• To what extent was Nazi anti-Semitism set in a larger racist-eugenicist framework?
• When and why did the Nazis turn from persecution to annihilation of the Jews?
• How widely should historians ascribe responsibility for the Holocaust?

Background Reading

M. Burleigh The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945
J. Hiden/JF Explaining Hitler’s Germany, chs. 2 & 5
I. Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship, chs. 5, 6 & 8
Antisemitism and Eugenics
M.D. Biddis ‘Gobineau and the Origins of European Racism’, Race 1966
M. Burleigh Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany 1900-1945
G.G. Field ‘Nordic Racism’, Jnl of Hist of Ideas 1977
P. Pulzer* The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany & Austria
J.A. Rogers ‘Darwinism and Social Darwinism’, Jnl Hist of Ideas, 1972
R.A. Graham ‘The "Right to Kill" in the Third Reich: Prelude to Genocide’, Catholic Hist Rev 1976
L. Thomson ‘Lebensborn and the Eugenics Policy of the Reichsführer-SS’, Cent Euro Hist 1971
P. Weindling Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism

The Final Solution

F. Bajohr, 'Aryanisation' in Hamburg
D. Bankier The Germans and the Final Solution
R. Breitman The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution
M. Broszat* ‘Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution’, in H. Koch, Aspects of the Third Reich, 390-429
C. Browning* Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution, 1941-42
________* Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101
________* The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution
D. Cesarani (ed.) The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation
N. Cohn Warrant for Genocide
H. V. Dicks Licensed Mass Murder: A Socio-Psychological Study of Some SS Killers
L. Dawidowicz The War against the Jews
G. Fleming Hitler and the Final Solution
M. Gilbert The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy
D. Goldhagen Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
S. Gordon Hitler, the Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’
H. Graml Antisemitism in the Third Reich
R. Hilberg* The Destruction of the European Jews
G. Hirschfeld The Politics of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany
F.E. Katz ‘Implementation of the Holocaust: the Behaviour of Nazi Officials’, Comp Studies in Society & Hist 1982
I. Kershaw ‘The Persecution of the Jews and German Popular Opinion in the Third Reich’, Leo Baeck Inst Yearbook 1981
E. Klee et al. Those Were the Days: The Holocaust through the Eyes of the Perpetrators and Bystanders
L. Kochan Pogrom: 10 November 1938
M.J. Marrus* The Holocaust in History
A.J. Mayer Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History
H. Mommsen* ‘The Realisation of the Unthinkable: The "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" in the Third Reich’, in ibid., From Weimar to Auschwitz
J. Noakes/GP* Nazism 1919-1945, vol. 3
A. Reed/DF Kristallnacht: Unleashing the Holocaust
G. Reitlinger The Final Solution
K. Schleunes* The Twisted Road to Auschwitz
G. Serenyi Into that Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder

Non-Jewish Victim Groups

G. Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies
R. Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals