The Holocaust in Germany
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 July 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0091
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 July 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0091
Introduction
The Holocaust is one of the most researched events in modern history, but it is nevertheless still one of the most disputed. This article covers the origins and the development of anti-Jewish persecution in the Third Reich by exploring books about the early efforts to isolate and marginalize German Jewry during the 1930s, changes in persecution strategy after the notorious pogrom of 1938 known as Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”), as well as the decision about forced relocation and mass murder during the Second World War. First, after the war, most works aimed at judgment, and later at documentation; only since the 1990s have analyses prevailed. While historians, mostly survivors, started 1945 with a more European perspective of the Holocaust, during the next decades more and more isolated national narratives evolved in Germany (where it was a subfield of Third Reich studies), in Israel, or in Anglo-Saxon countries. Only after 1989 did an international historiographical approach emerge from a new global network of scholars. This bibliographical article concentrates on Germany and Austria, though many of the books also contain a European dimension. The studies annotated here either influenced the historical debate, raised new questions, started new research agendas, or covered a subject in hitherto not reached depth. Beginning in the 1990s a lot of advanced research was undertaken in Germany itself, so that many more German books are part of the article than one would suspect would be the case. If they are translated into English, both versions are mentioned, since the original German was often studied by English-speaking specialist years before a translation followed. Some works are also taken from Hebrew and French.
General Historical Overviews
Up to now, dozens of works have been published that cover the Holocaust in Germany in a general way. It had started already during the war with books such as Hitler’s Ten-Year War on the Jews (Institute of Jewish Affairs 1943), and it reached a first climax in the 1960s with Hilberg’s classic work The Destruction of the European Jews (Hilberg 2003). Hilberg 1992 shifted the focus from the analysis of institutions to the actors, a view that was adopted by newer accounts, as in the two volumes by Saul Friedländer (Friedländer 1996, Friedländer 2007). While Longerich 2010 focuses on the development of Nazi politics, Zimmermann 2008 illuminates the life of German Jews under persecution. Bloxham 2009 offers a grounded view of the Holocaust as one of several genocides in the 20th century, which believers in the uniqueness of the former contested.
Bloxham, Donald. The Final Solution: A Genocide. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199550333.001.0001
The British historian places the Holocaust in a European context of mass violence. His synthesis, based on an intimate knowledge of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, explores the violent ethnopolitics around World War I, analyzes the German and European dimensions of the Holocaust, compares the motives of the perpetrators of mass murder, and concludes by investigating the scholarly explanations of the Holocaust.
Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. I, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
The prominent scholar provides a seminal work, in which he focuses on the Jewish experience, by providing individual stories from diaries, yet loses neither the oversight of the historical process nor the decision-making process. His first volume describes in full detail the persecution in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939, and explains it with a “redemptive anti-Semitism” of the perpetrators.
Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. 2, The Years of Extermination: 1939–1945. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
In his second volume, Friedländer extends his focus beyond the German borders, focusing on occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. He uses the same technique of introducing Jewish voices from diaries and testimonies, while also paying close attention to the historical and decision-making processes.
Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945. New York: Aaron Asher, 1992.
This study of the US historian shifts the perspective from the administrative system to the actors on all sides. Hilberg explores motives of perpetrators as well as resisters, Jewish representatives, and ordinary Jews. In contrast to his standard work (Hilberg 2003), he also includes examples of Jewish resistance.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
This book by the survivor and renown US historian Hilberg is a standard reference on the topic. Originally published in 1961, it deals in a sophisticated manner with the decision-making process and many then unresearched facets of the Holocaust: its personnel, its bureaucracy, and its financial aspects. The study uses the Nuremberg trial materials, newspapers, and testimonies, and it covers Germany, Austria, and the rest of Europe.
Institute of Jewish Affairs, ed. Hitler’s Ten-Year War on the Jews. New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress, 1943.
