Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning historian of the Holocaust, Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945 is the first book to move beyond Germany’s singular crime to the collaboration of Europe as a whole.
The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans, but it would not have been possible without the assistance of thousands of helpers in other countries: state officials, police, and civilians who eagerly supported the genocide. If we are to fully understand how and why the Holocaust happened, Götz Aly argues in this groundbreaking study, we must examine its prehistory throughout Europe. We must look at countries as far-flung as Romania and France, Russia and Greece, where, decades before the Nazis came to power, a deadly combination of envy, competition, nationalism, and social upheaval fueled a surge of anti-Semitism, creating the preconditions for the deportations and murder to come.
In the late nineteenth century, new opportunities for education and social advancement were opening up, and Jewish minorities took particular advantage of them, leading to widespread resentment. At the same time, newly created nation-states, especially in the east, were striving for ethnic homogeneity and national renewal, goals which they saw as inextricably linked. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unpublished sources, Aly traces the sequence of events that made persecution of Jews an increasingly acceptable European practice.
Ultimately, the German architects of genocide found support for the Final Solution in nearly all the countries they occupied or were allied with.
Without diminishing the guilt of German perpetrators, Aly documents the involvement of all of Europe in the destruction of the Jews, once again deepening our understanding of this most tormented history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sweeping and persuasive study, German historian Aly (Why the Germans? Why the Jews?) investigates how and why "the architects of genocide were able to find support for the Final Solution in nearly all of the countries occupied by or allied with Germany." Noting that the phrase "anti-Semitism" first appeared in 1880, Aly links Russian pogroms, nativist political movements, and unequal distribution of industrial progress to this new form of hostility based on "national, social, and economic arguments." Though contemporaneous observers claimed that anti-Jewish sentiment arose from envy and "base greed," the reality, according to Aly, was that restrictive laws curtailed professional opportunities for most Jews. In the wake of WWI, efforts to compel Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe intensified, leading to persecution and violence. While France let in tens of thousands of Jewish refugees in the 1930s, other countries, including the U.S., curtailed entry permits, leaving few safe options for relocation. During WWII, leaders in Croatia and Romania seized the opportunity to rid their countries of Jews. Aly packs this dense account with statistics and analysis, making a convincing case that "the pace and extent" of the genocide could not have been achieved without widespread cooperation. This expertly researched account is destined to influence future histories of the Holocaust.
