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history Also underestimated by the West was the level of opposition to Hitler, both among the German public and among his own military top brass and civil servants. Public discontent is, of course, always hard to gauge in a police state. Even harder to judge was the veracity of the inflated rumours of German military muscle that were fed to the West by Hitler’s opponents in his own Abwehr (military intelligence service) in the hope of alarming the West into taking tougher action against him. Most unfortunate of all, in retrospect, was the reluctance of the Western powers to decapitate the Nazi regime by simply assassinating Hitler or encouraging his internal opponents to do so. Although there was the risk of making him a martyr, the information presented here suggests that the regime would have crumbled without the Führer. In particular, the Oster Plot, aimed at replacing Hitler with a British-style constitutional monarchy, supported by Winston Churchill when on the backbenches, failed largely because of Chamberlain’s capitulation at Munich. This book argues convincingly, like so many others, that the right juncture for a Western military ultimatum was over Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Allied military strength, and especially air power, far exceeded Hitler’s. Less familiar is the suggestion here that Western guarantees to Po l a n d a y e a r l a t e r we r e e q u a l l y m i s g u i d e d . The Poles, far from being innocent victims, had earlier intrigued with Hitler over the partitioning of Czechoslovakia. However, they refused to negotiate with him over the status of the majority German city of Danzig, given to them at Versailles, or of the Polish Corridor, which divided the bulk of Germany from the province of East Prussia. The evidence cited here suggests that Hitler had little appetite for a major European war but may have been provoked into his invasion of Poland by a combination of Western threats and Polish intransigence. Hitler’s main long-term objective was to smash the Soviet Union, an aim with which many Western appeasers sympathised. Even the treaty with his fellow dictator Stalin is presented in this book as a clever subterfuge, designed to lull the latter into a false sense of security. How this might have played out without Western intervention, and how long Hitler would have survived discontent at home and in occupied central and eastern Europe, are questions that remain unanswerable. What is evident from this remarkably thorough and well-researched study is that false intelligence presents many pitfalls, as we see all too clearly in our own era of dodgy dossiers. mary fulbrook Many Faces of Genocide The Holocaust: An Unfinished History By Dan Stone (Pelican 464pp £22) People glancing at this book might ask whether we need another general his- tor y of the Holocaust. There are already well-established syntheses and original over views, including Saul Friedländer’s path-breaking two-volume histor y of the persecution and extermination of Europe’s Jews, in which he called for an ‘integrated history’ giving voice to vic- tims. What does Dan Stone’s latest have to add to the existing literature? The Holocaust is, as the subtitle of this book indicates, an almost overwhelming topic to tackle and one on which it is impossible to say the final word. Even the concept itself is problematic. While some historians interpret the term widely, to encompass the persecution and murder of a range of groups – including Sinti and Roma, and the mentally and physically disabled – others, such as Dan Stone and his late colleague David Cesarani, prefer a narrower definition relating specifically to the Jews. While some see the Holocaust as one case in a longer histor y of genocide or situate it in a wider framework of colonialism, others see the mass murder of Jews as sui generis. Even the ver y term is disputed. Some prefer the Hebrew word Shoah (‘catastrophe’), the title of Claude Lanzmann’s masterly film of 1985, to ‘Holocaust ’ (‘totally burnt ’), popularised by the 1978 American television miniseries of that name. Other historians, such as Richard J Evans, insist on using the Nazis’ own phrase, the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’. Beyond the conceptual debates, there are issues of scope and explanatory framework. Many older histories focused quite narrowly on German policies and perpetrators, but the last thirty years have seen a huge expansion of research on both victim experiences and also perpetration and collaboration across Europe. This is particularly the case for eastern Europe, where sources became more accessible following the collapse of communism, though access remains constrained by political considerations in some cases (see, for instance, recent controversies over complicity in Poland, Lithuania and Latvia) and has been further compromised by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The expansion of empirical knowledge has not led, however, to mutually agreed explanations. In particular, the role of anti-Semitism remains central to debates. Was ideologically driven hatred of Jews – Friedländer’s ‘redemptive’ antiSemitism, Nazi determination to ‘annihilate’ not only Jews but also the ‘Jewish spirit ’ (emphasised by scholars such as Dan Michman) – the primary motivating force? Or is the mass killing of Jews only explicable in terms of wartime factors, such as the scarcity of food, the perceived need for labour, strategic considerations, peer-group pressure, brutalisation in warfare, local greed, social envy and the desire for sheer sur vival? Similarly, the roles of Hitler, Himmler and German policymakers have been explored not just in terms of political structures at the highest level in the Reich (as in the heated debates between ‘intentionalists’ and ‘functionalists’ in the 1980s), but also in terms of Literary Review | february 2023 12
