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The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942
Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
In 1939, the Nazi regime’s plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period—of how, precisely, the Nazis’ racial policies evolved from persecution and “ethnic cleansing” to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.
Focusing on the months between the German conquest of Poland in September 1939–which brought nearly two million additional Jews under Nazi control—and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death camps in the spring of 1942, Christopher R. Browning describes how Poland became a laboratory for experiments in racial policies, from expulsion and decimation to ghettoization and exploitation under local occupation authorities. He reveals how the subsequent attack on the Soviet Union opened the door for an immense radicalization of Nazi Jewish policy—and marked the beginning of the Final Solution. Meticulously documenting the process that led to this fatal development, Browning shows that Adolf Hitler was the key decision-maker throughout, approving major escalations in Nazi persecution of the Jews at victory-induced moments of euphoria. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this groundbreaking work provides an essential chapter in the history of the Holocaust.
In 1939, the Nazi regime’s plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period—of how, precisely, the Nazis’ racial policies evolved from persecution and “ethnic cleansing” to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.
Focusing on the months between the German conquest of Poland in September 1939–which brought nearly two million additional Jews under Nazi control—and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death camps in the spring of 1942, Christopher R. Browning describes how Poland became a laboratory for experiments in racial policies, from expulsion and decimation to ghettoization and exploitation under local occupation authorities. He reveals how the subsequent attack on the Soviet Union opened the door for an immense radicalization of Nazi Jewish policy—and marked the beginning of the Final Solution. Meticulously documenting the process that led to this fatal development, Browning shows that Adolf Hitler was the key decision-maker throughout, approving major escalations in Nazi persecution of the Jews at victory-induced moments of euphoria. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this groundbreaking work provides an essential chapter in the history of the Holocaust.
616 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
54 people are currently reading
1466 people want to read
About the author
Christopher R. Browning
34 books157 followersChristopher Robert Browning recently retired as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books on Nazism and the Holocaust, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
October 25, 2010
This is every bit as harrowing as you might expect – perhaps even more so, because it details the unfolding of extermination through the accumulation of painstaking detail. Much of the material on which it is based has been uncovered (or studied) only in recent decades.
It shows that the policy of eradication, whether explicit or not, had been accepted by much of the army and the police of Nazi-occupied territories – not simply by "extremist elements." The blood-lust involved, absurdly tied to Nazi bureaucratic documentation, was unlike anything in modern history (except perhaps in Rwanda). It's nearest historical precedent would probably be the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan, which made no pretense of philosophical argument.
It shows that the policy of eradication, whether explicit or not, had been accepted by much of the army and the police of Nazi-occupied territories – not simply by "extremist elements." The blood-lust involved, absurdly tied to Nazi bureaucratic documentation, was unlike anything in modern history (except perhaps in Rwanda). It's nearest historical precedent would probably be the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan, which made no pretense of philosophical argument.
November 22, 2023
Hilary Earl
Department of History
Nipissing University (formerly Northeastern University, North Bay, Ontario Canada)
H-German
April, 2005
When I was asked to review Christopher Browning's new book I was not in the least hesitant; in fact, I was rather excited. Anyone familiar with Browning's work knows his books are a pleasure to read. Not only is he one of the foremost experts on the Nazi "Final Solution" to the Jewish question, but in transmitting his arguments, he is always eloquent and articulate, and judicious in his use of language. Browning is such a good writer that I frequently hold him up as an example for my students to emulate and more than one undergraduate has conveyed to me the power of his prose. Now, imagine my surprise when a 640-page book arrived in my mailbox. I thought it must be a mistake. Browning's books are never more than 200 pages and frequently they are less. After reading The Origins of the Final Solution I now understand why the book is so lengthy. It was commissioned by Yad Vashem as part of a comprehensive multi-volume project on the history of the Holocaust. Who better to ask to write the volume on the origins of the Final Solution than Christopher Browning, a historian who has spent most of his career attempting to answer this question.
