In 1939, the Nazi regime’s plans for redrawing the demographic map of Eastern Europe entailed the expulsion of millions of Jews. By the fall of 1941, these plans had shifted from expulsion to systematic and total mass murder of all Jews within the Nazi grasp. The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed and comprehensive analysis ever written of what took place during this crucial period—of how, precisely, the Nazis’ racial policies evolved from persecution and “ethnic cleansing” to the Final Solution of the Holocaust.

 

Focusing on the months between the German conquest of Poland in September 1939–which brought nearly two million additional Jews under Nazi control—and the beginning of the deportation of Jews to the death camps in the spring of 1942, Christopher R. Browning describes how Poland became a laboratory for experiments in racial policies, from expulsion and decimation to ghettoization and exploitation under local occupation authorities. He reveals how the subsequent attack on the Soviet Union opened the door for an immense radicalization of Nazi Jewish policy—and marked the beginning of the Final Solution. Meticulously documenting the process that led to this fatal development, Browning shows that Adolf Hitler was the key decision-maker throughout, approving major escalations in Nazi persecution of the Jews at victory-induced moments of euphoria. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this groundbreaking work provides an essential chapter in the history of the Holocaust.

Christopher R. Browning is Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books on Nazism and the Holocaust, including Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers and Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.

"Christopher Browning has produced a standard of historical work, which is accordingly characterized by scholarly precision and intellectual honesty."—Gerhard Hirschfeld, Journal of Modern History

“Extraordinary. . . . A masterpiece of the historian’s art.”—Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly

"[Browning's] massive account is utterly convincing in its historical detail."—Foreign Affairs

"The definitive work on the road Germany took toward the Final Solution during the crucial first three years of the war."—István Deák, New York Review of Books

"Magisterial."—New York Times Book Review

"Superb. . . . [Browning] has created an eloquent, painstaking narrative of how the Final Solution evolved."—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal

History Book Club Main Selection, Book-of-the-Month Club Selection, Military Book Club Selection

 

2004 National Jewish Book Award, sponsored by the Jewish Book Council, holocaust category winner

 

2004 "Book of the Year," sponsored by the Atlantic Monthly