page 15
history relations between the central government and localities. Despite the exponential growth of research in the field, the dynamics of radicalisation and of the chances of sur vival in different areas, require further analysis; the roles of members of surrounding societies – in terms of complicity as well as resistance – often remain shrouded in a combination of obscurity and national myth-making. So the Holocaust is ver y much open to further research. Stone is well placed to provide an informed over view, having spent decades immersed in this subject (as numerous footnotes referring to his own previous publications readily attest). He is extremely well read, and makes good use of both secondar y literatures and widely available source collections, whether published or online. Moreover, Stone is no dry academic: he is determined to ensure that the brutality of the violence and the suffering of the victims are conveyed vividly, with emotive quotations that are at times – as is this whole history – almost unbearable to read. One aspect of the tragedy is that those who were persecuted were indeed also dehumanised. And there is no attempted idealisation of ‘sur vivors’ – something that has been a feature of much recent memory politics. The reader is left in no doubt that this is a truly ghastly history, and one that it is vital to grapple with, even if it seems to resist full explanation. Stone has quite decided views on some of the key issues. For him, ideological anti-Semitism is indeed central. A lengthy introduction (more than forty pages) ser ves to remind readers of the ‘trauma of the Holocaust ’, something he alleges ‘has been largely written out of the historiography’, as well as to underline the fact that the Holocaust was ‘a truly transnational affair’. But the main thrust of this introduction, as well as of the chapters that follow, is to emphasise the centrality of anti-Semitic ideology to the Nazi world-view. Once he gets going on the histor y Stone, an intellectual historian by training, treats readers to a somewhat disembodied explication of the ideological background to Nazi anti-Semitism, while at the same time emphasising that Hitler and his associates simply picked up what was convenient in order to bolster and ‘justify ’ their prejudices and fantasies. This stor y of ideologically motivated obsession is woven into a narrative that also highlights different patterns of collaboration or hesitation in carr ying out Germany’s anti-Semitic business at each stage of the war. The implications of differing national interests for the sur vival chances of Jews in, for example, Vichy France, Italy, Romania and Hungary are brought out clearly, though inevitably some areas are covered more securely than others. But the central backbone of the narrative has to do with the changing patterns of maltreatment and methods of killing: the placing of Jews in ghettos and camps, where disease, starvation and brutality took countless lives; the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ across eastern Europe; the use of gas, first against people with disabilities, then in the so-called Operation Reinhard ‘camps’ – Beł ec, Sobibór and Tr e b l i n k a – a s w e l l a s i n v a n s i n m u l t iple locations, most notably Chełmno; the special case of Auschwitz-Birkenau; the forcing of Jews to perform slave labour; the final death marches. Stone is particularly strong in contextualising ‘Auschwitz’, which has become a metonym for the Holocaust, while in fact being atypical as well as accounting for less than one fifth of the total number of Jewish deaths – still an enormous number but overshadowed by the combined totals of deaths in the Operation Reinhard camps or of victims killed through face-to-face methods in eastern Europe. The number murdered in AuschwitzBirkenau is only so huge because of the late mass slaughter of Hungary’s Jews, photographs of whose arrival in spring 1944 and selection on the specially built ‘ramp’ in Birkenau have become iconic images for how people, particularly in We s t e r n c o u n t r i e s , i m a g i n e t h e H o l ocaust. Stone effectively manages to combine the necessary contextualisation with a sensitive and indeed searing reminder of the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Stone makes clear, too, that ‘liberation’ was far from the joyous experience we might want to imagine. Survivors, wracked by disease and star vation, might have recovered and made it through the first few days and weeks of ‘freedom’, but they still had to register the extent of their losses – of loved ones, family, friends, even whole communities, and, in the case of many who tried to return to eastern Europe, of homes and homelands. This is not a stor y with a happy ending: even if military hostilities ceased in Europe, the ‘sur viving remnant ’ faced continuing distress and challenges for decades to come. Stone rightly subtitles his book ‘An Unfinished Histor y ’. Even if he has pointed to the transnational character of the murder of Europe’s Jews, his coverage of different areas is uneven, and at times (necessarily) sketchy. He reminds us repeatedly of the traumatic experiences of the victims, but focuses less on the range of people and groups involved in perpetration. Nor does he explore controversial questions around complicity. And while widespread misconceptions are directly addressed, the historiographical and scholarly debates remain largely out of sight here. They inform Stone’s slant, of course, and are tackled explicitly in his many other works, but do not unduly disturb this particular ‘unfinished history ’. For the general reader, then, this is a powerful sur vey, but one that also leaves many questions wide open. february 2023 | Literary Review 13

