The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution

by Christopher R. Browning

The Nazi Holocaust haunts the modern imagination as one of the most compelling examples of the human capacity for organized 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's account assesses the historians' interpretations and offers his own insights, based on detailed case studies that uncovered important and telling new evidence.

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

208 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 1992

About the author

Christopher 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.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know where to write this critique but in a chapter on the Nazi Empire by this author I found some stunning manipulation of information- not a single word of the NDH (Greater Croatia) a technical puppet state of the Nazi Empire, and the extremely brutal genocide the Croatians Ustasha committed against hundreds of thousands, yet the author felt compelled to bring up Slobodan Milosevic by falsely attributing the term ethnic cleansing to him. Paul Mojzes has stated that the term was actually created in the early 1800s by a Serb poet named Vuk Kazaradic. The term was later employed by the American ruling class in the 1990s to describe one particular case, strictly Serb atrocities, as opposed to Croat atrocities or any others. In other words the term was entirely employed for political reasonings- to promote the interests of America. The promotion of western geopolitics and its narratives, the complete omission of very relevant topics and the inclusion of lesser relevant ones, is certainly evident in Browning's work. The politicization of genocide is reprehensible.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the one hand, this was quite dry and I did find it a drag in places. On the other hand, would you really want this subject matter to be anything but factual? It was well researched and well argued, and ultimately enhanced my understanding of a difficult subject.

As this was a collection of essays it didn't need to flow, but there was a mixture of factual content and analysis of different interpretations of the primary evidence. Browning was quite persuasive, though in all honesty I know so little of the minutiae that I would probably take everything he said as read. The last essay in particular was very illuminating, and in a way reassuring given the number of people who couldn't carry out the horrific orders, and who were essentially army reservists.

[Mike Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy. I read this over a matter of months which seemed apt given the subject matter and how the book is broken into multiple essays. Overall it's a riveting read about how the Nazis operated, how some people tried to do their bits to diminish horrors in the holocaust (before the concentration camps), and how ultimately it was primarily down to evil creatures who wanted to eradicate the Jewish people with no logical reason, despite how people might try to appease them. A lesson for anyone thinking autocracy makes sense.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro molto interessante, che riporta un punto di vista nuovo (almeno per me) e che permette di riflettere ancora sul ruolo avuto dai tedeschi "comuni" in questo evento tanto tragico.
Purtroppo sono indecisa se dare tre o quattro stelle perchè, a dispetto dal tema trattato come ho detto molto stimolante, ho trovato il metodo di scrittura, soprattutto nella prima parte del libro, piuttosto confusionario e ripetitivo. Troppo infarcito di dettagli e soprattutto nomi sempre diversi che ti fanno perdere di vista il discorso complessivo.
Inoltre capisco la necessità di confutare teorie già prese in considerazione da altri, ma il continuo intrecciarsi di teorie e contro riflessioni ha reso la lettura piuttosto frammentaria e spesso non fluida.
Infine ho notato che spesso le stesse conclusioni a cui vuole portarci l'autore vengono ripetute e ribadite più volte, creando delle ridondanze inutili.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting and detailed analysis, very in-depth and shows a lot of behind the scenes ideas and actions