Research Catalog

Title

Why did the heavens not darken? : the "final solution" in history / Arno J. Mayer.

Author

Mayer, Arno J.

Publication

London : Verso, 2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xv, 524 pages : maps; 24 cm.

Summary

Was the extermination of the Jews part of the Nazi plan from the very start? Arno Mayer offers a startling and compelling answer to this question, which is much debated among historians today. In doing so, he provides one of the most thorough and convincing explanations of how the genocide came about in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? which provoked widespread interest and controversy when first published. Mayer demonstrates that, while the Nazis anti-Semitism was always virulent, it did not become genocidal until well into the Second World War, when the failure of their massive, all-or-nothing campaign against Russia triggered the Final Solution. He details the steps leading up to this enormity, showing how the institutional and ideological frameworks that made it possible evolved, and how both related to the debacle in the Eastern theater. In this way, the Judeocide is placed within the larger context of European history, showing how similar "holy causes" in the past have triggered analogous -- if far less cataclysmic -- infamies. -- Back cover.

Series Statement

Verso world history series

Subjects

• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
• 1939-1945
• Jewish Holocaust > (1939-1945)
• Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Causes

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 483-507) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Prologue: Historical Signposts --- The Golden Age --- The East European Rimland --- The Syncretism of Mein Kampf --- The Founding and Consolidation of the Nazi Regime: Mainsprings of Deemancipation --- Expansion and War, 1938-40: Catalysts for Forced Emigration, Ghettoization, and Deportation --- Conceiving Operation Barbarossa: Conquest and Crusade --- The Miscarriage of Barbarossa: From Pogrom to Babi Yar --- Wannsee: Toward the "Final Solution" --- Waging War to the Death: The Rape of Europe --- Auschwitz --- The Extermination Sites: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka --- In The Maelstrom of Final Defeat: The Death Marches and the Wrack of Hungarian Jewry ---- Appendix, Memory and History: On the Poverty of Remembering and Forgetting the Judeocide.

ISBN

9781844677771

LCCN

^^2012426640

OCLC

• 817892539
• SCSB-11979293

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library