Overview

""This is by far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development.""―Antony Beevor, bestselling author of Stalingrad Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now, he combines their never-before-seen eyewitness testimony with the latest academic research to create a uniquely accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust. In The Holocaust, Rees offers an examination of the decision-making process of the Nazi state, and in the process reveals the series of escalations that cumulatively created the horror. He argues that while hatred of the Jews was always at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, what happened cannot be fully understood without considering the murder of the Jews alongside plans to kill large numbers of non-Jews, including the disabled, Sinti, and Roma, plus millions of Soviet civilians. Through a chronological, intensely readable narrative, featuring enthralling eyewitness testimony and the latest academic research, this is a compelling new account of the worst crime in history.

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9781541730076

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Reviews

""A masterpiece... Rees' best book yet""--Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War ""Anyone wanting a compelling, highly readable explanation of how and why the Holocaust happened, drawing on recent scholarship and impressively incorporating moving and harrowing interviews with victims as well as chilling accounts by perpetrators, need look no further than Rees's brilliant book.""--Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of To Hell and Back and Hitler, A Biography ""Contributed magnificently to the vast corpus of Holocaust literature.... Serve[s] as an excellent guide for the perplexed.""--Wall Street Journal ""Rees has compiled a readable, moving, and comprehensive overview of this scholarship, enlivened by vivid first-person reminiscences... Readers looking for a single-volume history of the Holocaust will have trouble finding one better than this.""--ForeignAffairs ""Rees has spent his life researching, writing, and making documentaries about the Holocaust, and his new book is full of facts and stories that landed on the cutting-room floor when he was editing his other works. It is a long and detailed explanation of why the Holocaust happened, of why Hitler was embraced by millions, of why what's thought of by many as an aberration wasn't an aberration at all but a result of all the history and politics and religion and prejudice that went on for centuries before.""--Boston Globe ""This is by far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development.""--Antony Beevor, bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin, and The Second World War

Author Information

Laurence Rees is an award-winning historian and documentary filmmaker. He has authored several books including Hitler and Stalin, the bestselling, Auschwitz: A New History, and his forthcoming title, The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History. He lives in London.

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