Holocaust : the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews / Peter Longerich ; translated by Shaun Whiteside.

Originally published: 2010.

Translated from the German.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Historical background: Anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic -- Part I. Racial persecution, 1933-1939: -- The displacement of the Jews from public life, 1933-1934 -- Segregation and comprehensive discrimination, 1935-1937 -- Interim conclusions: the removal of Jews from German society, the formation of the national socialist 'people's community', and its consequences for Jewish life in Germany -- The intensification of the racial persecution of non-Jewish groups by the police apparatus, 1936-1937 -- Comprehensive deprivation of rights and forced emigration, late 1937-1939 -- The politics of organized expulsion -- Part II. The persecution of the Jews, 1939-1941 -- The persecution of Jews in the territory of the Reich, 1939-1940 -- Germen occupation and the persecution of the Jews in Poland, 1939-1940/1941: the first variant of a 'territorial solution' -- Deportations -- Part III. Mass executions of Jews in the occupied Soviet zones, 1941 -- Laying the ground for a war of racial annihilation -- The mass murder of Jewish men -- The transition from anti-Semitic terror to genocide -- Enforcing the annihilation policy : extending the shootings to the whole Jewish population -- Part IV. Genesis of the final solution on a European scale, 1941 -- Plans for a Europe-wide deportation and regional mass murders -- The Wannsee Conference -- Part V. The extermination of the European Jew, 1942-1945: -- The beginning of the extermination policy on a European scale in 1942 -- The further development of the policy of extermination after the turning of the war in 1942-1943: continuation of the murders and geographical expansion of the deportations.

Focusing clearly on the perpetrators and exploring closely the process of decision making, Longerich argues that anti-Semitism was not a mere by-product of the Nazis' political mobilization or an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses, but that anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement's attempts to implement, disseminate, and secure National Socialist rule - and one which crucially shaped Nazi policy decisions, from their earliest days in power through to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the Final Solution. -- Publisher description.