Books
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- General
- Origins
- Nazi media
- Gypsies
- Homosexuals
- Victims and survivors
- Trials of perpetrators
- Holocaust denial
- Restitution and compensation
- Other controversies
- Miscellaneous
General
The Destruction of the European Jews by Raul Hilberg (Holmes & Meier, 1986)
First published in 1961, this revised and expanded edition was the first major account of the Nazis' Final Solution. Based on reliable historical sources, it estimates the number of Jews killed as 5.1 million. Subsequent studies have amended this figure to six million.
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Hitler by Joachim C Fest, translated by Clara Winston and Richard Winston (Penguin, 1982)
Contains a shrewd assessment of Hitler's feelings about the wilder shores of Himmler's pagan religious beliefs.
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Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris by Ian Kershaw (Penguin, 2001)
First volume of an acclaimed biography. It deals lucidly with the influence on Hitler of pan-German nationalism and also touches on the role of Karl Haushofer in the 1920s in the evolution of Nazi philosophy.
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Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw (Penguin, 2001)
Second volume of the acclaimed biography. At its heart lies Hitler's decision to unleash annihilatory war in the East and the terrifying new moral universe this brought into being: the degradation of enemies into 'beasts' and the hatching of the Final Solution.
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The Hitler Myth: Image and reality in the Third Reich by Ian Kershaw (Oxford Paperbacks, 2001)
Kershaw shows how Hitler's public image welded together antagonistic forces within the Nazi state, mobilised the nation for war and contributed to the ethos that animated systematic and genocidal violence.
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The Holocaust: The Jewish tragedy by Martin Gilbert (HarperCollins, 1989)
An extremely detailed account of the experience of the Jews in Europe during World War II, drawing on archive documents and the words of ordinary people who experienced the events.
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The Holocaust in History by Michael R Marrus (Key Porter Books, 2000)
An important and readable account that places the Holocaust firmly in its historical context.
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Nazi Germany and the Jews: Vol. 1: The years of persecution 1933–39 by Saul Friedländer (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998)
Examines Hitler's Final Solution using newly discovered archive material, focusing on the years leading up to 1939.
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The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust by Martin Gilbert (Routledge, 2002)
A series of 320 maps with photographs, compiled by a distinguished and reliable historian, providing a graphic outline of the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jews of Europe.
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Origins
Das Ahnenerbe der SS 1935-1945: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches by Michael H Kater (R Oldenbourg [Germany], 1974, paperback edition 1997)
The only book about the Ahnenerbe, written by a professor at York University in Canada but, alas, available only in German.
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The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Sutton, 1995)
Originally published in 1871 (and also known as Vril: The power of the coming race), in it Bulwer-Lytton coined the name 'Vril' for the power of his master race. It eventually inspired the tradename 'Bovril'.
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Himmler: Reichs Führer SS by Peter Padfield (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001)
The definitive biography of the man who presided over the Final Solution, written by a leading historian of World War II.
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Himmler's Crusade: The true story of the 1938 Nazi expedition into Tibet by Christopher Hale (Bantam, 2004)
An account of the Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1938 in search of clues to the master race, plus the research carried out on concentration camp victims during the war, based on the expedition's spurious findings.
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Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama (Fontana, 1996)
Contains some revealing sections on the Teutonic myths that played so large a part in Himmler's beliefs, and also refers to the Ahnenerbe.
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The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan cults and their influence on Nazi ideology by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Tauris Parke, 2003)
Traces the intellectual roots of Nazism to a number of influential occult and millenarian sects of the Hapsburg empire, which combined notions of popular nationalism and an advocacy of 'Aryan' racism and a proclaimed need for German world rule. As one reviewer put it, 'Sets the remarkable stupidity of Nazi occultism in a solid historical context'.
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The Order of the Death's Head: The story of Hitler's SS by Heinz Höhne (Penguin, 2000)
Account of Hitler's élite in which Höhne suggests that the Society for the Promotion and Preservation of German Cultural Monuments aligned itself with the anti-Christian and anti-Slav symbolism of the SS.
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The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 by Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis tried to restructure a 'class' society along racial lines. This book deals with the ideas and institutions that underpinned this mission and shows how Nazi policy affected various groups of people, both victims and beneficiaries. It includes a discussion of the role of the Ahnenerbe.
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The Rape of Europa: The fate of Europe's treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H Nicholas (Vintage, 1995).
Comprehensive and lucid account of the Nazi plunder of European cultural artefacts. Includes many references to the activities of the Ahnenerbe.
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The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft (Red Wheel/Weiser, 1983)
'The occult power behind the spear which pierced the side of Christ … and how Hitler inverted the force in a bid to conquer the world'. Originally published in 1973, the theories in this book were essentially demolished by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (see above).
