The Holocaust, Laurence Rees
The Holocaust, Laurence Rees
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The Holocaust
A New History

Author: Laurence Rees

Narrator: Eric Vale

Unabridged: 19 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 04/18/2017

Synopsis

“This is by far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development.”―Antony Beevor, bestselling author of Stalingrad

Laurence Rees has spent twenty-five years meeting survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Now, he combines their never-before-seen eyewitness testimony with the latest academic research to create a uniquely accessible and authoritative account of the Holocaust.
 
In The Holocaust, Rees offers an examination of the decision-making process of the Nazi state, and in the process reveals the series of escalations that cumulatively created the horror. He argues that while hatred of the Jews was always at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, what happened cannot be fully understood without considering the murder of the Jews alongside plans to kill large numbers of non-Jews, including the disabled, Sinti, and Roma, plus millions of Soviet civilians.
 
Through a chronological, intensely readable narrative, featuring enthralling eyewitness testimony and the latest academic research, this is a compelling new account of the worst crime in history.
 

About Laurence Rees

Laurence Rees is the writer, director, and producer of the BBC TV series The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler. The former head of BBC Television History programs, he has specialized for the last twenty years in writing books and making television documentaries about the Nazis and World War II. Previous projects that were both series and books include Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution and World War II Behind Closed Doors. In 2006 Rees won the British Book Award for History Book of the Year for Auschwitz. Educated at Oxford University, he was appointed in 2009 a senior visiting fellow in the International History Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2010 he launched the multimedia website ww2history.com, which won best in class awards in the education and reference categories at the 2011 Interactive Media Awards. He lives in London.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Macy_Novels at Night on December 22, 2018

Wonderful book for anyone that is studying the Holocaust or just looking to learn more. This is an in-depth look at the whole situation from the start to finish. The beginning offers a good look at why the whole thing started, and progresses through each year. Eye witness accounts and stories fill t......more

Goodreads review by Omar Ali on January 26, 2018

Historian Laurence Rees has spent a lifetime studying the Holocaust, and it shows in this book. This is a very readable (and horrifying) retelling that begins in post-WWI Germany and details all the steps in the somewhat haphazard but ultimately effective process that led to the most horrifying mass......more

Goodreads review by Christopher on October 05, 2022

Engaging narrative history of the Holocaust from historian and filmmaker Rees (The Nazis: A Warning from History). Where most writers on the Holocaust, understandably daunted by the subject, often resort to simply compiling its atrocities at encyclopedic length, Rees tries to make his work both comp......more

Goodreads review by Leo on January 04, 2018

Of all the books in the airport, there were only two I wanted to read on my journey back from Glasgow to Oslo. (I'd like to point out that in my suitcase I had maybe 100 secondhand books I'd picked up from charity shops over Xmas, but didn't want to spoil the opportunity to buy a new book, so I took......more

Goodreads review by Bon Tom on February 17, 2020

Once a year I go on my Holocaust spree... wait, that didn't sound good. I meant to say that over a few weeks, I binge on Holocaust literature, both fiction and documentary. During that period, I also watch related movies. You know, the usual suspects. Schindler's List, The Pianist... There may be some......more

Quotes

“Contributed magnificently to the vast corpus of Holocaust literature.... Serve[s] as an excellent guide for the perplexed.”—Wall Street Journal

“Rees has compiled a readable, moving, and comprehensive overview of this scholarship, enlivened by vivid first‑person reminiscences... Readers looking for a single‑volume history of the Holocaust will have trouble finding one better than this.”—ForeignAffairs

“Rees has spent his life researching, writing, and making documentaries about the Holocaust, and his new book is full of facts and stories that landed on the cutting‑room floor when he was editing his other works. It is a long and detailed explanation of why the Holocaust happened, of why Hitler was embraced by millions, of why what's thought of by many as an aberration wasn't an aberration at all but a result of all the history and politics and religion and prejudice that went on for centuries before.”—Boston Globe

“Anyone wanting a compelling, highly readable explanation of how and why the Holocaust happened, drawing on recent scholarship and impressively incorporating moving and harrowing interviews with victims as well as chilling accounts by perpetrators, need look no further than Rees's brilliant book.”—Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of To Hell and Back and Hitler, A Biography

“A masterpiece... Rees' best book yet”—Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War

“This is by far the clearest book ever written about the Holocaust, and also the best at explaining its origins and grotesque mentality, as well as its chaotic development.”—Antony Beevor, bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin, and The Second World War

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