Various authors provide the chapters for this first account, which investigates the extermination of the Jews and mentions already a number of over 5 million lost Jews. Based on law gazettes, newspapers, reports of Jewish institutions, reports of diplomatic personnel, underground press, and materials of exile governments, the study describes in detail the persecution in Germany as well as in the annexed and occupied countries.
Longerich, Peter. Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. New York: Oxford University Press 2010.
In his study, the German historian complements his analysis of the central anti-Jewish policy with a large number of local examples of violent actions and official measures. He discusses the existing arguments about how anti-Jewish policy developed and how the decision-making process fit into the practices of extinction. Originally published as Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung in 1998.
Zimmermann, Mosche. Deutsche gegen Deutsche : Das Schicksal der Juden 1938–1945. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2008.
The Israeli historian offers a synthesis on the persecution from a perspective of the German Jewish experience. He focuses on the less well-researched period of 1938–1945, which often is overshadowed by the events in occupied Poland and Soviet Union. Based on the state of research, testimonies, and diaries, Zimmermann introduces the reader to many aspects of German Jewish life and thought under Nazi persecution.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abraham Isaac Kook
- Aggadah
- Agudat Yisrael
- Ahad Ha' am
- American Hebrew Literature
- American Jewish Artists
- American Jewish Literature
- American Jewish Sociology
- Ancient Anti-Semitism
- An-sky (Shloyme Zanvil Rapoport)
- Anthropology of the Jews
- Anti-Semitism, Modern
- Apocalypticism and Messianism
- Aramaic
- Archaeology, Second Temple
- Archaeology: The Rabbinic Period
- Art, Synagogue
- Austria, The Holocaust In
- Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867-1918
- Biblical Archaeology
- Biblical Literature
- Bratslav/Breslev Hasidism
- Buber, Martin
- Buczacz
- Bukharan Jews
- Canada
- Central Asia, Jews in
- Chagall, Marc
- China
- Classical Islam, Jews Under
- Cohen, Hermann
- Culture, Israeli
- David Ben-Gurion
- David Bergelson
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Death, Burial, and the Afterlife
- Debbie Friedman
- Demography
- Deuteronomy
- Dietary Laws
- Dubnov, Simon
- Dutch Republic: 17th-18th Centuries
- Early Modern Period, Christian Yiddishism in the
- Eastern European Haskalah
- Emancipation
- England
- Environment, Judaism and the
- Eruv
- Ethics, Jewish
- Ethiopian Jews
- Feminism
- Film
- Folklore
- Folktales, Jewish
- Food
- Forverts/Forward
- Frank, Jacob
- Gender and Modern Jewish Thought
- Germany, Early Modern
- Ghettos in the Holocaust
- Goldman, Emma
- Golem
- Graetz, Heinrich
- Hasidism
- Hasidism, Lubavitch
- Haskalah
- Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) Literature
- Hebrew
- Hebrew Bible, Blood in the
- Hebrew Bible, Memory and History in the
- Hebrew Literature and Music
- Hebrew Literature Outside of Israel Since 1948
- History, Early Modern Jewish
- History of the Holocaust
- Holocaust in France, The
- Holocaust in Germany, The
- Holocaust in Poland, The
- Holocaust in the Netherlands, The
- Holocaust in the Soviet Union, The
- (Holocaust) Memorial Books
- Holocaust Museums and Memorials
- Holocaust, Philosophical and Theological Responses to the
- Holocaust Survivors, Children of
- Humor, Jewish
- Ibn Ezra, Abraham
- Indian Jews
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Israel Ba'al Shem Tov
- Israel, Religion and State in
- Israeli Economy
- Israeli Film
- Israeli Literature
- Israel's Society
- Italian Jewish Literature (Ninth to Nineteenth Century)
- Jewish American Women Writers in the 18th and 19th Centuri...
