The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945

New York: Bantam Books, 1979. Bantam Edition [stated], Fifth printing [stated]. Mass market paperback. Good. Vincent Kotschar (Maps). xxviii, 610, [2] pages. Footnotes. Maps. Appendices. Notes. Sources. Index. The War Against the Jews is a major work of synthesis, providing for the first time a full account of the holocaust. Lucy Dawidowicz (née Schildkret; June 16, 1915 - December 5, 1990) was an American historian and writer. She wrote books about modern Jewish history, in particular, about the Holocaust. Dawidowicz took an Intentionalist line on the origins of the Holocaust, contending that, beginning with the end of World War I on November 11, 1918, Hitler conceived his master plans, and everything he did from then on was directed toward the achievement of his goal, and that he had "openly espoused his program of annihilation" when he wrote Mein Kampf in 1924. Dawidowicz's conclusion was: "Through a maze of time, Hitler's decision of November 1918 led to Operation Barbarossa. There never had been any ideological deviation or wavering determination. In the end only the question of opportunity mattered." In her view, the overwhelming majority of Germans subscribed to the völkische antisemitism from the 1870s onward, and it was this morbid antisemitism that attracted support for Hitler and the Nazis. Dawidowicz maintained that from the Middle Ages onward, German Christian society and culture were suffused with antisemitism and there was a direct link from medieval pogroms to the Nazi death camps of the 1940s. The War Against the Jews is a 1975 book by Lucy Dawidowicz. The book researches the Holocaust of the European Jewry during World War II. The author contends that Adolf Hitler pursued his policies to eliminate Jewish populations throughout Europe even to the detriment of pragmatic wartime actions such as moving troops and securing supply lines. As an example, Dawidowicz notes that Hitler delayed railcars providing supplies to front line troops in the Soviet Union so that Jews could be deported by rail from the USSR to death camps. She uses records of "one-way" rail tickets as additional documentation of those sent to camps. Dawidowicz also draws a line of "anti-Semitic descent" from Martin Luther to Hitler, writing that both men were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews. She contends that similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings, especially On the Jews and Their Lies, and modern anti-Semitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass (Jew-hatred), which she traces back to the biblical Haman's advice to Ahasuerus. She argues that though modern anti-Semitism has its roots in German nationalism, the foundation of Christian anti-Semitism was laid by the Catholic Church and "upon which Luther built." The book also provides detailed listings by country of the number of Jews killed in World War II. Dawidowicz researched birth and death records in many cities of prewar Europe to come up with a death toll of 5,933,900 Jews.