That the book represents the culmination of a lifetime of research and writing is not the only reason it is so lengthy. Browning asked Jürgen Matthäus to contribute his expertise on this subject, and as a result the volume includes two chapters on the role of Operation Barbarossa and the Einsatzgruppen (the mobile intelligence and killing units) in the origins of the Final Solution.[2]
The fact that the timeframe of the analysis is less than three years, September 1939 until March 1942, also indicates just how advanced our knowledge is on the subject. Indeed, this volume is so comprehensive that it presents the reader with a near blow-by-blow account of the unfolding of events that led to the decision to murder all of Europe¹s Jews in late 1941.
Browning is neither a functionalist nor an intentionalist. His position is somewhere in between, what he calls a "moderate functionalist"; that is, someone who views the origins of the Final Solution as a process in which the decision to murder all of Europe¹s Jews was the result of the cumulative radicalization of policy and not Hitler's life-long intention.
Little by little as the Nazis tried and failed to solve the Jewish question, solutions became increasingly more radical until finally, the decision to murder them all was made. Even though Browning believes there was no blueprint, he does not eschew the important role of Hitler or other high-ranking Nazis in the decision-making process.
Rather, the comprehensive nature of the project requires that he examine every possible facet of this complex question. Explaining when, where, and by whom the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews was made means he cannot ignore the role of the individual in the decision-making process anymore than he can ignore the role of the war in radicalizing policy. Page by page and chapter by chapter the author builds a strong and convincing case: The Final Solution was more than the decision of one man, it was the outcome of the repeated failure of the Nazis to solve their population and racial problems through resettlement and expulsion, in the context of a war of destruction in the east and within a polycratic system that allowed for some individual initiative, but which also included the complicity and active involvement of all major state organizations, including the German bureaucracy and the army. This is not a simple argument. In fact, it takes ten chapters to elaborate fully.
The book begins with an introductory chapter immediately dispensing with the idea that the Holocaust was the logical and/or inevitable outcome of centuries of Christian anti-Judaism. Undoubtedly this beginning is in part a response to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's criticisms of Browning's methodology, but it is also an attempt by the author to situate his subject in a broader historical framework. While the chapter in no way exhausts the issue of the role of Christian anti-Judaism in the origins of the Final Solution, it is important in that it is here that Browning lays the foundation for the rest of the book: the Final Solution was not the outcome of years of Christian anti-Judaism or even generations of racial antisemitism, but rather it was the result of Germany's particular historical experiences, and was inconceivable without World War II, which was a necessary precondition for its evolution.
The remainder of the book contends with various components of the question of origins. For example, Browning illustrates quite convincingly that in 1939, Poland was a testing ground for Nazi "racial imperialism," a time when Nazi anti-Jewish policy was indistinct from its overall policy against Poles and other racial "inferiors."
During the Polish campaign, then, the Nazis attempted to solve their so-called population problems through resettlement; that is, moving undesirable elements of the population to areas far away from Germany. Massive population transfers proved to be impossible however. Resettlement was a failure; instead, many Poles were uprooted and entire segments of the Polish population were murdered.
What is significant about this early period, argues Browning, is that it was the failure to solve the population problems through resettlement that brought the Nazis one step closer to genocide.
In Poland the Nazis learned an important lesson: it was easier to murder undesirable peoples than to find them new homes. This would become significant later in the war, most especially in 1941 during their war of destruction in Soviet Russia.
Browning also illustrates the relationship between the policies of expulsion and ghettoization, and genocide. After the failure of resettlement, the Nazis thought they might solve the Jewish problem through mass expulsion. The Nisko and Madagascar plans, intended to permanently rid Europe of its Jews, failed to solve their racial problems however.
Again, Browning argues that failure was an important step toward genocide. Why? Because it radicalized policy and brought the army into the killing process. If expulsion was a practical failure, what then was the relationship of the policy of ghettoization to the origins of the Final Solution?
