The Years of Extermination

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945

by Saul Friedlander

Saul Friedlander's compelling THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS 1939-1945 completes the masterwork of history that began with Friedlander's NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS: THE YEARS OF PERSECUTION 1933-1939. Friedlander provides an in-depth account of the decisions of Hitler and the Third Reich to eliminate Jews across Europe--all drawn from Friedlander's exhaustive research of official documents. He also traces, in precise everyday detail, the effects of these decisions on the Jewish people and their experiences as recorded in the many memoirs, diaries, and eyewitness accounts that survived their makers. These public and private accounts, through Friedlander's deft scholarship, provide new perspectives on the events of that time and answer a multiplicity of questions about history and the Holocaust.

Editions of The Years of Extermination

ISBN

9780060190439

Binding/Format

Hardcover

Publisher

Harpercollins

Date

2007

Price

$9.97

Fair

Publisher Notes

With THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION, Saul Friedländer completes his major historical work on Nazi Germany and the Jews. The book describes and interprets the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe. The enactment of German extermination policies and measures depended on the cooperation of local authorities, the assistance of police forces, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. This implementation depended as well on the victims’ readiness to submit to orders, often with the hope of attenuating them or of surviving long enough to escape the German vise.

Media Reviews

"Friedlander seems to have read virtually every printed source and secondary work on his vast subject....His judgments are scrupulous and levelheaded. And he treats the historical controversies that have raged around so many of the he covers with untiring fair-mindedness. He writes without a trace of polemic or of facile retrospective moralizing. The book meticulously satisfies every requirement of professional historical writing....He has written a masterpiece that will endure."

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