Nazi Anti-Semitism

From Prejudice to the Holocaust

Philippe Burrin

Translated by Janet Lloyd

hardcover

$21.95 / £12.99

One of the continuing puzzles of twentieth-century history is how Germany moved from a kind of anti-Semitism that was despicable, but did not seem exceedingly dangerous, to the Final Solution. This question has been much debated in recent years, and historians have arrived at very different answers.

In Nazi Anti-Semitism, Philippe Burrin, one of the leading historians of Nazi Germany, offers a new understanding of the evolution of Nazi thought and policy. Disagreeing with those such as Daniel Goldhagen (author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners) who would condemn the German population as a whole for being inherently anti-Jewish, Burrin presents a more nuanced picture and shows how Nazi policy evolved gradually. How the Germans proceeded from seemingly unthinkable premises to the actual horror of the Holocaust is the story that he tells in this essential book.

Burrin’s France Under the Germans, published by The New Press in 1997, received widespread praise and has become a seminal work. Already published to great acclaim in France, Nazi Anti-Semitism opens new perspectives in a vital historical debate with continuing relevance.

Philippe Burrin is a professor of international history in the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. His previous books include France Under the Germans and Hitler and the Jews. He lives in Geneva, Switzerland.