Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933–1945: Abridged Edition

Nazi Germany and the Jews #2

by Saul Friedländer

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an abridged edition of Saul Friedländer's definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume history of the Holocaust: Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.

The book's first part, dealing with the National Socialist campaign of oppression, restores the voices of Jews who were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality following the Nazi accession to power. Friedländer also provides the accounts of the persecutors themselves—and, perhaps most telling of all, the testimonies of ordinary German citizens who, in general, stood silent and unmoved by the increasing waves of segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, and violence.

The second part covers the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews—an official program that depended upon the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, the passivity of the populations, and the willingness of the victims to submit in desperate hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.

A monumental, multifaceted study now contained in a single volume, Saul Friedländer's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 is an essential study of a dark and complex history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust, World War II, War, Germany, European History

514 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 10, 2007

About the author

Saul Friedländer (Hebrew: שאול פרידלנדר) is an Israeli/French historian and a professor emeritus of history at UCLA.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Note: This is a review for Volume II of Saul Friedlander's "Nazi Germany and the Jews". This volume is "The Years of Extermination." Volume I is entitled "The Years of Persecution." I did not realize there WAS a Volume I until I was far into this book. I will go back and read it at some point, but I have many other books waiting on my reading list. These are large books and, frankly, rather depressing.)


Whoa. This book is, essentially, the definitive chronicle of the Holocaust. It is heavily informed by diaries, and the chronological nature of the book follows many diarists up until their deaths (other than a very few who did survive). This results in an intense combination of large-scale analysis of policy, public opinion, and historical events, mixed with first person eyewitness to persecution, brutality, and murder.

This is not a short read. It took me about 3 weeks of regular reading to get through it, but that is due purely to length (and the desire to preserve my own mental health). The writing itself can get bogged down at times with numbers and dates, and can become confusing in terms of names, but those are very, very minor criticisms of what is otherwise an outstanding history.

Friedlander spends a good portion of time analyzing the conduct of the Roman Catholic Church, and of religious organizations and institutions in general. He seems very interested (as am I) in truly understanding the motivations behind the Church's actions (and frequent lack thereof). I do begrudge the Pope his precarious political position, being inside a fascist state allied to the Reich, but in the end I think that the actions of Church leadership were utterly reprehensible. What small protest was made was almost exclusively for the protection of converted Catholics of Jewish descent. (Yes, some, even many, individual members of the clergy did an extraordinary amount of work selflessly protecting Jews. But in doing so, they were sometimes actively acting against Church decrees) I have also come to the conclusion that the idea that the average German citizen "didn't know" is absolutely ridiculous. Of course they knew. At BEST, they "didn't want to know." But claims of pure ignorance are nothing but post-war smoke screen, and an attempt to assuage their own guilt. Now, do I think they could have done anything about it? Probably not. Not in a fascist police state, which made it difficult to coordinate resistance activities. However, when it comes down to it, I think that the average German just didn't care. At least not enough to make a fuss. Anti-semitism was a deep part of culture in large sections of Europe anyway, and this was only exacerbated by the propaganda efforts of the Nazi Party. You see this in some of the language used by civilians, soldiers, and clergy alike: it was "horrible," but "they only brought it on themselves." Or, "they started the war" and now they were "getting what they deserved."

This book cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the complexities of the Holocaust. But it is, in my opinion, about the best that a single volume could attempt to do. It's very readable, and while maintaining a good deal of impartiality still manages to have an enormous emotional impact. Simple passages about how on such and such a day in the Ukraine, an Einsatzgruppen shot 25,000 men, women, and children. Just, wow, how do you even process that? The number of "6 million Jews killed" gains so much more impact when numbers like 25,000 killed in two days, or 4,000 being killed PER DAY in Auschwitz are presented to you. A million is a number too large to really imagine. But when you imagine 25,000, and realize that this is only killing out of thousands...


