The Path to Genocide
Essays on Launching the Final Solution

An authoritative and compelling account of the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy between 1939 and 1942.

Christopher R. Browning (Author)

9780521558785, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 June 1995

208 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.2 cm, 0.277 kg

'The clarity as well as economy with which he writes, his firm grasp of the evidence and the balanced judgement he brings to its interpretation make this a most impressive performance … He uses his flair for uncovering new archive material to throw light on the attitudes and roles of a variety of people who became involved in carrying out the Final Solution.' The Times Literary Supplement

The Nazi Holocaust haunts the modern imagination as one of the most compelling examples of the human capacity for organised atrocity on a mass scale. This authoritative account of the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy from 1939 to 1942 seeks to answer some of the fundamental questions about what actually happened, and why, between the outbreak of war and the emergence of the Final Solution. Christopher Browning assesses the historians' interpretations and offers his own insights, based on detailed case studies uncovering important and telling new evidence.

Part I. The Prelude to Genocide: 1. Nazi resettlement policy and the search for a solution to the Jewish question, 1939–1941
2. Nazi ghettoization policy in Poland, 1939–41
Part II. Conflicting Explanations: 3. German technocrats, Jewish labor, and the Final Solution: a reply to Götz Aly and Susanne Heim
4. The holocaust as by-product? A critique of Arno Mayer
5. 'Intentionalism' and 'Functionalism': the decision for the Final Solution reconsidered
Part III. The Perpetrators: Accommodation, Anticipation and Conformity: 6. Bureaucracy and mass murder: the German administrator's comprehension of the Final Solution
7. Genocide and public health: German doctors and Polish Jews, 1939–1941
8. One day in Józefów: initiation to mass murder.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], European history [HBJD]