For Browning, the debate about what to do with the Jews of the ghetto highlights the fact that not only was there no uniform ghetto policy, but at this time the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews had not yet been made. In effect, ghettoization was not an end in itself, but rather a temporary solution to a larger problem during wartime.
According to Browning's view the Jewish problem would be solved, but not until after the war was over; until then the Jews would be concentrated in ghettos and put to work. Ghettoization, then, was intended as a temporary measure, not as a permanent feature of Nazi population policy. And, like with the policy of expulsion, it was important in that it illustrates just how improvised racial policy was at this time in 1940-1941. It was not until the Germans invaded the Soviet Union that Nazi anti-Jewish policy was transformed into genocide.
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, marks a watershed in the origins of the Final Solution. It was during this campaign that the destructive impulse took shape, and for the first time the systematic murder of Jewish men, women, and children was practiced by members of the elite Einsatzgruppen with the help of the German army. Once women and children were murdered, a Rubicon was crossed.
By mid-August 1941 murder permeated everything, the Einsatzgruppen were killing Soviet Jews en masse, and the Final Solution in Russia was well under way (pp. 320-321).
In the next year and a half approximately one million Soviet Jews were murdered. In this way Operation Barbarossa and the mass murder carried out by the Einsatzgruppen was the bridge between localized mass murder and the European-wide genocide that was to follow in the spring of 1942.
If the war in the east marked the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Soviet Jews, when did the Nazis decide to murder all of Europe¹s Jews? The turning point, according to Browning, was October 18, 1941, in the anticipation of military victory in the east.
Prior to this point, many attempts were made to solve the Jewish question through resettlement and expulsion. After October 18, 1941 however, there was only one solution: death (p. 318). While it took several months before the Final Solution could be implemented, the fact that the Nazis conceived of such a murderous policy is an unfortunate testament to the incredible "problem-solving abilities" of the perpetrators (p. 316).
As Browning concludes, it only took a little more than two years (from the outset of war in September 1939 to October 1941) for the Nazis to determine that systematic mass murder was a viable and desirable option.
What followed the mass murder of Russian Jews was the implementation of the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews, beginning with the gassing of Jews in the Polish town of Chelmno in December 1941. The following spring Jews from across Europe would meet the same fate in stationary gas chambers erected throughout Poland.
Who made the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews? When was the decision made? Why and how was it made? The Origins of the Final Solution is an answer to these questions and for this reason is an extremely important book. It marks the first time since Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews that any historian has written a comprehensive history of the subject. For this reason it is difficult to critique. I suspect my criticism of the book is the same as anyone else who reads it: length.
While its comprehensive nature is its strength, it is, to some extent, also its short-coming. The length of the book may deter some readers, and in all likelihood the novice will find the sheer amount of information daunting. However, just as Hilberg's lengthy Destruction showed that the murder of the Jews required the efforts of all elements of German society, what he called "the machinery of destruction", Browning's Origins illustrates the complexities of the decision-making process.
This is an important book and to date marks the only comprehensive analysis of the origins of the Final Solution. For this reason it should be read by anyone serious about this subject. Scholars and graduate students alike will find it illuminating, and while I would not recommend assigning it to undergraduates, certainly selected chapters would prove useful in the classroom.
I am glad that I read this book, I now have one of the most important reference works at my disposal, and next time I look for information to write a lecture on the link between Nazi population policy in Poland and the origins of the Final Solution, I will know where to turn.