Again, it's impossible to really address the Holocaust in a single book. But I think the quote by Stefan Ernest, a Jew hiding on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw, which Friedlander places at the beginning is a good way to put it:

"The struggle to save myself is hopeless... But that's not important. Because I am able to bring my account to its end and trust that it will see the light of day when the time is right... And people will know what happened... And they will ask, is this the truth? I reply in advance: No, this is not the truth, this is only a small part, a tiny fraction of the truth... Even the mightiest pen could not depict the whole, real, essential truth."

[Maggy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed with this book. Granted, this is a hard topic to tackle, simply due to the magnitude of victims, and the extent of brutality; however, the author really did not, in my opinion, do justice to his subject.

Strangely, the author slams every conceivable population for their part in the Holocaust - I never thought I'd read a book where the pope appeared more anti-Semitic than Hitler, but so it was. The Jewish community also gets a good heaping helping of blame in this book, which is just ridiculous. Not only were the author's arguments on this point extremely facile ("The Pope didn't say anything, so he was secretly in cahoots with the Nazis; the Jewish community didn't organize any huge resistance, so they cooperated in their ultimate demise"), but they did not take into account many of the important factors of the time (German post-WWI mentality, reluctance of the other European nations to get into another war, etc.). Many arguments from other historians are dismissed out of hand, while documents from the Nazi party are used as the sole reference for some conclusions.

I was also reminded of the infamous quote, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." Though the author did include some eyewitness accounts (mainly diary entries), these did not assuage the feeling that I was reading through a list of numbers. Again, I know this is a VERY hard thing to do in regards to the Holocaust, due simply to the sheer number of victims; however, perhaps if the book had been written in a less clinical tone throughout, it might have helped.

To end on a more positive note, I appreciated that Friedlaender included the original German and Italian texts of some passages; granted, I couldn't understand all of them, but it was nice to get a sense of the original statements, if that makes sense. It also seemed to be a very well-researched book.

My advice: stick with "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," and with accounts of other people who lived through the atrocity (Elie Wiesel is an amazing author, and "Night" gives a much better account of the concentration and extermination camps than this book did).

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a horrible book. And I don't mean the writing or the research. I mean having to wrap my head around things like this:

In order to be effective, however, the ideological impetus had to emanate not only from the top but also be fanatically adopted and enforced at intermediate levels of the system by the technocrats, organizers and direct implementers of the extermination - by those, in short who made the system work, several levels below the main political leader ship.

and

As before, hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of Germans and other Europeans continued tacitly to support the extermination campaign, both for profit and on ideological grounds. ... The determining factors in the passivity of most remained fear, of course, the absence of any sense of identification with Jew, and the lack of decided and sustained encouragement to help the victims from the leaders of Christian churches or the political leadership of resistance movements.

Among the Jews ... two contrary trends... became ever more noticeable: increasing passivity and lack of solidarity with fellow sufferers among the mass of terrorized and physically weakened victims (mainly in the camps) on the one hand, and on the other the tightening bonds within small, usually politically homogeneous groups...

So many many many human beings came up with better and more efficient way of killing. So many many many many failed to do squat.

I wanted to continue reading. I could not finish. So much death aided and abetted by so many.

[KB · Rating 5 out of 5]

One thing I can certainly say about Saul Friedländer's Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination is that you'll only read it once. Over 600 pages of absolute horror and despair. It's an exhaustive account of the fate of Europe's Jews, yet despite its length and subject remains readable. It might take you some time to get through, and it's not a pleasant read, but it's very much worth it.

The book is mostly laid out chronologically. But as it covers all of Europe's Jews, Friedländer has no choice but to do a little bouncing around across the timeline to cover what was happening in different countries. The chapters are quite lengthy, but are broken up into smaller sections. I always appreciate when an author does this, as I tend to prefer shorter chapters and the breaks at least allow for some breathing room.