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Nazi media
Leni Riefenstahl: A memoir (Picador, 1995)
Autobiography of the German photographer and film-maker whose work glorified the Aryan stereotype.
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Nazi Wireless Propaganda: Lord Haw-Haw and British public opinion in the Second World War by Martin Doherty (Edinburgh University Press, 2000)
Analyses the Nazis' radio effort against the United Kingdom during World War II.
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Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945 by David Welch (I B Tauris, 2001)
Comprehensive analysis of Nazi film propaganda in its political, social and economic contexts. Aims to reveal those aspects of Nazi ideology that were concealed in the framework of popular entertainment in over 100 films.
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Gypsies
And the Violins Stopped Playing: A story of the Gypsy Holocaust by Alexander Ramati (Franklin Watts, 1986)
Young adult novel based on the true story of teenager Roman Mirga's experiences in Auschwitz, working as a translator for Dr Mengele.
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Black Silence: The Lety survivors speak by Paul Polansky (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1998)
In 1994, the Czech government tried to convince American writer Paul Polansky that there were no living survivors of Lety, the World War II Romani (Gypsy) death camp in southern Bohemia, but Polansky found more than 100 Lety survivors living in the Czech Republic. These are their stories.
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Gypsies under the Swastika by Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon (University of Hertfordshire Press, 1995)
Commissioned by the Centre for Gypsy Research in Paris, this account of the fate suffered by Europe's Gypsies during the Holocaust was published on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps where a quarter of a million Gypsies died.
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Homosexuals
Aimée and Jaguar: A love story, Berlin, 1943 by Erica Fischer (Bloomsbury, 1995)
The moving account of an ecstatic love affair in wartime Berlin between Lilly Wust, a mother of four, and Jewish Felice Schragenheim.
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Bent by Martin Sherman (Amber Lane Press, 1979)
A story of tolerance, love and human dignity, this ground-breaking play features a group of gay men in Germany in the early 1930s who, after the 'Night of the Long Knives', are arrested and sent to Dachau.
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Hidden from History: Reclaiming the gay and lesbian past, edited by Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey (G P Putnam, 1996)
Contains the essay 'Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow Star: The destruction of sexology and the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany' by Edwin J Haeberle.
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The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan, translated by John Brownjohn (Basic Books, 2002)
Controversial book that claims evidence for Hitler's homosexuality.
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Hidden Holocaust: Gay and lesbian persecution in Germany 1933–45 by Günter Grau and Claudia Schoppmann, translated by Patrick Camiller (Continuum, 1995)
A history of the Nazis' attitude towards and treatment of homosexuals, which draws on documents from the East German State archives.
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Liberation Was for Others: Memoirs of a gay survivor of the Nazi Holocaust by Pierre Seel, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (Da Capo Press, 1997)
First-hand account of the Nazi round-up and persecution of homosexuals.
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The Men with the Pink Triangle: The true life-and-death story of homosexuals in the Nazi death camps by Heinz Heger, translated by D Fernbach (Alyson, 1994)
The author's personal account of persecution in Nazi Germany and surviving the gay holocaust.
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The Night of the Long Knives: June 29–30, 1934 by Max Gallo, translated by Lily Emmet (Da Capo Press, 1997)
Hour-by-hour account of the assassination of the leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as 'Stormtroopers' or 'Brown Shirts', and, in particular, its leader – the homosexual Ernst Röhm.
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The Pink Triangle: The Nazi war against homosexuals by Richard Plant (Holt, 1988)
Overview and historical perspective on the Nazi persecution of gay men.
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Victims and survivors
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, translated by Susan Massotty (Penguin, 1997)
The ultimate Holocaust memoir, by a young Jewish girl in Amsterdam, who died in a concentration camp shortly before liberation.
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Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto by Bernard Goldstein (AK Press, 2005)
An incredible story told by one of the leaders of the Bund (Jewish Socialist movement) and the resistance against Nazi occupation, which describes the terror of the Warsaw ghetto, the underground organisation and the heroic last stand against Nazi extermination.
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The Ghetto Fights: Warsaw, 1941–43 by Marek Edelman (Bookmarks, 1990)
An account of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto by a man who played a leading role in organising the resistance and survived.
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If This Is a Man/The Truce by Primo Levi, translated by Stuart Woolf (Abacus, 1991)
Originally published in 1947, Levi's moving account of life as a concentration camp prisoner is in two parts: 'If This Is a Man' describes his deportation to Poland and the 20 months he spent in Auschwitz, and 'The Truce' covers his journey home to Italy at the end of the war.
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The Informed Heart by Bruno Bettelheim (Penguin, 1991)
In 1938–9, the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim was imprisoned in the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. To keep alive and maintain his humanity, he began to analyse his own behaviour and that of everyone around him. This book is a record of that period.