Department of History
Nipissing University (formerly Northeastern University, North Bay, Ontario Canada)
H-German
April, 2005
When I was asked to review Christopher Browning's new book I was not in the least hesitant; in fact, I was rather excited. Anyone familiar with Browning's work knows his books are a pleasure to read. Not only is he one of the foremost experts on the Nazi "Final Solution" to the Jewish question, but in transmitting his arguments, he is always eloquent and articulate, and judicious in his use of language. Browning is such a good writer that I frequently hold him up as an example for my students to emulate and more than one undergraduate has conveyed to me the power of his prose. Now, imagine my surprise when a 640-page book arrived in my mailbox. I thought it must be a mistake. Browning's books are never more than 200 pages and frequently they are less. After reading The Origins of the Final Solution I now understand why the book is so lengthy. It was commissioned by Yad Vashem as part of a comprehensive multi-volume project on the history of the Holocaust. Who better to ask to write the volume on the origins of the Final Solution than Christopher Browning, a historian who has spent most of his career attempting to answer this question.
That the book represents the culmination of a lifetime of research and writing is not the only reason it is so lengthy. Browning asked Jürgen Matthäus to contribute his expertise on this subject, and as a result the volume includes two chapters on the role of Operation Barbarossa and the Einsatzgruppen (the mobile intelligence and killing units) in the origins of the Final Solution.[2]
The fact that the timeframe of the analysis is less than three years, September 1939 until March 1942, also indicates just how advanced our knowledge is on the subject. Indeed, this volume is so comprehensive that it presents the reader with a near blow-by-blow account of the unfolding of events that led to the decision to murder all of Europe¹s Jews in late 1941.
Browning is neither a functionalist nor an intentionalist. His position is somewhere in between, what he calls a "moderate functionalist"; that is, someone who views the origins of the Final Solution as a process in which the decision to murder all of Europe¹s Jews was the result of the cumulative radicalization of policy and not Hitler's life-long intention.
Little by little as the Nazis tried and failed to solve the Jewish question, solutions became increasingly more radical until finally, the decision to murder them all was made. Even though Browning believes there was no blueprint, he does not eschew the important role of Hitler or other high-ranking Nazis in the decision-making process.
Rather, the comprehensive nature of the project requires that he examine every possible facet of this complex question. Explaining when, where, and by whom the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews was made means he cannot ignore the role of the individual in the decision-making process anymore than he can ignore the role of the war in radicalizing policy. Page by page and chapter by chapter the author builds a strong and convincing case: The Final Solution was more than the decision of one man, it was the outcome of the repeated failure of the Nazis to solve their population and racial problems through resettlement and expulsion, in the context of a war of destruction in the east and within a polycratic system that allowed for some individual initiative, but which also included the complicity and active involvement of all major state organizations, including the German bureaucracy and the army. This is not a simple argument. In fact, it takes ten chapters to elaborate fully.
The book begins with an introductory chapter immediately dispensing with the idea that the Holocaust was the logical and/or inevitable outcome of centuries of Christian anti-Judaism. Undoubtedly this beginning is in part a response to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's criticisms of Browning's methodology, but it is also an attempt by the author to situate his subject in a broader historical framework. While the chapter in no way exhausts the issue of the role of Christian anti-Judaism in the origins of the Final Solution, it is important in that it is here that Browning lays the foundation for the rest of the book: the Final Solution was not the outcome of years of Christian anti-Judaism or even generations of racial antisemitism, but rather it was the result of Germany's particular historical experiences, and was inconceivable without World War II, which was a necessary precondition for its evolution.
The remainder of the book contends with various components of the question of origins. For example, Browning illustrates quite convincingly that in 1939, Poland was a testing ground for Nazi "racial imperialism," a time when Nazi anti-Jewish policy was indistinct from its overall policy against Poles and other racial "inferiors."
During the Polish campaign, then, the Nazis attempted to solve their so-called population problems through resettlement; that is, moving undesirable elements of the population to areas far away from Germany. Massive population transfers proved to be impossible however. Resettlement was a failure; instead, many Poles were uprooted and entire segments of the Polish population were murdered.
What is significant about this early period, argues Browning, is that it was the failure to solve the population problems through resettlement that brought the Nazis one step closer to genocide.
In Poland the Nazis learned an important lesson: it was easier to murder undesirable peoples than to find them new homes. This would become significant later in the war, most especially in 1941 during their war of destruction in Soviet Russia.