While we naturally and obviously associate the Holocaust with Nazi Germany, Friedländer argues right in the introduction that although that approach is not wrong, it perhaps needs to be broadened: "At each step in occupied Europe, the execution of German measures depended on the submissiveness of political authorities, the assistance of local police forces or other auxiliaries, and the passivity or support of the populations..." Friedländer comes back to this point throughout the book and talks about how the persecution (and eventual murder) of Jews was able to happen because people tolerated it. There was some push back in western European countries, and of course many individuals risked their lives to shelter or aid Jews all across Europe, but on the whole, people were anti-Semitic - or at the very least apathetic - and this seemed to get worse the further east you went.

The gassing of millions of Jews in concentration camps doesn't, as we know, begin with the invasion of Poland - it gets built up to. Friedländer covers all of this in detail and shows that there was no true grand plan for the murder of Jews from the get-go. Another important thread running through the book is the role of the church in helping influence the population with anti-Jewish rhetoric, or not doing anything to stand up against it. Particular attention is paid to the pope in this regard. We also follow the reactions of the Western powers as they learn the fate of the Jews and how little was done until it was already far too late.

Because the nature of the book has to be so general in order to cover everything, to help ground the narrative Friedländer returns to specific individuals who left letters and diaries. These consist of people of varying ages, from different countries, with different roles and positions in society. One towards the end of the book that really broke my heart came from an "adolescent" in the Łódź ghetto who was starving and ate the half loaf of bread his sister was saving. He felt immense guilt knowing his sister would now barely eat, but could not bring himself to admit what he had done. Most of the diaries Friedländer quotes from abruptly end when the author was deported to a concentration camp. Others end with an intended finality before the author took their own life.

There's not much I'm going to fault: some typos here and there, sometimes it can feel a little bogged down in detail. But this is a very impressive piece of work. Absolutely horrible to read, but supremely important.

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces the development of the Final Solution and chronicles the deaths of millions of Jews. It is, of course, impossible to tell the stories of 6 million individuals; in spite of the inclusion of quotations from victims' diaries, the scope of this book remains vaguely wide.

The Holocaust is still a very hard thing for me to comprehend, but this book makes some things clearer. Friedlander highlights how quickly many, many Europeans let themselves be convinced that the Jews were vile, in spite of ludicrous propaganda (e.g. "The Jews are making us Germans go to war"); the failure of the "good guys" (Britain and the U.S.) to stop the genocide and save lives; the fact that Jews from different regions did not, generally, view themselves as a united people; and how Nazism brought forth vociferous anti-Semitism among many Catholics and Lutherans throughout Europe.

I found the first book I read by Friedlander, on Pope Pius XII, less dense and therefore more readable. Here the historian revisits that earlier topic: Based on more current information, he judges the pope even more harshly than before.

[Corny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a monumental study of Nazi state and its relationship with the Jews. It is written as dispassionately as possible given the topic. It reports the facts through diary entries, archives, correspondance and the work of previous historians. The sheer volume of effort that has been put to creating this record is almost unfathomable as is the record of atrocities committed by the Nazis. There is some attempt to examine motivation but in the end the author admits that the reasons are unknowable especially as regards the Fuhrer himself. What is amazing is the complicity of literally millions of Gentile Europeans in this mass murder.

One of the drawbacks of this book is that it provides such a mountain of detail that it is often impossible to follow the thread of the story. The names of many of the Eastern Europeans are easily confused and there are no maps of the geography, which is a definite omission. That said, this tome is worth attention and for those of us interested in the history of the period, indispensible. It is very dense, but worth the effort.

[Margaret Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using diary's, letters, and other first-hand accounts, Friedlander (historian and Holocaust survivor), follows the destructive path of Hitler's final solution. Although there are stories of those few who stood apart and worked clandestinely to save numerous people, Friedlander emphasizes the complicity of most of Europe (because of deeply embedded anti-semitic ideology;), which helped propel the overwhelmingly effective destructiveness of mass murder, through both active collaboration and passive apathy.

