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The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 | 
 enlarge | Author: Saul Friedlander
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 33707
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 896
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.9
ISBN: 0060930489
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318
EAN: 9780060930486
ASIN: 0060930489
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New & Unread Book with Remainder Marked- May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf- Instock For Immediate Shipping
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Product Description
The enactment of the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews depended upon many factors, including the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. Necessary also was the victims' willingness to submit, often with the hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise. The Years of Extermination, the completion of Saul Friedlaender's major historical opus on Nazi Germany and the Jews, explores the convergence of the various aspects of this most systematic and sustained of modern genocides. In this unparalleled work—based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices from diaries, letters, and memoirs—the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Eyewitness Accounts of the Horror That Was the Holocaust December 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Freidlander has strung together a narrative of the horrors of the Holocaust as seen in the eyewitness accounts of Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders, and survivors. Each chapter is the culmination of the accounts of journals kept by as diverse a group as schoolchildren such as the famous Anne Frank, Various Jewish leaders, simple shopkeepers, laborers and farmers, German soldiers, Slavic witnesses, and a multitude of others.
The book is very hard to read yet compelling. I could only read 10-20 pages at a sitting without becoming upset at man's inhumanity. The life reported in the eastern Ghettoes is especially grim as people report in a manner of fact manner "Oh only 20 people starved to death yesterday." Diaries just suddenly end abruptly as the writers succumb to starvation and illness or are taken away. The deaths of children are especially hard to take.
It is amazing that save in Hungary which resisted Nazi pressure until occupied and Denmark where the population managed to smuggle most of their Jewish neighbors to safety in Sweden (my father in law had two uncles in the Danish resistance who's health was wrecked after being arrested by the Gestapo in 1945)most of the rest of occupied Europe actively cooperated with the roundup and deportation of the Jews to the Death Camps. Vichy France being a notorious example.
The failure of Jewish leaders to realize what was happening until too late is also present in their writings. They thought that their Segregation would be the same as in other periods of European History where their ancestors had endured abuse but the population had survived. By the time they realized that they were being set aside for extermination it was too late and they tried their best to keep as many as they could 'safe' for as long as possible.
The German diaries show that the SS and Wehrmacht soldiers who committed the deeds were not psychopaths but normal people doing their duty. One Auschwitz Doctor described his evil deeds then finished with a report of what he and his wife had for dinner.
The book would be a good place to start for a narrative history of the Holocaust. We are touched by some of the writers humanity and appalled by the inhumanity of many more. Perhaps if enough people read their stories another such Human Tragedy might be prevented.
 Very Dry, Scholarly Work October 16, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is the kind of work whose rating depends exclusively on what kind of reading experience you're looking for. If you are a scholar of the Holocaust and German policies during World War II as it relates to the "Jewish problem", this will perhaps be the gold standard. If, on the other hand, you're merely in search of an educational and captivating read, you'd best look elsewhere.
At its core, this book is a compilation of hundreds of sources that chronicle the evolution of Nazi policies from 1939-1945. Sadly, while the author quotes from numerous diaries and journals, the individual experiences of many of the victims comprise but a small part of the narrative; far too small in my opinion. Instead, the text is loaded with literally hundreds of excerpts from Nazi speeches and policy papers, all variations on the underlying theme of, "We're going to kill all the Jews". As a result, the writing is dry to say the least.
This book has perhaps two hundred pages of end notes and source material, an indication of its scholarly weight. Again, if you're doing research or enjoy such writing, this is the book for you. I think it says something that the writer, on a topic as emotionally laden as the Holocaust, left this reader feeling nothing, whereas other books on the topic have left me in tears.
Astonishing history of our darkest hour August 15, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
First of all set aside a long time to read this. The author devotes a great deal of detail into establishing his theories and then proves them one by one. First of all he destroys the myth that either the German people or anyone in the occupied countries did not know what was going on. In fact he clearly demonstrates that many played active roles in if not betraying Jews, they chose to be blind to their plight.
We also get an in depth view of how the German killing machine turned killing and murder into an efficient, factory like process. This is what is so scary about this process. Lastly, he makes it clear that this was a German process with great assistance from the occupied countries, thus dispelling the myth of this being the SS or some "bad eggs." This book is finally brave enough to tell the truth about the Holocaust.