Browning also illustrates the relationship between the policies of expulsion and ghettoization, and genocide. After the failure of resettlement, the Nazis thought they might solve the Jewish problem through mass expulsion. The Nisko and Madagascar plans, intended to permanently rid Europe of its Jews, failed to solve their racial problems however.
Again, Browning argues that failure was an important step toward genocide. Why? Because it radicalized policy and brought the army into the killing process. If expulsion was a practical failure, what then was the relationship of the policy of ghettoization to the origins of the Final Solution?
For Browning, the debate about what to do with the Jews of the ghetto highlights the fact that not only was there no uniform ghetto policy, but at this time the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews had not yet been made. In effect, ghettoization was not an end in itself, but rather a temporary solution to a larger problem during wartime.
According to Browning's view the Jewish problem would be solved, but not until after the war was over; until then the Jews would be concentrated in ghettos and put to work. Ghettoization, then, was intended as a temporary measure, not as a permanent feature of Nazi population policy. And, like with the policy of expulsion, it was important in that it illustrates just how improvised racial policy was at this time in 1940-1941. It was not until the Germans invaded the Soviet Union that Nazi anti-Jewish policy was transformed into genocide.
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, marks a watershed in the origins of the Final Solution. It was during this campaign that the destructive impulse took shape, and for the first time the systematic murder of Jewish men, women, and children was practiced by members of the elite Einsatzgruppen with the help of the German army. Once women and children were murdered, a Rubicon was crossed.
By mid-August 1941 murder permeated everything, the Einsatzgruppen were killing Soviet Jews en masse, and the Final Solution in Russia was well under way (pp. 320-321).
In the next year and a half approximately one million Soviet Jews were murdered. In this way Operation Barbarossa and the mass murder carried out by the Einsatzgruppen was the bridge between localized mass murder and the European-wide genocide that was to follow in the spring of 1942.
If the war in the east marked the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Soviet Jews, when did the Nazis decide to murder all of Europe¹s Jews? The turning point, according to Browning, was October 18, 1941, in the anticipation of military victory in the east.
Prior to this point, many attempts were made to solve the Jewish question through resettlement and expulsion. After October 18, 1941 however, there was only one solution: death (p. 318). While it took several months before the Final Solution could be implemented, the fact that the Nazis conceived of such a murderous policy is an unfortunate testament to the incredible "problem-solving abilities" of the perpetrators (p. 316).
As Browning concludes, it only took a little more than two years (from the outset of war in September 1939 to October 1941) for the Nazis to determine that systematic mass murder was a viable and desirable option.
What followed the mass murder of Russian Jews was the implementation of the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews, beginning with the gassing of Jews in the Polish town of Chelmno in December 1941. The following spring Jews from across Europe would meet the same fate in stationary gas chambers erected throughout Poland.
Who made the decision to murder all of Europe's Jews? When was the decision made? Why and how was it made? The Origins of the Final Solution is an answer to these questions and for this reason is an extremely important book. It marks the first time since Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews that any historian has written a comprehensive history of the subject. For this reason it is difficult to critique. I suspect my criticism of the book is the same as anyone else who reads it: length.
While its comprehensive nature is its strength, it is, to some extent, also its short-coming. The length of the book may deter some readers, and in all likelihood the novice will find the sheer amount of information daunting. However, just as Hilberg's lengthy Destruction showed that the murder of the Jews required the efforts of all elements of German society, what he called "the machinery of destruction", Browning's Origins illustrates the complexities of the decision-making process.
This is an important book and to date marks the only comprehensive analysis of the origins of the Final Solution. For this reason it should be read by anyone serious about this subject. Scholars and graduate students alike will find it illuminating, and while I would not recommend assigning it to undergraduates, certainly selected chapters would prove useful in the classroom.
I am glad that I read this book, I now have one of the most important reference works at my disposal, and next time I look for information to write a lecture on the link between Nazi population policy in Poland and the origins of the Final Solution, I will know where to turn.
