Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis

A political biography of Adolf Hitler, from 1936 to his suicide in May 1945 in Berlin. Ch. 3 (pp. 127-153), "Marks of a Genocidal Mentality", describes the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, which was preceded by lesser-scale pogroms in summer 1938. Subsequent chapters discuss, inter alia, the first Nazi projects of 1939-41 to resettle the Jews of Europe to distant places (Madagascar, eastern Russia, etc.). Ch. 10 (pp. 459-495), "Fulfilling the 'Prophecy'", deals with the beginning of the genocide of Jews in the East and deportations of Jews from Germany to the East. The motives for the killing of Jews in the USSR were ideological: the belief that the Jews were the leading force in the Soviet state. Argues that it was in the summer and fall of 1941 when the Nazi plans to annihilate all the Jews of Europe took shape, albeit not yet in the form of industrialized mass-killing. Hitler's responsibility for the Holocaust cannot be questioned. Although his public pronouncements on the Jews evaded the issue of a systematic mass killing of Jews (e.g. Hitler was absent at the Wannsee conference) and mainly were an expression of his fear and hatred of Jews, his recurring references to his 1939 "prophecy" on the "annihilation of the Jewish race" served for the SS and SD as directives for the mass murder. As the war turned remorselessly against Germany, Hitler reverted ever more to his obsession with Jewish responsibility for the conflagration.