Holocaust

Doris L. Bergen is Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto.

Doris L. Bergen, professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto, has written perhaps the best concise history of the Holocaust published to date. She provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to this complex subject. Writing with clarity and sensitivity, and based on the latest research, she places the Holocaust in its historical, cultural, social, and military contexts. The narrative is powerful and engaging, and the analysis is balanced and compelling. In this compact volume, fully illustrated with photographs and maps, Bergen covers all the major issues surrounding the Holocaust. She discusses not only the persecution of the Jews, but other groups victimized by the Nazis: Gypsies, the disabled, Poles, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, and political opponents of the regime. She also provides firsthand accounts from perpetrators, victims, and eyewitnesses thus adding the human dimension of the tragedy that is so often left out of other textbook treatments of the subject. The book is very readable, compelling and informative and highly recommended to expert and novice alike.

• Preface: War and Genocide: Race and SpaceChapter 1: Preconditions: Antisemitism, Racism, and Common Prejudices in Early-Twentieth-Century EuropeChapter 2: Leadership and Will: Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and Nazi IdeologyChapter 3: From Revolution to Routine: Nazi Germany, 1933–1939Chapter 4: Open Aggression: In Search of War, 1938–1939Chapter 5: Experiments in Brutality, 1939–1940: War against Poland and the So-Called Euthanasia ProgramChapter 6: Expansion and Systematization: Exporting War and Terror, 1940–1941Chapter 7: The Peak Years of Killing: 1942 and 1943Chapter 8: Death Throes and Killing Frenzies, 1944–1945Conclusion: The Legacies of AtrocitySources and Suggestions for Further Reading