March 29, 2018
There’s lots to say about a book of this importance and its contribution to deepening our understanding of the Holocaust and the fateful steps taken by the Nazi regime, and those authorities acting under its auspices, to exterminate European Jewry.
Browning is able to illuminate the mechanics of the sprawling Nazi bureaucracy and traces the lineage of the final solution from its embryonic stages to its culmination and endpoint in the gas chambers of the numerous death camps littered throughout Poland and Eastern Europe.
His grasp and mastery of the historical record, the painstaking efforts to weave together the numerous memos, diary entries, meetings, concentration camp sites, transportation records, personal recollections and orders of the senior branch of the Nazi regime operating in the Reich, General Government and Eastern territories shows a historian at the very height of their analytical and writing powers.
The main thesis of this book is that there was no single order or executive decision that initiated the wide scale, industrial slaughter of European Jews. Browning argues that the evolution of Nazi racial policy possessed within its theoretical framework the possibility of genocide, but by no means was there an inevitability about this before the onset of the Second World War. Instead, as foreign policy -the quest for lebensraum or living space in the East - entwined with racial policy - the dream of a Germany free of Jews through expulsion was clouded by the ever growing number of Jews that were being absorbed as Germany’s territories expanded - hastened the decisions and radicalised the thinking on how to deal with the “Jewish question”. As Browning asserts, “the combination of Hitler’s anti-Semitism as ideological imperative and the competitive polycracy of the Nazi regime created immense pressures for the escalation of Nazi Jewish policy”. Ultimately, it was the fate of the Soviet Jewry, considered to be lacking the refinement of German Jews and carriers of “Bolshevist” ideology, which sealed the fate of European Jews. It was the mass killings of Soviet Jews which legitimated the mass killings of Jews living within the Third Reich.
If the Jewish policy invoked a Darwinian struggle between superior and inferior races, Browning extends this idea further and argues that Hitler delegated the intricacies of the final solution to the “institutional Darwinism” of the regime’s bureaucratic apparatus, and the willingness of Nazi officials and civil servants to unravel Hitler’s ideology to its gruesome endpoint in the hope that they could court additional favour with the centre of power. This is supported by the competing arguments, the jostles over bureaucratic responsibility, the clashes of egos and opinions of the so-called experts on the Jewish question, which give considerable weight to this argument.
This is a vital contribution to this field and I would strongly recommend this to anybody with an interest in the Nazi regime or the Holocaust.
Browning is able to illuminate the mechanics of the sprawling Nazi bureaucracy and traces the lineage of the final solution from its embryonic stages to its culmination and endpoint in the gas chambers of the numerous death camps littered throughout Poland and Eastern Europe.
His grasp and mastery of the historical record, the painstaking efforts to weave together the numerous memos, diary entries, meetings, concentration camp sites, transportation records, personal recollections and orders of the senior branch of the Nazi regime operating in the Reich, General Government and Eastern territories shows a historian at the very height of their analytical and writing powers.
The main thesis of this book is that there was no single order or executive decision that initiated the wide scale, industrial slaughter of European Jews. Browning argues that the evolution of Nazi racial policy possessed within its theoretical framework the possibility of genocide, but by no means was there an inevitability about this before the onset of the Second World War. Instead, as foreign policy -the quest for lebensraum or living space in the East - entwined with racial policy - the dream of a Germany free of Jews through expulsion was clouded by the ever growing number of Jews that were being absorbed as Germany’s territories expanded - hastened the decisions and radicalised the thinking on how to deal with the “Jewish question”. As Browning asserts, “the combination of Hitler’s anti-Semitism as ideological imperative and the competitive polycracy of the Nazi regime created immense pressures for the escalation of Nazi Jewish policy”. Ultimately, it was the fate of the Soviet Jewry, considered to be lacking the refinement of German Jews and carriers of “Bolshevist” ideology, which sealed the fate of European Jews. It was the mass killings of Soviet Jews which legitimated the mass killings of Jews living within the Third Reich.