[Marcos Francisco Muñoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

La lectura de este libro podría considerarse un ejercicio de masoquismo metafísico, pero subyace la pregunta de hasta qué punto el "hacerse cargo" de los actos de la raza humana queda a cargo de las consciencias y las mentes que hacen un esfuerzo con propósito para, de una manera u otra preservar tanto la memoria de todas esas existencias arrancadas del bajoelsol contribuye a una voluntad colectiva que pueda oponerse al surgimiento de ideologías y/o movimientos que pretendan cometer de nuevo acometidas similares en contra del conjunto de la humanidad; pero una basta una mirada al grueso de la historia antropocénica y encontrar el océano de atrocidades cometidos en nombres de diferentes figuras apotropeicas (sobre todo, por parte de lo que a occidente le encanta llamar "occidente") contra grandes y determinados grupos considerados inferiores, para perder toda esperanza. Por eso hay que echar más que un vistazo.

En el segundo tomo de esta dantesca obra de recuperación histórica, Friedländer vuelve a hacer gala de su impecable y metódica manera de presentar sus fuentes (174 páginas son dedicadas a las notas bibliográficas) y esto lo digo como una manera de hablar de algo de este libro que no termine destrozándome los nervios. Al igual que en el primer libro, los testimonios de ciudadanos judíos ricos y pobres, funcionarios nazis (la palabra alemana "tagebücher" se quedará grabada en mi memoria asociativa con Goebbels debido a las omnipresentes referencias a sus diarios que plasman un paisaje de primera persona este oscuro e inhumano delirio del nazismo) y presentación de datos duros (estadísticas de muertes, muertes y más muertes) dejan un vacío en el estómago con cada nueva pieza de conocimiento oscuro presentada.
Aun así, es un libro que tenía que leer, a veces las palabras sobran y a la vez nunca logran ser lo suficiente al hablar de este tema, y otros actos sistematizados de violencia. Pero al menos yo siento que se lo debemos a la preservación colectiva y memorial de la historia como un proceso humano de pasos a tratar de evitar.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

2008 Pulitzer Prize winner in the General Non-Fiction category.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was kind of a bummer ngl

[Brandon Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful work on one of history's darkest times... this is a work of narrative history at its best.

[Marshall Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

A devastating book! In horrific detail, the author tells the history of the Holocaust from the highest levels in the Nazi government to the deaths of individuals. What surprised me was the full extent of the collaboration by the governments of the occupied countries in Europe, especially the French and the Dutch.

[Rachele Deans · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They lay as they had fallen, contorted, knotted together like a ball of yarn."

I picked that one sentence from the memoirs of a Sonderkommando at a concentration camp because of the impact those words instantly have due to the horrific, gruesome image it conjures. The majority of the world has studied the Holocaust at school so the scene being described is sadly familiar to our knowledge. I studied history at school but my degree is in modern and contemporary history so the topic is one I am very familiar with. But this book, to me, provides a deeper, even more emotional account of the systematic murder that took place between 1939 and 1945.

Friedlander's use of primary sources - mainly being diaries of those living through the atrocities - manages to evoke pure helplessness and despair in the reader because we know that in most of the cases, the authors of the diary entries being read will have been executed in a vicious, degrading way. Which sadly, is confirmed at the end of the book.

I found it harrowing to read the numbers of human beings murdered in such a "matter-of-fact" way. Not in a disrespectful way but in the sheer volume of numbers of those who were killed. The complicity, sadistic fanatics, the leaders of the regime are treated purely as factual entities - there is no personal history, no delving into who they are and why they did what they did - which I think was the best way to use their names.

I found the book to be very mournful and completely focused on the victims and their tragic circumstances as opposed to being just a historical book. Obviously there are facts and figures but it felt like the main reason for this book was to give the six million people murdered a voice.

Heartbreaking, poignant and should be read by all so this never happens again.