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The Nazi Officer's Wife: How one Jewish woman survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn with Susan Dworkin (Abacus, 2001).
When Hitler absorbed Austria in 1938, Edith Hahn, a young law student, was sent to a forced labour camp. So began the extraordinary chain of events that led to her return to Vienna, her life as a 'hidden' Jew with an identity given to her by a German girlfriend and her marriage to a Nazi who knew she was Jewish and protected her.
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Night by Elie Wiesel (Penguin, 2006)
Born in a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child Elie Wiesel was sent to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald. Originally published in 1958, this is his account of that terrible time – of the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith.
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Return to Auschwitz by Kitty Hart-Moxon (House of Stratus, 2000)
At 15, Kitty and her mother were deported to Auschwitz. Amazingly she managed to survive the terror that she faced daily and was eventually freed by US troops in 1945, to become a recognised authority on Auschwitz. This is her personal testimony of her time there and of her subsequent return.
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Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally (Coronet, 1996)
This Booker Prize-winning historical novel – the basis of the film Schindler's List – tells the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, the Czech-born industrialist and Nazi Party member who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.
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Trials of perpetrators
Genocide on Trial: War crimes trials and the formation of Holocaust history and memory by Donald Bloxham (Oxford University Press, 2003).
According to Bloxham, the Nuremberg trials failed. Not only did the guilty often escape punishment but the Final Solution was largely written out of history in the post-war era.
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The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A personal memoir by Telford Taylor (Little, Brown, 1993)
The author was a member of the US prosecution staff during the International Military Tribunal against the main war criminals, then acted as chief prosecutor at 11 of the 12 subsequent trials.
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Eyewitnesses at Nuremberg by Hilary Gaskin (Weidenfeld Military, 1990)
The memories of guards, secretaries, translators, casual visitors and others for whom the Nuremberg trials were a personal experience rather than a newspaper report.
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Justice at Nuremberg by Robert E Conot (Carroll & Graf, 1984)
A comprehensive account of the public trial, the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings and the major personalities of the first trial.
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Nuremberg Diary by G M Gilbert (Da Capo Press, 1995)
Dr Gilbert was the psychologist assigned to evaluate and counsel the defendants at Nuremberg.
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The Nuremberg Trials by Ann Tusa and John Tusa (Cooper Square, 2003)
Drawing on a variety of sources to recreate the proceedings, this also offers a reasoned examination of the processes that created international law.
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The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial 1945-46: A documentary history by Michael R Marrus (Palgrave Macmillan, 1997)
Introduction to the complex 1946 war crimes trial. Documents include press accounts, testimony and cross-examination of defendants, the Treaty of Versailles and the final indictment by the American judge.
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Witnesses to Nuremberg: An oral history of American participants at the war crimes trials by Bruce M Stave and Michele Palmer with Leslie Frank (Twayne, 1998)
The oral testimonies of 11 men who contributed to the Nuremberg trials, including the courtroom architect, prison guards, translators, attorneys and journalists.
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Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese war crimes trials by Tim Maga (University of Kentucky Press, 2001)
In the years since the trials concluded, the proceedings have been coloured by charges of racism, vengeance and guilt. Maga reviews the context for the trials, recounts the proceedings and contends that good law was practised and evil did not go unpunished.
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The Tokyo Trial and Beyond by B V A Röling and Antonio Cassese (Polity Press, 1994)
An extended interview with one of the 11 international judges who took part in the Tokyo Trial: the Dutch jurist and professor of law B V A Röling. This is an insider's view of one of the most important trials in history and a reflection on the idea of individual responsibility for crimes of state, on the difference between Japanese and Western attitudes to guilt and crimes against humanity, and on the nature and limits of international law in controlling the use of force.
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Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil by Hannah Arendt (Penguin, 1994)
In 1960, leading Nazi Adolf Eichmann was tried in Israel for crimes against humanity. Hannah Arendt, covering the trial for the New Yorker magazine, coined the phrase 'the banality of evil' and argued controversially that Eichmann was an ordinary man drawn into an evil, totalitarian machine.
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Holocaust denial
Denying the Holocaust: The growing assault on truth and memory by Deborah Lipstadt (Penguin, 2004)
Originally published in 1993, this book was at the centre of the David Irving libel trial. It is a fully researched and passionately argued account of the evolution of Holocaust denial from being a set of cranky ideas on the lunatic fringe to their partial acceptance in respectable academic contexts. It charts the disturbing growth of repeated attacks on the historical facts of the Holocaust and of the threat to society's historical memory of Nazi atrocities.
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History on Trial: My day in court with David Irving by Deborah E Lipstadt (HarperPerennial, 2006)
The account of the successful defendant in the Holocaust denial libel trial.
