This is an important book covering not only the facts of the history of the Holocaust but also reactions to it in various countries across Europe and wider from the immediate post war period until the 2010s when the revised edition of the book was published. One of the key trends is the argument about the extent of collaboration and co-operation from non-Nazis in various countries in persecuting and killing Jews. In the immediate aftermath of the war, and until the early 1960s, the emphasis was on post-war reconstruction, and the priority was the formation of Cold War alliances. In the West, this meant there was a lazy assumption for example that the German people collectively were merely passive victims of a small band of Nazi leaders and the SS. There was a widespread belief that the latter groups were solely responsible for atrocities against Jews and others, rather than the German army being key perpetrators, and collaboration and acquiescence by many ordinary non-Jewish Germans. It also meant much wilful blindness in, for example, France at the role of French police in deporting Jews to their deaths, often without or ahead of any Nazi pressure having been exerted. In the East, Cold War realignments meant that the Soviet Union emphasised their own central role in the anti-Fascist struggle and that Jewish victims of mass killings such as that at Babi Yar in Ukraine were described merely as killings of "peaceful Soviet citizens", denying the anti-Semitic element of the murders.

This situation started to change, at least in the non-communist world, from the 1960s with events such as the Eichmann trial reawakening consciousness of the Holocaust, and the advent of the new 1960s generation questioning the roles of their parents during the war. In Russia and Eastern Europe, this process did not start until after the fall of communism and has been rather more uneven, given the much more virulent historical role of anti-Semitism there and the more active part played by many non-Jewish and non-Nazi people in persecuting and killing Jews.

The book also looks at themes such as the debasing of the terms Holocaust and genocide when they are applied to other violent and killing episodes, often emotively or by states or actors that have a particular political perspective in mind in so doing: "large-scale killing alone, however reprehensible, does not compare with the Holocaust, because the attempt to define and destroy an entire ethnic group and its complete culture represents a different scale and intention of assault, indeed a global assault". It also deals with the role of Holocaust denial or minimisation, the latter of which sometimes overlaps with the relativism mentioned above.

This is a fascinating and obviously horrific book, and makes for very difficult reading in places, not only because of its subject matter, but also it is written in a sometimes overly academic style which can come across as a bit dry. ( )

Powerful recount which covers what happened country by country and time period by time period. The prime argument is that the Final Solution was core to the Third Reich’s vision and mission rather than a cause rather than a consequence of WW2. The book also describes the role occupied and allied countries played and how it fed into Nazi objectives. Also describes the politics of remembering the holocaust in different parts of the world including the Middle East. I was gripped. I dropped a star because upon occasion the content did not always appear relevant to the heading and would be better housed elsewhere But all in all a great book on a horrific phase in history. ( )