Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing

The first comparative, comprehensive history of Nazi mass killing—showing how genocidal policies were crucial to the regime’s strategy to win the war

Nazi Germany killed approximately 13 million civilians and other noncombatants in deliberate policies of mass murder, mostly during the war years. Almost half the victims were Jewish, systematically destroyed in the Holocaust, the core of the Nazis’ pan-European racial purification programme.

Alex Kay argues that the genocide of European Jew...