Product Description

'This is a book of exceptional quality - The work of a historian at the peak of his powers, a magisterial study, a profound analysis of how the darkest chapter in human history could come about.' - Ian Kershaw, bestselling author of "Hitler". "The Origins of the Final Solution" is the most detailed, careful, and comprehensive analysis to date of the descent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews into mass murder. Arguing that genocide was not a preconceived plan but rather a discovered possibility, Christopher Browning explains how the decision to murder the Jews en masse emerged in stages and by a process of elimination that gradually foreclosed plans for their expulsion from Europe. Only in the interval between late September and late October 1941 did the desire to 'remove' the Jews intersect with the discovery of acceptable means of killing them on a large scale and with the euphoria of expected victory in Russia, all of which followed on from two years of 'race war' and 'racial imperialism' in eastern Europe that prepared 'ordinary Germans' for this fateful task. Author Bio: Christopher Browning is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His previous books include "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" (1992); "The Path to Genocide" (1992); "The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office" (1978) and "Nazi Policy, Jewish Labour, German Killers" (2000). Praise for "Origins of the Final Solution":' This magisterial work...An unrivaled account of how the Nazi leadership ended up with a policy of industrialized mass murder of Jews-Probably no one is better qualified for this task than Christopher Browning.' - Mark Mazower in the "New York Times". 'Browning is persuasive because he marshals his evidence with unrivalled skill and writes with awesome clarity.' - "Literary Review".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #133319 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From the Publisher
'This is a book of exceptional quality... The work of a historian at the peak of his powers, a magisterial study, a profound analysis of how the darkest chapter in human history could come about.' Ian Kershaw, bestselling author of Hitler

About the Author
Christopher Browning is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His previous books include Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992); The Path to Genocide (1992); The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (1978) and Nazi Policy, Jewish Labour, German Killers (2000).

Customer Reviews

A revelation!
This book is a revelation. It tackles the issue of whether the Holocaust was planned from the first or whether it evolved due to circumstance. It does this through a meticulous process of narration of events from 1939 to 1942. This step by step approach can appear laborious at first but it has the effect of stopping preconceptions and making the reader understand the prevailing attitudes of the time. Browning quite cleverly takes the reader on a journey from exclusion to expulsion to concentration to extermination. It is very logical and very convincing. Highly recommended.

Superb
The popular perception of Hitler is that "he made the trains run on time", and that the Holocaust was meticulously planned from the early days of Nazi power.

This book shows how nothing could be further from the truth. Browning's compelling theory is that Nazi Germany was a "polycracy", where vague directives and pronouncements from Hitler were enthusiastically developed and "ratcheted up" by subordinates and the bureaucracy.

Thus the institutionalised mass slaughter of the Jews developed from Nazi frustration at the failure of various deportation initiatives from 1939-41, and the new possibilities opened up by the Einsatzgruppen in the USSR from June 1941.

There is a massive amount of detail, but the book is extremely readable for the layperson. Highly recommended.