This is the first investigation of anti-Semitism and the prehistory of the Holocaust from a comprehensive European perspective.
The Holocaust cannot be explained only by examining German history. Starting in 1880, driven by nationalism and social crises, hostility toward Jews took a dramatic rise in both western and eastern Europe. Without in any way downplaying the culpability of German actors, historian Götz Aly shows how rivalries, envy, discrimination and pogroms throughout Europe paved the way for mass deportations and murder. For the first time, modern anti-Semitism is presented as a crossborder phenomenon. Aly opens up a new perspective on the European, and not just German, prehistory of the Holocaust.