[Carla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, this was rough. The subject matter, of course, is literally, soul-crushingly awful. 660 pages of racist, completely unreasonable hatred and the worst of what humans can be is hard to read much of at a time. And I couldn’t escape the parallels to today’s casual acceptance of racism and the hatred of the other that is being actively promoted by the White House. As in Nazi Germany, the real tragedy isn’t the charismatic lunatic at the head of the movement, but the millions of common people who endorsed and followed without thought.

I did learn a lot about exactly how the millions of Jews killed in WWII met their end - somehow the facts around how many were just killed on arrival at a camp, thousands and thousands at a time, had escaped me thus far. But I’ve got to say that the writing really wasn’t good. The research behind this was clearly amazing, and that must be the basis for the Pulitzer. It read almost like a bulleted list - this, and then this and then this, on and on with endless names to keep track of (and which he seemed to assume the reader had knowledge of) and figures. It would actually have benefitted from a textbook approach, organizing headers, maps and timelines to help the reader keep centered among of all the facts and data of which the author is clearly a master. There has to be a way to make all of that information flow better and in a more interesting way. And finally, there was a tic that recurred throughout and I found very irritating - the reference to “as we shall see”. Completely unnecessary and jarring to break the fourth wall in that way.

[Carolyn O'Hara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, in-depth examination of factors surrounding the darkest years of the 20th century. The author's use of diaries throughout was brilliant, and I am in total awe that so many diaries were rescued and preserved.

New York Times, 24 June 2007:

"What raises “The Years of Extermination” to the level of literature, however, is the skilled interweaving of individual testimony with the broader depiction of events. Friedländer never lets the reader forget the human and personal meanings of the historical processes he is describing. By and large, he avoids the sometimes unreliable testimony of memoirs for the greater immediacy of contemporary diaries and letters, though he also makes good use of witness statements at postwar trials. The result is an account of unparalleled vividness and power....

I plan to read "volume one" -- The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, and Friedländer's biography. The librarian in me would like to read a book on the diaries, and how they survived....

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barnes & Nobles impulse acquisition 2008-05-19, largely swayed due to the gauche Pulitzer emblem.

A pretty solid companion to Shirer, which glosses over most of the destruction of European Jewry (the authority here is of course Hilberg's three-volume 1985 update to his classic The Destruction of the European Jews, and honestly I'd have expected Friedländer to use his access to modern Soviet sources to great effect in distinguishing himself from Hilberg, especially given the six (6!) bibliographic references to the latter's work), and a good introduction to the subject in a single volume. It does tend to run together a bit.

[Daniel Law]

This is probably the most in depth look at what really happened in the German occupied Europe during WWII. It is a mixture of documentary, evidentiary, and diaristic evidence all wound together in a way that will keep you spell bound as you read your way through the madness that was NAZI Germany.