An Essential Study of Nazi Germany and the Jews July 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is truly a magisterial study of the Holocaust (Shoah), well deserving of its award of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, and follows the author's earlier volume covering the 1933-1939 period. It runs some 663 pages of text, includes 128 pages of meticulous notes, and 51 pages of bibliographic references. It places heavy reliance not only on contemporary documents, but also on published and unpublished memoirs and diaries (such as that of Victor Klemperer, also reviewed on Amazon). The author has a unique perspective, since he was born in Prague in but grew up in France between 1940 and 1944 during the Nazi occupation. He spent part of this period in a Catholic boarding school and considered converting. His parents were both lost.
There are many fine books on the Holocaust. But Friedlander's work is unique and distinctive in contribution. He does not just recount in graphic detail how the extermination program progressed (although there is plenty of this horror discussed), he explains how it developed. It is not until page 339 that he even gets to the Wannsee conference. Rather, he focuses upon how the Nazi Jewish policy evolved from harasment to racial extermination. The author makes the somewhat surprising argument (to me at least) that the Nazis did not start out at the beginning of the war or earlier to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Rather, the policy evolved as the war developed and various demands encouraged this program to be developed. In fact, it is not until late 1942 or early 1943 that the extermination policy was implemented by the Nazi leadership. Truly an interesting argument to say the least.
Given the author's previous biography of Pius XII, there is much discussion of the Catholic Church's reaction to all this. The author also discusses the Jewish Councils set up by the Nazis and whether they sacrificed the "less valuable" Jews in an effort to spare the more elite groups--another interesting topic. The book proceeds chronologically from 1939 through to 1945. Friedlander is able to balance a large number of topics skillfully as he develops his narrative. Many individual countries and their involvement in Holocaust implementation are discussed. The competing goals of extermination versus the use of Jews as slave laborers in defense industries is also covered. The author also wants to make it explicitly clear that ordinary Germans well knew that extermination was underway. Finally, one of the most surprising aspects to me was the author's explanation of how the determination to complete extermination only increased as it became obvious the war had been lost.
Friedlander could have written an emotional account, given his background. Instead, we see the work of a master historian true to his craft and unwilling to sacrifice professional standards in his analysis of a topic that surely was of the greatest pain to himself. We can all benefit from his professional dedication.
 Truly magisterial but something is missing July 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a magisterial book, as one of the critics defined it. Not only does it contain an exhaustive research, poignant diarists' quotations, and a vast collection of amazing facts (such as the refusal of the Hungerians to surrender their Jews to Hitler, or the indifference of starving and desperate parents to the deportation of their children), it also, and most importantly, "nails" the Nazi crimes and criminals as no other book has ever done. In the presence of this book, Holocaust deniers will be forever silenced. Furthermore, I can hardly imagine the pain Prof. Friedlander, a Holocaust survivor whose parents were murdered by the Nazis, had subjected himself to in writing this tome of a book. It is a brave, sacrificial work.
I agree, though, with some of the critics' complaints that the book, although riveting, is at times a difficult slog. Maps and pictures would have helped. Also chapters' titles would have helped. In the notes section, printing the chapter #s and the pages #s at the top of the page would have helped a great deal. But isn't it the function of the editors to notice such things? My most important criticism, though, concerns Friedlander's omissions. The Nazi evil sears the pages, as it did the Jews, and the victims' cries for help plow like an ax, as Kafka would put it, in the frozen sea within us. One cannot forget those screams, cannot take the ax out and toss it to oblivion. The bystanders, too, are revealed in their shame and cowardice, like thousands and thousands of shadows crowding the gladiatorial arena. But one group of people is noticeably missing: the heroes who risked their lives to save Jews. Wallenberg is given a brief mention in half a sentence; the Danish rescuers are mentioned in a mere short paragraph; and Schindler and Hannah Senesh are not even mentioned. Thousands of heroic gentiles are listed in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., but Friedlander has found no room for even some of them in his book. If an act of courage is mentioned, it is disposed of quickly, as if it did not matter. But it did, and it does. Granted, Friedlander's subject moves in a different direction, but his omitting of the heroes does them--and all humanity perhaps--a grave injustice.
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