If the Jewish policy invoked a Darwinian struggle between superior and inferior races, Browning extends this idea further and argues that Hitler delegated the intricacies of the final solution to the “institutional Darwinism” of the regime’s bureaucratic apparatus, and the willingness of Nazi officials and civil servants to unravel Hitler’s ideology to its gruesome endpoint in the hope that they could court additional favour with the centre of power. This is supported by the competing arguments, the jostles over bureaucratic responsibility, the clashes of egos and opinions of the so-called experts on the Jewish question, which give considerable weight to this argument.
This is a vital contribution to this field and I would strongly recommend this to anybody with an interest in the Nazi regime or the Holocaust.
January 22, 2013
As much as I love reading about Hitler, I usually avoid books about the holocaust. Its just too sad. This book, however, is remarkably well done. It stays very factual and dry, but the writing is compassionate and engaging. This is a great one for history nerds.
January 9, 2023
Extremely detailed, strongly argued and strongly disturbing, Browning’s account of the origins of the final solution remains one of the most important explications of the “moderate functionalist” consensus that emerged out of the 70’s and 80’s historiographical debate over the origins of the Shoah and the nature of the Nazi regime. This is not light reading - full comprehension of the book requires a detailed working knowledge of the Nazi bureaucracy (which I do not have) and I found myself often overwhelmed with names of actors, political agencies, and chains of command. Nevertheless, this book is at least accessible provided you have a basic understanding of the final solution. Browning and co-writer Matthaus’s style can be dry, but contained enough rhetorical flourishes and engaging questions and answers to keep me interested. My one complaint would be that Matthaus and Browning seem to diverge on the role of peripheral actors in the acceleration and radicalization of mass executions in the occupied Soviet Union leaving Chapter 7 (written by Matthaus) and 8 (written by Browning) with conflicting interpretations for the reader to decide between (for example, the role of Himmler in the escalation of Karl Jaeger’s killings in Lithuania to include women and children). Overall a must read on not just the final solution, but the polycratic and chaotic nature of the Nazi regime in which bureaucrats of different stripes worked towards the Furher.
September 11, 2021
Iperdocumentato e articolato saggio incentrato sugli anni e il percorso che hanno condotto alla Soluzione Finale della "questione ebraica". Seppur nel contesto di una precoce ed evidente volonta' di sterminio, si dimostra che il genocidio di milioni di ebrei (e di slavi e di zingari per tacere degli altri) si sia insinuato, a seguito di tutta una serie di tentativi e ripensamenti, nella gerarchia nazista che in un primo momento aveva ipotizzato una biblica (e comunque mortifera) deportazione dall'Europa. Interessante sottolineare le dinamiche decisionali della catena di comando tedesca (nazisti, militari, civili): se e' evidente e prevedibile che gli input genocidi (piu' o meno allusivi) venissero dall'alto, e' invece piu' sorprendente constatare la criminale proattivita' dei quadri piu' periferici di ogni ordine e struttura militare/civile come in gara per "meglio figurare" in questa corsa al massacro, che spesso precedono e a volte determinano le decisioni del vertice.
June 4, 2013
Very well done. it is a very scary book. The infighting and the despotism in a name of careerism is still very much alive in many democratic governments, overlooking the main ethical issue as to whether action should be done in the first place. Government employees often act because they want to be seen as doing something,The infighting is often veiled under the cloak of greater good when in fact it is about advancing one's career. It has happened to the extreme in this time and place covered by Browning, but it still resonate today. Sad but true.
December 13, 2015
This monograph presents a comprehensive overview of the various strands of atrocity that, driven by an impetus of Nazi ideology, combined to form the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" - the systematic gassing, cremation and burial of European Jews. Presenting the difficulties and historiographical gaps in detail, Browning nevertheless forms a comprehensive narrative that describes the role of Hitler, the Nazi elite, and various agencies in this great crime against humanity.
