Para esre autor, judeu, o holocausto é o genecídio, é o centro da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Perante esta visão etnocêntrica, quando compara o holocausto com outros genocídios, passados ou contemporâneos, é só para mostrar o que o holocausto teve de brutal, de bárbaro e de violência organizada. Por outro lado, todos são culpados, alemães, povos dominados e aliados - uns porque perpetrara,. outros porque colaboraram e outros porque nada fizeram para o impedir. Todos os povos são culpados do holocausto excepto os judeus. Porém, a dúvida que fica da leitura desta obra é porque tantos povos e tão diferentes ao longo da História, odiaram de morte os judeus?
Contextualizando a obra no tempo que lhe pertence, a obra merce ser consultada. ( )

El prestigioso historiador Robert S. Wistrich analiza la naturaleza apocalíptica del proyecto racial nazi, la escala paneuropea de colaboración en el exterminio masivo y la indiferencia de los aliados occidentales.El libro definitivo sobre el Holocausto, escrito por Robert Solomon Wistrich, la autoridad máxima en la materia.Con Hitler y el Holocausto se inaugura en México el regreso al mercado de la Colección de Historia Universal.El exterminio de seis millones de judíos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial fue el acontecimiento más terrorífico de la historia del siglo XX. Este esclarecedor libro proporciona nuevas respuestas a la gran pregunta de por qué ocurrió el Holocausto bajo el régimen de Adolf Hitler. El prestigioso historiador Robert S. Wistrich explora la fatídica conjunción entre la política de Hitler basada en el mito racial, la larga tradición de antisemitismo, las revueltas sociales y los avances técnicos de la modernidad.En este vívido relato, Wistrich analiza con brillantez la naturaleza apocalíptica del proyecto racial nazi, la escala paneuropea de colaboración en el exterminio masivo y la indiferencia de los aliados occidentales, del Vaticano y de las iglesias cristianas ante la terrible situación de los judíos. Wistrich se alinea con las últimas teorías desarrolladas por historiadores que tratan de comprender por qué ocurrió el Holocausto y compone la visión más actualizada disponible de esta tragedia.www.megustaleer.com.mx

While well written, this book suffered from the extremes - in some cases going into so much detail that it became confusing to follow and then immediately jumping into vast generalizations making assumptions about knowledge the reader may not already have. Finally gave up with only about 50 pages to go. ( )

3656. Hitler and the Holocaust - Robert S. Wistrich (read 29 Nov 2002) This 2001 book by a professor of modern Jewish history at a Jerusalem university gives a succinct account of his subject. There is no way that the brutal actions of so many involved in carrying out the Holocaust can be explained except that the devil inspired them. It is a sad, sad chapter in human history and one shich should be read about periodically so as to continue to realize that such things could happen in our times. ( )

In Hitler and the Holocaust, part of the Modern Library Chronicles series, Robert S. Wistrich is less concerned with detailing the "what" and "how" of this century's most infamous genocide than he is in answering the seemingly unanswerable: "Why?"

World War II, Wistrich posits, was not only a German attempt to obtain territorial hegemony but simultaneously (and perhaps more importantly, in Hitler's eyes) a crusade against the "mythical Jewish enemy," those people he felt were the source of "all evils"--internationalism, pacifism, democracy, Marxism, and Christianity among them. Jews were nonpeople--vermin, bacteria, a contagion--and therefore "unworthy of life." This ideology was most immediately a reaction to Germany's defeat in World War I and the economic chaos and national humiliation that followed, but Wistrich suggests, this "apocalyptic theology" was only the ghastly tip of an anti-Jewish iceberg that had floated on European seas for the best part of two millennia. The Nazi agenda was aided and abetted, Wistrich goes on, as much by the indifference toward and abandonment of the Jews by most European Christian religious bodies (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) and American and British political exigencies as it was by modern technology.

This is a grave, dense book, one almost entirely unrelieved by anecdote. It is, as well, rigorous, adamant, and sure to generate controversy. Though it catalogues many individual trees, many of them difficult to behold, its primary value is to look upon the entire Holocaust forest and to describe that disturbing, grotesque panorama in eschatological terms. --H. O'Billovitch

From Publishers Weekly
Wistrich, professor of modern Jewish history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has masterfully condensed four decades of Holocaust research into an accessible and informative book that will benefit specialists and lay readers alike. This new addition to the Modern Library's Chronicles series of short histories is organized thematically, exploring 2,000 years of anti-Semitism, the context and events that yielded the Third Reich and what differentiates the Holocaust from other 20th-century genocides. As depicted here, the few rays of light offered by the noble actions of Denmark, Italy and Bulgaria are snuffed out by the Protestant and Catholic churches' inactivity, the shameful behavior of Britain and the U.S., and the atrocious actions of Germans and other Europeans, particularly the German allies. Wistrich (The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph) continually refers and responds to other Holocaust studies; of particular interest is the controversy concerning "ordinary men" and "ordinary Germans" that erupted with Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Christopher Browning's studies. Wistrich draws a connection between the infamous Nazi euthanasia program and later developments, and briefly discusses the debate between "functionalists" (those who believe the Holocaust to be an outcome of the war) and "intentionalists" (those who believe Hitler always intended to exterminate the Jews). The general reader will be interested in Wistrich's detailed description of the decision to implement the "Final Solution." The most provocative chapter, though, is surely the last, on "Modernity and the Holocaust." Most commentators (secular and religious) have argued that the Holocaust represents the complete antithesis of Western civilization, but some scholars interpret it as the logical, brutal outcome of Western modernity's bureaucratic, technocratic and rationalist impulse. Wistrich's balanced, nuanced discussion is illuminating.