Volume 51, Number 14 · September 23, 2004
Improvising the Holocaust
By Istvan Deak
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942
by Christopher R. Browning, with contributions by Jürgen Matthäus
University of Nebraska Press/Yad Vashem, 615 pp., $39.95
The Final Solution of the Jewish Question was a unique undertaking, its execution an industrial enterprise of unprecedented proportions. Yet it was only one in a series of murderous ethnic campaigns that began well before Hitler and is not yet over. Heinrich Himmler called the Final Solution a Flurbereinigung, a cleansing operation. Europeans have been practicing something like it from the time of the French Revolution but with one major difference: governments and peoples have been satisfied with forced assimilation, expulsion, deportation, and occasional massacres; the Nazis wanted to annihilate every single Jew. More than a few historical actions resembled the Final Solution—the Turkish massacre of the Armenians during World War I; Stalin's deportation to Siberia of entire ethnic minorities, and the killing and expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from Eastern and East Central Europe following World War II. But none aimed at the total destruction of an entire people.
Review, 4327 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |