Hitler's Shadow War: The Holocaust and World War II / Edition 1

by Donald M. McKale Clemson University; autho

Overview

Examines the entire history of Hitler's racial war, including the murderous role of the Wehrmacht in the extermination of Jews; Jewish resistance; and the role of German citizens as both enablers and witnesses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815412113
Publisher:	Taylor Trade Publishing
Publication date:	07/23/2002
Edition description:	1ST COOPER
Pages:	586
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.45(d)

About the Author

Donald McKale is the Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of Humanities in the history department at Clemson University and is the author of Hitler: The Survival Myth, The Nazi Party Courts, and War by Revolution: Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of WWI. He lives in Clemson, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Abbreviations and Special Terms	xi
	Introduction	1
1.	Germany and the Rise of Hitler	11
2.	The Nazi Revolution and German Jews, 1933	36
3.	The Revolution Ends? Between Anti-Jewish Violence and Legislation, 1933-1936	60
4.	Foreign Aggression and the "Jewish Question," 1936-1938	80
5.	The Final Steps to War and Intensification of Jewish Persecution, 1938-1939	97
6.	The Beginning of Racial War, 1939-1940	126
7.	Expanding the Racial War, 1940	159
8.	The Racial War in the East, 1941	182
9.	Repercussions of the War and Decision for the Final Solution	206
10.	The Killing Centers and Deportations of Polish Jewry, 1942	241
11.	Attempted Revolts, Auschwitz, and the Beginning Deportations of European Jewry, 1942	277
12.	Growing Jewish Resistance and Continued Deportations, 1943	308
13.	Expansion of Auschwitz, Allied Victories, and More Deportations, 1943-1944	330
14.	The Final Solution amid German Defeat, 1944-1945	364
15.	Bystanders: The World and the Holocaust, 1942-1944	387
16.	Rescue, Relief, and War Crimes Trials	408
17.	The Perpetrators: Types, Motives, and the Postwar Era	428
18.	The Victims: Destruction, Resistance, and Memory	454
19.	Learning from the Past	473
	Endnotes	479
	Suggestions for Further Reading	507
	Index	521
	About the Author	541

Editorial Reviews

McKale's book is a stunning achievement that will be read eagerly by students and scholars of the Holocaust. ... If readers at any level, or any library, were to purchase one book on the Holocaust, Hitler's Shadow War would be the recommended choice.

Choice

For anyone seeking to come to terms with the depravity of the Holocaust, Hitler's Shadow War will be required reading.

Booklist

McKale's book is a stunning achievement that will be read eagerly by students and scholars of the Holocaust. ... If readers at any level, or any library, were to purchase one book on the Holocaust, Hitler's Shadow War would be the recommended choice.

CHOICE

Donald McKale's latest book is a detailed study of Nazi Germany's Jewish persecutions and the Holocaust. Drawn mainly from the abundant secondary literature in English, the work surveys the familiar territory, however in great detail.

History: Reviews Of New Books

For anyone seeking to come to terms with the depravity of the Holocaust, Hitler's Shadow War will be required reading.

Booklist

Offers an incisive introductory survey of the Holocaust from the ideological inception of modern anti-Semitism through the rising tide of anti-Jewish persecution in the 1930s and culminating in the Final Solution. I would strongly recommend the book for use in college courses on the Holocaust or the Third Reich, and it is appropriate for advanced high students as well.
— Abraham J. Edelheit

Jewish Book World

McKale (humanities, Clemson U.) has written widely about Germany and the Nazi Party. Here he surveys the history of the Holocaust to show how the concept of racial war strongly influenced Hitler's thinking and actions before and after World War II, and how he believed the Holocaust and the war were closely connected. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Wide-ranging study of the Holocaust argues that WWII was something of an afterthought for the architects of genocide. "Hitler and his Nazi associates used the war in Europe, with its massive violence, as a cover or camouflage for the real war they meant to fight," writes McKale (History/Clemson Univ.). That was the war against Jews, no matter where in the world they lived; anti-Semitism was central to Nazi thought and practice. Pragmatic considerations kept Hitler from immediately attending to his promise in Mein Kampf to rid Europe of Jews on coming to power in 1933; propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels explained that "both domestic and foreign pressures prevented a more radical anti-Jewish policy," a point that sorely displeased party radicals and may have contributed to the purge of Ernst Rohm's SA soon thereafter. Measures to remove Jews from business proved unpopular and were not uniformly enforced, McKale adds; the disappearance of Jewish business leaders would have endangered Germany's recovery from depression, and Jewish firms employed many Aryan workers. Still, when rising international opposition to German expansionism made war inevitable, the Nazi regime renewed its campaign against the Jews with murderous force. Even then, the author notes, not all Germans and not even all Nazis shared the regime's hostility to Jews. Members of the killing units on the Eastern Front who refused to participate in the slaughter were quietly reassigned to other posts; "none suffered punishment for their refusal to involve themselves in the grisly work," McKale argues, which puts the lie to postwar protestations that had Germans opposed the genocide they would have been shot. The author alsoobserves that most ordinary Germans did in fact know full well of the murders taking place all around them-and so did the Allies, at least as early as 1941. Breaks little ground and enters a crowded field, but nonetheless: a useful one-volume survey.

Kirkus Reviews