zionists. And on page 305 the author will have us believe that Hitler declared war on the U. S. exactly a year later than in fact he did. Moreover, the index is incomplete and misleading. The SPD (Social Democratic Party) is mentioned in the text but is absent from the index and is absent, also, from the list of abbreviations. The KPD (Communist Party) on the other hand, also absent from the index, can be found in the list of abbreviations.

Let us hope that a new edition will make this excellent work even better !