ABSTRACT
Nazi Germany and particularly the Holocaust, the signature crime of the twentieth century, present perhaps the greatest challenge to the explanatory powers of historians. Many explanations for Nazism have been offered in the course of the nine decades since the first fascist movement was founded in Italy in 1919. The most important interpretations are discussed in the section on historiography that follows the chronology in Part I. Whether we understand why the Nazis rose to power and why the Holocaust happened any better at the beginning of the twenty-first century than contemporaries did at the time remains an open question. History is, after all, an ongoing argument conducted from different and ever-changing perspectives very much dependent on the unpredictable course of events, changing public attitudes, and varying personal loyalties. But more than 60 years of intensive research have incontestably given us a clearer understanding of how the Nazis rose to power and how the Holocaust occurred. This book is intended to provide in readily accessible form the basic factual and conceptual tools and resources to understand how the Nazis established and consolidated their rule in Germany, how they drove the nation to war, how they committed their terrible atrocities, how they were resisted and eventually destroyed, and how their actions have been viewed by posterity. It sets forth basic information on what happened, how it happened, where it happened, when it happened, and who were the major actors in Germany who made it happen. By describing how the Nazi era has been interpreted, I hope this book also provides insight into why these catastrophic events occurred, without, however, presuming to offer definitive explanations to questions that historians have wrestled with for years and that will continue to challenge historians for many years to come.
