By
– March 30, 2012
Wolfgang Benz’s sixth book is an overview of the history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Fifteen well written and nicely translated chapters cover Nazi state and society in a thematic and broadly chronological fashion. The Holocaust is covered in two chapters: chapter nine, dealing with the persecution of German Jewry from 1933 to 1939, and chapter thirteen, reviewing the Final Solution from 1939 to 1945. Both chapters attempt to place the assault on Jewry into a broader Nazi racial and political context, while also retaining an understanding of the uniquely Jewish aspects of Nazi policy. In this respect, the two chapters are a summary of, and good complement for, Benz’s brief The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide (1999). I have one criticism of the book: Benz added an introduction for the American edition that adds some of the needed German history background that most readers in this country will need to place the Nazis into their proper German context. Albeit, this eight page excursus and the eleven page prologue that follows (detailing the fall of the Weimar Republic) are too cursory to be of any real use. If Benz sought to explain how the Nazis managed to wrest control of Germany in 1933, he should have devoted an entire chapter to that subject.
Abraham J. Edelheit is an associate professor of history at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY) and the author, co-author, or editor of eleven books on the Holocaust, Zionism, Jewish and European history, and Military affairs. His most recent publication appeared in Armor magazine, the official journal of the US Army Armor and Cavalry Command.
