Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. By Ian Kershaw. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. 2008. Pp. vi þ 394.Cloth $32.50. ISBN 978-0-300-12427-9.

摘要

In the past ten years, the field of scholarship on the Nazi era in general and thenHolocaust in particular has seen massive transformations.Why read a new booknthat combines texts published for the most part in the 1980s and 1990s, even ifnthey were written by one of the most preeminent historians? Ian Kershawnhimself seems doubtful about the merits of this anthology, especially in lightnof the fact that the editors arranged his articles along topical, not chronologicalnlines which makes it more difficult to retrace the evolution of Kershaw’sninterpretation. Still, for anyone who savors highly insightful essays written bynan expert historian who participated in all major debates on the subject, thisnis an excellent book. Four chapters—“Hitler and the Final Solution,”n“Popular Opinion and the Jews in Nazi Germany,” “The Final Solution innHistoriography,” and “The Uniqueness of Nazism”—guide the reader on anpath that leads to the currently prevailing interpretations of the Third Reich,nits leader, and its followers.