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history relations between the central government and localities. Despite the exponential growth of research in the field, the dynamics of radicalisation and of the chances of sur vival in different areas, require further analysis; the roles of members of surrounding societies – in terms of complicity as well as resistance – often remain shrouded in a combination of obscurity and national myth-making.

So the Holocaust is ver y much open to further research. Stone is well placed to provide an informed over view, having spent decades immersed in this subject (as numerous footnotes referring to his own previous publications readily attest). He is extremely well read, and makes good use of both secondar y literatures and widely available source collections, whether published or online. Moreover, Stone is no dry academic: he is determined to ensure that the brutality of the violence and the suffering of the victims are conveyed vividly, with emotive quotations that are at times – as is this whole history – almost unbearable to read. One aspect of the tragedy is that those who were persecuted were indeed also dehumanised. And there is no attempted idealisation of ‘sur vivors’ – something that has been a feature of much recent memory politics. The reader is left in no doubt that this is a truly ghastly history, and one that it is vital to grapple with, even if it seems to resist full explanation.

Stone has quite decided views on some of the key issues. For him, ideological anti-Semitism is indeed central. A lengthy introduction (more than forty pages) ser ves to remind readers of the ‘trauma of the Holocaust ’, something he alleges ‘has been largely written out of the historiography’, as well as to underline the fact that the Holocaust was ‘a truly transnational affair’. But the main thrust of this introduction, as well as of the chapters that follow, is to emphasise the centrality of anti-Semitic ideology to the Nazi world-view. Once he gets going on the histor y Stone, an intellectual historian by training, treats readers to a somewhat disembodied explication of the ideological background to Nazi anti-Semitism, while at the same time emphasising that Hitler and his associates simply picked up what was convenient in order to bolster and ‘justify ’ their prejudices and fantasies.

This stor y of ideologically motivated obsession is woven into a narrative that also highlights different patterns of collaboration or hesitation in carr ying out Germany’s anti-Semitic business at each stage of the war. The implications of differing national interests for the sur vival chances of Jews in, for example, Vichy France, Italy, Romania and Hungary are brought out clearly, though inevitably some areas are covered more securely than others. But the central backbone of the narrative has to do with the changing patterns of maltreatment and methods of killing: the placing of Jews in ghettos and camps, where disease, starvation and brutality took countless lives; the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ across eastern Europe; the use of gas, first against people with disabilities, then in the so-called Operation Reinhard ‘camps’ – Beł ec, Sobibór and Tr e b l i n k a – a s w e l l a s i n v a n s i n m u l t iple locations, most notably Chełmno; the special case of Auschwitz-Birkenau; the forcing of Jews to perform slave labour; the final death marches.

Stone is particularly strong in contextualising ‘Auschwitz’, which has become a metonym for the Holocaust, while in fact being atypical as well as accounting for less than one fifth of the total number of Jewish deaths – still an enormous number but overshadowed by the combined totals of deaths in the Operation Reinhard camps or of victims killed through face-to-face methods in eastern Europe. The number murdered in AuschwitzBirkenau is only so huge because of the late mass slaughter of Hungary’s Jews, photographs of whose arrival in spring 1944 and selection on the specially built ‘ramp’ in Birkenau have become iconic images for how people, particularly in We s t e r n c o u n t r i e s , i m a g i n e t h e H o l ocaust. Stone effectively manages to combine the necessary contextualisation with a sensitive and indeed searing reminder of the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Stone makes clear, too, that ‘liberation’ was far from the joyous experience we might want to imagine. Survivors, wracked by disease and star vation, might have recovered and made it through the first few days and weeks of ‘freedom’, but they still had to register the extent of their losses – of loved ones, family, friends, even whole communities, and, in the case of many who tried to return to eastern Europe, of homes and homelands. This is not a stor y with a happy ending: even if military hostilities ceased in Europe, the ‘sur viving remnant ’ faced continuing distress and challenges for decades to come.

Stone rightly subtitles his book ‘An Unfinished Histor y ’. Even if he has pointed to the transnational character of the murder of Europe’s Jews, his coverage of different areas is uneven, and at times (necessarily) sketchy. He reminds us repeatedly of the traumatic experiences of the victims, but focuses less on the range of people and groups involved in perpetration. Nor does he explore controversial questions around complicity. And while widespread misconceptions are directly addressed, the historiographical and scholarly debates remain largely out of sight here. They inform Stone’s slant, of course, and are tackled explicitly in his many other works, but do not unduly disturb this particular ‘unfinished history ’. For the general reader, then, this is a powerful sur vey, but one that also leaves many questions wide open.

february 2023 | Literary Review 13

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