- Jewish Bible Translations
- Jewish Culture, Children and Childhood in
- Jewish Diaspora
- Jewish Economic History
- Jewish Folklore, Chełm in
- Jewish Genetics
- Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland
- Jewish Names
- Jewish Studies, Dance in
- Jewish Territorialism (in Relation to Jewish Studies)
- Jewish-Christian Polemics Until the 15th Century
- Joseph Ber Soloveitchik
- Josephus, Flavius
- Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
- Karaism
- Khmelnytsky/Chmielnitzki
- Kibbutz, The
- Ladino
- Languages, Jewish
- Late Antique (Roman and Byzantine) History
- Latin American Jewish Studies Latin American Jewish Studie...
- Law, Biblical
- Law in the Rabbinic Period
- Life Cycle Rituals
- Literature Before 1800, Yiddish
- Literature, Hellenistic Jewish
- Literature, Holocaust
- Literature, Latin American Jewish
- Literature, Medieval
- Literature, Modern Hebrew
- Literature, Rabbinic
- Magic, Ancient Jewish
- Maimonides, Moses
- Maurice Schwartz
- Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought
- Medieval Anti-Judaism
- Medieval Islam, Jews under
- Meir, Golda
- Menachem Begin
- Mendelssohn, Moses
- Messianic Thought and Movements
- Middle Ages, the Hebrew Story in the
- Midrash
- Minority Literatures in Israel
- Minsk
- Modern Germany
- Modern Hebrew Poetry
- Modern Jewish History
- Modern Kabbalah
- Moses Maimonides: Mishneh Torah
- Music, East European Jewish Folk
- Music, Jews and
- Nathan Birnbaum
- Neo-Hasidism
- New York City
- North Africa
- Orthodoxy
- Orthodoxy, Post-World War II
- Palestine/Israel, Yiddish in
- Palestinian Talmud/Yerushalmi
- Philo of Alexandria
- Piyyut
- Poetry in Spain, Hebrew
- Poland, 1800-1939
- Poland, Hasidism in
- Poland Until The Late 18th Century
- Politics and Political Leaders, Israeli
- Politics, Modern Jewish
- Prayer and Liturgy
- Purity and Impurity in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism
- Queer Jewish Texts in the Americas
- Rabbi Yeheil Michel Epstein and his Arukh Hashulchan
- Rabbinic Exegesis (Midrash) and Literary Theory
- Rashi's Commentary on the Bible
- Reform Judaism
- Revelation
- Ritual Objects and Folk Art
- Rosenzweig, Franz
- Russia
- Russian Jewish Culture
- Sabbath
- Sabbatianism
- Sacrifice in the Bible
- Safed
- Sarah Schenirer and Bais Yaakov
- Scholem, Gershom
- Second Temple Period, The
- Sephardi Jews
- Sexuality and the Body
- Shlomo Carlebach
- Shmuel Yosef Agnon
- Shulhan Arukh and Sixteenth Century Jewish Law, The
- Sociology, European Jewish
- South African Jewry
- Soviet Union, Jews in the
- Space in Modern Hebrew Literature
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Sutzkever, Abraham
- Talmud and Philosophy
- Talmud, Narrative in the
- The Druze Community in Israel
- The Early Modern Yiddish Bible, 1534–1686
- The General Jewish Workers’ Bund
- The Modern Jewish Bible, Facets of
- Theater, Israeli
- Theme, Exodus as a
- Tractate Avodah Zarah (in the Talmud)
- Translation
- Translation in Hebrew Literature, Traditions of
- United States
- Vienna
- Vilna
- Warsaw
- Weinreich, Max
- Wissenschaft des Judentums
- Women and Gender Relations
- World War II Literature, Jewish American
- Yankev Glatshteyn/Jacob Glatstein
- Yemen, The Jews of
- Yiddish
- Yiddish Avant-garde Theater
- Yiddish Linguistics
- Yiddish Literature since 1800
- Yiddish Theater
- Zamenhof
- Ze’ev Jabotinsky
- Zionism from Its Inception to 1948