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Restitution and compensation
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering by Norman G Finkelstein (Verso Books, 2003)
Argues that public emphasis on the Holocaust and on reparations serves more to enhance the status of Israel and Jewish élites in the diaspora than to honour the memory of its victims.
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Holocaust Justice: The battle for restitution in America's courts by Michael J Bazyler (New York University Press, 2003)
Describes both the human and the legal dramas involved in the struggle for restitution, bringing the often-forgotten voices of Holocaust survivors to the forefront.
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Imperfect Justice: Looted assets, slave labor, and the unfinished business of World War II by Stuart Eizenstat (Public Affairs, 2004)
How the Holocaust became a political and diplomatic battleground 50 years after the end of the war as such issues as dormant bank accounts, slave labour, confiscated property, looted art and unpaid insurance policies became front-page news in Europe and the US.
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The Last Deposit: Swiss banks and Holocaust victims' accounts by Itamar Levin (Greenwood Press, 1999)
An account of the 'Holocaust deposits' affair by the journalist who first broke the story in 1995. Relying on archival and contemporary sources, Levin describes the Jews' decades-long effort to return the assets of death camp victims to their rightful heirs.
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Less than Slaves: Jewish forced labor and the quest for compensation by Benjamin B Ferencz (Indiana University Press, 2002)
As a US war crimes investigator during World War II, Ferencz participated in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. This narrative is concerned with the moral, legal and practical implications of the outburst of claims for compensation from victims of persecution throughout the world.
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The Plunder of Jewish Property during the Holocaust: Confronting European history, edited by Avi Beker (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
The campaign for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust touched a raw nerve within European society and created a need to re-evaluate conventional historical truths. This book reviews how the issue was dealt with in different countries and how national myths must be re-examined.
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The Victim's Fortune: Inside the epic battle over the debts of the Holocaust by John Authers and Richard Wolffe (HarperCollins, 2003)
Two reporters from the Financial Times go behind the scenes to detail both the nobility and the corruption in the fight for compensation of Holocaust survivors.
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German Reparations and the Jewish World: A history of the Claims Conference by Ronald W Zweig (Frank Cass, 2nd ed. 2001)
The debate within the Jewish world about whether it was possible to reach a material settlement with Germany. Concentrating on how the money has been spent in rebuilding Jewish life, Zweig also analyses how the reparations payments transformed the relations between Israel and the diaspora, and between different Jewish political and ideological groups.
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Other controversies
The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 by David S Wyman (New Press, 1998)
Contending that a substantial commitment by the US to rescue Jewish people could have saved hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims, this book responds to controversies surrounding the role of the Swiss, French, Americans and others during that period.
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America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism by Gulie Ne'eman Arad (Indiana University Press, 2001)
Investigates what American Jews did – and did not do – to help the threatened Jewish communities of Europe as the Nazi grip tightened in the 1930s.
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Auschwitz and the Allies by Martin Gilbert (Pimlico, 2001)
When Hitler announced that the result of the war in Europe would be the complete annihilation of the Jews, he did so in public. The Allies heard but did nothing. In 1944, Allied reconnaissance pilots repeatedly photographed Auschwitz: the pictures were filed away. The testimonies of escapees were also ignored. Why?
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Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (Abacus, 1997)
This controversial book argues that thousands of ordinary Germans participated in the extermination of European Jews.
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The Holocaust and Collective Memory by Peter Novick (Bloomsbury, 2001)
An analysis of how and why the Holocaust has become such a focus of interest now. Novick argues that portraying the Holocaust as a uniquely Jewish catastrophe has the effect of downgrading other genocides, and that seeing Jewish identity through the prism of victimhood is to collude with anti-Semitism.
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Justice Delayed: How Britain became a refuge for Nazi war criminals by David Cesarani (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001)
Exposes the use made of former members of the Waffen-SS and Nazi police units by British intelligence, and the post-war cover-up.
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The Myth of Rescue: Why the democracies could not have saved more Jews from the Nazis by William D Rubinstein (Routledge, 1999)
According to Rubinstein, few Jews who perished in the Holocaust could have been saved by any action of the Allies. He also considers the question of bombing Auschwitz.
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Miscellaneous
The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust by Tom Segev (Owl Books, 2000)
Beginning with the Zionist response to the rise of the Nazis and the arrival of the first German refugees, this book documents the response of the Jewish community in Palestine to the destruction of the European Jews and that community's encounters with the survivors.
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The Texture of Memory: Holocaust memorials and meaning by James E Young (Yale University Press, 1994)
Explores both the idea of the monument and its role in public memory, discussing how memorials reflect the ever-evolving meanings of the Holocaust in Europe, Israel and the US.
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The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust and German national identity by Charles S Maier (Harvard University Press, 1998)
Study of the debate in West Germany over the significance of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime.
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