Non­fic­tion

Hitler, the Ger­mans, and the Final Solution

Ian Ker­shaw
  • Review
By – January 10, 2012
This book, a cul­mi­na­tion of more than three decades of research on Nazi Ger­many by one of the period’s most dis­tin­guished and pro­lif­ic his­to­ri­ans, Ian Ker­shaw, brings togeth­er some of his most impor­tant and sem­i­nal schol­ar­ship for the first time. Ker­shaw was one of the first his­to­ri­ans, as ear­ly as the 1970’s, to work on the social his­to­ry of the Third Reich and this per­spec­tive is reflect­ed in this won­der­ful vol­ume. The writ­ings are arranged in four sec­tions — Hitler and the Final Solu­tion, pop­u­lar opin­ion and the Jews in Nazi Ger­many, the Final Solu­tion in His­to­ri­og­ra­phy, and reflec­tions in the essen­tial sin­gu­lar­i­ty of Nazism. As a social his­to­ri­an, Ker­shaw explores how Ger­man soci­ety react­ed to Nazism, what the atti­tude of ordi­nary” Ger­mans was under the Hitler dic­ta­tor­ship, and what shaped their behav­ior. With­in this gen­er­al frame­work, he attempts to under­stand how the major­i­ty Ger­man pop­u­la­tion respond­ed to the increas­ing­ly bru­tal per­se­cu­tion, then exter­mi­na­tion of the Jews. He con­cludes that moral indif­fer­ence toward the fate of the Jews had char­ac­ter­ized the stance of the major­i­ty of Ger­mans. His inter­pre­ta­tion can be summed up in one of his much quot­ed insights: The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indif­fer­ence.” 

Ker­shaw also includes reflec­tions on the role of Hitler in the pow­er struc­tures of the Third Reich as ide­o­logue and pro­pa­gan­dist, as archi­tect of the Final Solu­tion,” as a prin­ci­pal mover of domes­tic affairs and for­eign pol­i­cy. He also pro­vides reflec­tions on the focus on the Holo­caust in Ger­man his­to­ri­og­ra­phy that erupt­ed in the His­to­ri­ans’ Dis­pute” (His­torik­er­stre­it) in 1986, in which many of Germany’s lead­ing his­to­ri­ans open­ly debat­ed the sin­gu­lar­i­ty of the Holo­caust in the press. The final two essays are reflec­tive pieces that attempt to come to terms with the unique­ness of Nazism and what that peri­od can teach us about the dan­gers we cur­rent­ly face with actu­al or poten­tial geno­cides in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He does not view the future with great opti­mism. The threats from ris­ing fanati­cism, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Mid­dle East, are for­mi­da­ble. And humankind’s abil­i­ty to com­bine new forms of ide­o­log­i­cal demo­niza­tion with fright­ful tech­no­log­i­cal killing pow­er is far from eradicated. 

This is a deeply insight­ful and well-writ­ten social his­to­ry of the Nazi peri­od, an excel­lent review of the schol­ar­ship of one of the great­est liv­ing his­to­ri­ans of that era.
Michael N. Dobkows­ki is a pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at Hobart and William Smith Col­leges. He is co-edi­tor of Geno­cide and the Mod­ern Age and On the Edge of Scarci­ty (Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Press); author of The Tar­nished Dream: The Basis of Amer­i­can Anti-Semi­tism; and co-author of The Nuclear Predicament.

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