August 5, 2013
Well written, and well researched, this is an excellent book to read if you already have some knowledge of the Final Solution. To read this as an introduction without any other previous knowledge would be I think very hard going.
It's a very dark book, very to-the-point, but a must read. Fasten your seatbelt, and be very sure you want to open this book.
It's a very dark book, very to-the-point, but a must read. Fasten your seatbelt, and be very sure you want to open this book.
March 25, 2010
The most detailed comprehensive history of the Holocaust I have ever read.
November 13, 2012
To be read with Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews.
January 16, 2024
I don't know why I have read this ?
May 16, 2022
Excellent study of the evolution of the "Final Solution."
This book exhaustively explains and explores the Nazi idea of a "final solution" to the "Jewish problem" and shows as definitively as the historical evidence makes possible how and why the Nazis reached the ultimate Final Solution, i.e., the decision to murder every Jew they could lay their hands on. To derive the most benefit from the book the reader should have a general overall understanding of the chronology of the Holocaust and what specifically occurred from 1933 to 1945.
This book exhaustively explains and explores the Nazi idea of a "final solution" to the "Jewish problem" and shows as definitively as the historical evidence makes possible how and why the Nazis reached the ultimate Final Solution, i.e., the decision to murder every Jew they could lay their hands on. To derive the most benefit from the book the reader should have a general overall understanding of the chronology of the Holocaust and what specifically occurred from 1933 to 1945.
June 22, 2023
One of the key texts in understanding the minutiae as to how this terrible event occured. Browning's book concentrates on the period from the annexation of Poland to the failure to reach Moscow in the first phase of OPeration Barbarossa. Had he done so, the living room might have been achieved, but had he done so I think that confidence may have lead to equally terrible losses but at a slower rate.
December 19, 2017
This is a fascinating description of the events and personalities leading to the Nazi decision to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe. It is so filled with dates and places and numbers of victims that no one could possible keep track of them. Anyone with an interest in the Holocaust should read this book.
June 20, 2025
A very deep dive into how Nazi policy evolved over several years, culminating in the horrific "Final Solution." Browning is a preeminent expert on the Nazi regime and his book is extremely well-researched and includes extensive annotation.
April 18, 2021
What a distressing read.....horror after horror.......
July 12, 2022
Browning’s work is so comprehensive. It outlines the winding road to the Holocaust, challenging many commonly held assumptions about the Nazi Regime’s Final Solution Policy.
February 15, 2023
Zeigt eindrucksvoll den kurvenreichen und keinesfalls „geraden“ Weg zur Entstehung der „Endlösung“.
July 11, 2025
Very convincing! Provides a persuasive middle-ground between the intentionalists overly simplistic conjecture and functionalists complete neglect of Hitler’s role in configuring the FS
April 29, 2015
A thoroughly analytical examination of the evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy. Basic premise is that Hitler's ideology and increasing military euphoria advanced anti-Jewish measures to the Final Solution, especially when the 'vernichtungskrieg' in the East brought Germans in contact with Asiatic Bolshevik Ostjuden. A valuable academic source, but a difficult read due to the sheer volume of names/dates/places/numbers that overlap in many chapters.
May 24, 2016
a detailed break down of how the final solution in the sense we understand this concept came to be. charting how the initial plans for massive population movements and 'natural' decimation of the population gave way to the far more comprehensive and devastating plans to exterminate peoples. The book does a great deal to show the haphazard and incidental nature of this journey and details the involvements of many of the key figures showing how involved in the process each was
May 17, 2014
The definitive work on the "origins of the Final Solution". Christopher Browning meticulously details the attitudes, ideas, and events that allowed the Nazis to establish the cruelest form of genocide in world history.
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September 23, 2010"The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942 (Comprehensive History of the Holocaust) by Christopher R. Browning (2007)"
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