The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany

Considering the number of reference books that have already been devoted to the Third Reich, librarians might wonder why another should be needed. The author suggests a persuasive answer: “Nazi Germany and particularly the Holocaust … present perhaps the greatest challenge to the explanatory powers of historians”, and: “interpretations of its cause and meaning, like interpretations of Nazism itself, are inevitably morally and politically charged”, so that in consequence there are remarkably many interpretations of the known facts, and it is this stress on historiography which distinguishes this book from some of its competitors. It has been organized in several...