One might wonder why we need another book on the Holocaust. As Dan Stone points out, ‘the historiography of the Holocaust has been unimaginably large’. But this historiography is still responding to new developments and research. Stone’s new book is as up-to-date an overview as you are likely to find. At the same time, he presents a strong argument that the Holocaust should be understood as the result of ideological beliefs – beliefs shaped by a fascist identification of modernity’s ‘rootlessness’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ as a symptom of Jewish ‘domination’.
Stone emphasises the basic fact that it was the Nazis who planned and executed the Holocaust. He stresses the central role of the SS in the murder of the Jews, but also points to the killing sprees carried out by the Ordnungspolizei and the participation of the Wehrmacht. Reading his book, one becomes aware how the Holocaust was organised with the full knowledge and involvement of the German ministerial bureaucracy. But Stone goes to considerable lengths to demonstrate that the murder of the Jews was achieved in collaboration with other countries: ‘The Holocaust was a continent-wide crime with many perpetrators, not just Germans.’
