The literature on the ‘Final Solution’, the attempted genocide of the Jews during the Second World War, is already enormous, but many of the critical questions within this tragic chapter remain clouded or unresolved.1 At the same time the subject is being taught at an ever-growing number of institutions around the world to a swelling band of students.2 In several countries the Holocaust has also become the focus of heated public debate. This has been most notable in Germany where the place of the Third Reich and the persecution of the Jews in German history naturally assumes a highly charged significance.3 Meanwhile, attempts have been made by practitioners of Holocaust Denial to exploit the fractures in the historiography and so undermine the veracity of the Final Solution.4