It is one of the most complete and accurate accounts and is a must read

[Yupa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pensavo o, meglio, speravo che in questo secondo e conclusivo volume l'autore tirasse le fila, proponesse un qualche ragionamento esteso sulla vicenda dell'olocausto, su cui il dibattito non è certo piccolo. Non l'aveva fatto nel primo volume, non lo fa qui, se si escludono alcuni paragrafi nell'introduzione e nell'ultimo capitolo, in cui sostanzialmente riconduce buona parte (per fortuna non tutto!) di ciò che fu l'olocausto all'ossessione antisemita di Hitler.
Poi però c'è il resto del libro, con le sue mille pagine, con la cronaca degli eventi, che è completa, dettagliata, anche molto minuziosa, fatta di tanti fatti e, spesso, stralci delle voci di vittime, esecutori, spettatori. Qui emerge un quadro ulteriore, con l'autore che lascia quasi parlare gli eventi da soli, che fa emergere il contesto entro cui si sviluppò la vicenda politica di Hitler e le sue note conseguenze.
L'impressione è quella di un forte fatalismo, come se la corrente della Storia fosse stata troppo forte per impedire quel che è accaduto. L'autore, che è onesto, riporta i casi di individui od organizzazioni che agirono per ostacolare la macchina omicida nazista, facendo pressioni quand'era possibile, o anche intervenendo per salvare gruppi grandi o piccoli di vittime. Ma furono casi isolati e sporadici in una marea che andava in senso fortemente contrario. Emblematici, probabilmente, gli atteggiamenti e soprattutto i tentennamenti delle istituzioni religiose cristiane, interessate nel caso a salvare i "loro" (gli ebrei battezzati) e indifferenti, se non conniventi, a condannare tutti gli altri.
L'idea complessiva è che il nazismo hitleriano riuscì nella propria opera, oltre che per l'azione di tanti esecutori (che analizzare è compito della psicologia e della microsociologia) anche per un antisemitismo secolare diffuso, dove più dove meno, in tutto il continente, e ben radicato. Alla fine molti sapevano, probabilmente tanti disapprovavano le modalità estreme naziste, ma altrettanti pensavano che gli ebrei costituissero comunque un "problema", e questo persino tra gli oppositori del nazismo, come emerge dai documenti ben riportati dall'autore.
Il libro può essere soprattutto una riflessione su cosa può succedere quando, nel breve termine, una situazione politica precipita in un contesto in cui, nel lungo periodo della Storia, un gruppo umano è stato pervasivamente marchiato come indesiderabile se non maligno, e questo marchio è vissuto come "senso comune". Mancano però gli inneschi: il libro ha un approccio che privilegia soprattutto l'ideologia nazista, tralasciando tanto delle contingenze storiche materiali che funsero da brodo di coltura, dall'avvento della società urbana, alle trasformazioni della società, al grande trauma della I Guerra Mondiale, alle tribolazioni economiche successive.
Questo libro resta un ottimo resoconto di quel che è successo nell'immediato, e ne analizza tanto del come. Ma per interrogarsi in maniera profonda sui perché, forse, ci si deve rivolgere altrove.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two books by Friedlander

I've just finished the two books by Friedlander. The first on the build up of anti-Semitism in Germany and other European countries in the 30's, the second on the results of those policies from 1939 to May 1945.

Friedlander's incredible knowledge of what appears to be every aspect of his subject matter overwhelms the reader with the day to day details of laws enacted against Jews in the 30's and their persecution during the war.

His thoroughness of account taught me several things. Everyone was complicit, no country wanted massive numbers of Jewish refugees, organized religion wished to side step the whole issue, everyone seemed to want to put their heads in the sand and pretend the whole thing would go away.

I am unable to comprehend how such a thing could happen. In the early 30's my father, then a teenager apprenticed in a machine shop in Batavia New York. One of the workers had migrated from Germany. I remember my father telling me about conversations with this German immigrant. He left Germany, because right after the WWI armistice they started talking about the next war.

I look with disbelief at enroads by the same fanatical forces in the democracies of the European Community, I look with disbelief at the rise of forces in the United States, built on fear and hate.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readers should keep in mind what sort of history this is. It is not a narrative history of the war, and not even a narrative history of the Holocaust. It narrates chiefly the experience of undergoing the Holocaust, i.e. what it was like to be there and one of the victims. This is so difficult it requires clarification by various non-narrative ideas, some organizational (e.g. how the death camps were proposed and organized) but others wholly interpretive.
Friedlaender's main general idea is that "For a regime dependent on constant mobilization, the Jew served as the constant mobilizing myth" (Preface, p. xix.) This appears to be both unverifiable and (I fear) probably meaningless. However thought about, "the Jew" cannot possibly explain why Germany began the war (agreeing with the USSR to abolish Poland) or how Germans actually fought it. "The Jew" was no theoretical or practical help to the grenadier in the ruins of Stalingrad or the submarine sailor hunting for convoys in the Atlantic Ocean or the AA gunner blasting at fleets of B17s overhead.
The tragedy of the war includes that most of its victims (from the Jewish victims of Treblinka to the family round the corner from our house in suburban London, annihilated by one of the last V2 rockets) had so little to do with either its origins or the conduct of the actual fighting.

