Hitler and the Holocaust [Modern Library Chronicles]

This excellent work succintly reviews both the crime and the causes of the Holocaust. As a student of World War II and the Third Reich, I felt that I had a good comprehension of this subject. Wistrich gave me a far deeper understanding in four or five hours than I have attained in hundreds of hours of study with other materials. This is a truly superb work.

I found this volume to be an immensely interesting and fairly complete overview of a world leader that forever changed the world. It definitely revealed what is not commonly taught in school concerning the historical philosophical influences that were affecting European beliefs from the late nineteenth century forward that caused a nation to embrace the Nazi ideology. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to have a greater understanding of the events and beliefs that led up to one of the most diabolical segments of world history. The documentation of prewar antisemitism that pervaded Europe as well as America was enlightening. This book reveals the character traits of the upper echelon of the Nazi party as well as the beliefs of the average German of that era. This book is a must read to anyone that wants to understand how and why such a monstrous event could take place in the "civilized" world of the early twentieth century.

This is an excellent overview of the holocaust. In addition, it contains a summary of some of the new research in the study of the holocaust and offers some critique of some of the newer historiographical methodologies. The one issue that I would raise with the book is that the title is a little misleading. In reality, the book is not all that much about Hitler as it is about the environment that led to the holocaust, including - of course - Hitler. I suspected that the book would be more of a study about how Hitler was involved with the final solution. Indeed, the book is much better because it is not specifically about Hitler and his role in the holocaust.