ABSTRACT
Until the later nineteenth century, Jews were uniquely stigmatized within the European social hierarchy, often through stereotypical motifs that endure, in places, to the present. Germany was widely viewed as one of the more tolerant European societies. A great deal of scholarly energy has been devoted to Adolf Hitler’s and the Nazis’ evolving relationship with the German public. Victor Klemperer’s diaries provide an "extraordinarily acute analysis of the day-to-day workings of German life under Hitler" and "a singular chronicle of German society’s progressive Nazification." Many of the central themes of the Nazis’ attempted destruction of European Jews have served as touchstones for the broader field of comparative genocide studies. The depiction of Jews as having gone meekly to their deaths was first advanced by Raul Hilberg in his 1961 treatise The Destruction of the European Jews, and was then enshrined by Hannah Arendt in her controversial account of Eichmann in Jerusalem.