[Kenneth Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second volume of a history of the Holocaust. It covers the war years from 1939-1945. With the invasion of Poland’s, the Nazis began extermination of the Jews. They not only began to gathers Jews into ghettos, but also the wholesale killing of them.
The author describes how eisengruppen were formed and sent out to murder Jews by shooting them by the thousands. He traces the chronological steps from shooting to the development of the gas chambers and cremation of the bodies.
The author follows the extermination country by country on the deportation and sent to concentration camps. Many were used as slave labor, but most were gassed upon arrival.
Throughout the book, the author utilizes the diaries of Jews caught up in the ghettos and concentration camps. The author also details the aid rendered by people , the collaborators and the pervasive anti-Semitic feeling in many countries. We also learn about the attitudes of the religious entities,both Protestant and Catholic.
The book is a very emotional read, but needs to be read as a warning not to repeat this sad chapter in history.

[Brooksie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This won a Pulitzer Prize? Really? Are their standards really this low?

Very few of the works I've read on Nazis and the Holocaust have included diary entries from those who ended up in ghettos, in camps, in prison. The most engaging aspect of this book is learning about ordinary Jewish citizens caught up in the machine and trying to survive.

But the writing is atrocious. Random punctuation, round and square brackets used willy-nilly, needlessly grammatically confusing sentences ... and the repetition. Oh, the repetition. Did I mention the repetition? If I had a dollar for every:

As we have seen
As we shall see
As has already been discussed
As previously mentioned
Of course
Thus

I'd be bleeping rich right now.

There are entirely too many irritants to list here. Reading this book was like having a little fly buzzing around your head, then another, then another, until there are too many damn flies to deal with and you just want to toss the book out the window. But I made it to the end. ~takes bow~

[Tiago Rodrigues Dinarés · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Between five and six million Jews had been killed, among them almost a million and a half under the age of fourteen. They comprised the immense mass of silent victims and also most of the diarists and authors of letters whose voices we heard in these pages.

From among the few hundreds of thousands of Jews who had survived, most struck roots in new surroundings, either by necessity or by choice; they built their lives, resolutely hid their scars, and experienced the common share of joys and sorrows dealt by everyday existence.

For several decades many evoked the past mainly among themselves, behind closed doors, so to speak; some became occasional witnesses, others opted for silence. Yet whatever the path they chose, for all of them those years remained the most significant period of their lives.

They were entrapped in it: Recurrently it pulled them back into overwhelming terror and, throughout, notwithstanding the passage of time, it carried along with it the indelible memory of the dead."

[Eric Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

My critique is of the writing style and structure. It is in no way meant to downplay the importance of this horrifying subject. Though the book was chronological, it lacked structure or a controlling theme to organize the facts and timelines. The author seems to assume the reader would have a vast back knowledge, knowing details of whatever he was referring to at any given time. I have read countless books on this subject and still found myself completely lost most of the time. At times the narrative/historical recounting would be very engaging and readable punctuated by long periods of random fact dumping. The author would also constantly say, in reference to certain people, "who we have already met/discussed" - expecting readers to recall a minor figure mentioned perhaps hundreds of pages prior !?! As a result the book just sort of blended into on big blur of people, places, and events without any rhyme or reason except to apparently showcase his thorough research on the subject. Poor writing on an important subject (just like the first volume). Not recommended.

