Books like Hitler's Germany by Roderick Stackelberg

A comprehensive history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, detailing the rise of Adolf Hitler and the collapse of the Third Reich during World War II.

Places the Holocaust in its historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts, focusing on the two goals that drove the Nazis in their persecution of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and other groups they deemed as undesirables.

xi, 483 pages ; 21 cm

THE MASTER PLAN is a groundbreaking history of a little known Nazi SS archeological research institute, the Ahnenerbe, and the key role it played in the Holocaust. The Ahnenerbe was the brainchild of Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer SS and architect of the Final Solution, who was intensely interested in Germany’s ancient past. His intent was not only to rewrite the history of what he and others termed the “Aryan Race,” but also to use that mythic past to shape a more glorious future for Germany. While attempting to prove that Aryans were responsible for all of civilization’s greatest achievements, he also hoped to use tall, blond-haired SS men as stock to breed future generations of Germans in a racially purer mold. In the tradition of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, THE MASTER PLAN is also an expose of the work of German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be used to justify extermination, and who, in some cases, directly participated in the slaughter—many of whom resumed their academic positions at war’s end. Intensely compelling and exhaustively researched, THE MASTER PLAN is based on extensive personal interviews and previously ignored archival material.

The Nazi conscience is not an oxymoron. In fact, the perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethnic community and denounced outsiders. Claudia Koonz's latest work reveals how racial popularizers developed the infrastructure and rationale for genocide during the so-called normal years before World War II. Her careful reading of the voluminous Nazi writings on race traces the transformation of longtime Nazis' vulgar antisemitism into a racial ideology that seemed credible to the vast majority of ordinary Germans who never joined the Nazi Party. Challenging conventional assumptions about Hitler, Koonz locates the source of his charisma not in his summons to hate but in his appeal to the collective virtue of his people, the Volk. - Jacket flap.

Saul Friedländer’s definitive study of the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945, examining German extermination policies, the role of local authorities, and the experiences of Jews, based on extensive documents and personal testimony.

Amidst a Society seeking to forget the atrocities of the past, an ongoing debate rages as to the role that should be given to historical study of the Holocaust. Maier presents an objective study of German efforts to deal with ... The tragic lessons of the past. for advanced students of the Holocaust and adult readers.