[Eric Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

My critique is of the writing style and structure. It is in no way meant to downplay the importance of this horrifying subject. Though the book was chronological, it lacked structure or a controlling theme to organize the facts and timelines. The author seems to assume the reader would have a vast back knowledge, knowing details of whatever he was referring to at any given time. I have read countless books on this subject and still found myself completely lost most of the time. At times the narrative/historical recounting would be very engaging and readable punctuated by long periods of random fact dumping. The author would also constantly say, in reference to certain people, "who we have already met/discussed" - expecting readers to recall a minor figure mentioned perhaps hundreds of pages prior !?! As a result the book just sort of blended into on big blur of people, places, and events without any rhyme or reason except to apparently showcase his thorough research on the subject. Poor writing on an important subject (just like the first volume). Not recommended.

[Jordan Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author methodically works through the gradual increase of the persecution of the Jewish people in Europe during the years mentioned in the title. While the book obviously focuses on the Third Reich and its role in the attempted destruction of the Jewish people in Europe, the author also discusses the role the other nations of Europe had in the persecution. Saul uses a combination of official records (Nazi officials were proficient record keepers), diaries, and correspondence to supplement the narrative - providing a horrifying reality to this dark time.

The inhumanity of Nazi officials and Einsatzgruppen is apparent throughout the book, but the humanity of those isolated and spread throughout Europe left a bigger impression on me. People who did not know where their next meal would come from, children who had to watch their parents be deported on a train to certain death, and all the other atrocities.

While a difficult, and long, book, it was incredibly engaging.

[Bianca Granneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Als je je wilt verdiepen in het hoe en waarom van de Holocaust, zijn de boeken van Friedländer van onschatbare waarde. De systematische uitsluiting van de joodse bevolking in de geannexeerde en bezette gebieden, de inzet van de Einsatzgruppen, de houding van de bevolking en overheid in diverse landen, de rol van de kerken, de uiteindelijke beslissing in januari 1942 over de Endlösung, de kennis over de massamoord die vanaf datzelfde jaar langzaam maar zeker doordrong in 'de buitenwereld', de totstandkoming van de gaskamers, de onwil en het onvermogen van landen om de massamoord te stoppen en de tragische gebeurtenissen aan het eind van de oorlog: alles is even helder beschreven vanuit meerdere perspectieven. De uitgebreide annotatie die het boek bevat is heel fijn, omdat je dan de bronnen makkelijk terugvindt.

[Howard Jaeckel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saul Friedlander’s massive history of the Holocaust is an undoubted masterpiece. His phenomenal research, which uncovered numerous letters and diaries of the victims, and the very few survivors, lend the book immense power. And his conclusion, in which he reflects on the unanswerable question – how could this happen – and names again each of the victims he has quoted from, establish him as a masterful writer.

One note of caution. The book is extremely detailed in recounting, with a profusion of names sometimes hard to keep track of, who did what in each country occupied by Germany. For readers who don’t share my compulsion (due to family background) to be apprised of all this, it may be a little much. Absolutely read the book, but give yourself permission to skip ahead when feeling overwhelmed by the detail.

[Ginger Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of history.

I hardly know where to begin. How very in depth this work is and very absorbing.Although I knew of the silence of the Pope Pious. How in his Christian soul could he not have spoken out to the world about the extermination of the Jews? I recoiled in horror at the overwhelming cooperation of Vichy France and the French police.The same for The Dutch. I simply do not understand the hate at the center of the Nazi state. The German denials after the war ring exceptionally hollow.The author does not give them a free pass. The "we didn't know" does not hold water here.I don't agree with everything is this book but no one can argue.with his research.It is not a happy book so do not expect it. It is history,brutal and honest.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? Aside from fairly arcane historical debates about selected aspects of the nature and progress of the Holocaust, Friedlander's two-volume history of the Nazi Germany and the Jews must be considered the gold standard. For this second volume, Friedlander leans heavily on the diaries of those who experienced it firsthand. His selections are judicious and remarkably insightful. He synthesizes an astounding number of events and sources to create a fully integrated history of the period, one that encompasses all of Europe and a host of perspectives. If you were to read one writer on Nazi Germany and the Jews, Friedlander is the one.