The Twisted Road to Auschwitz

''In his classic study, Schleunes meticulously examines the incremental erosion of Jewish Germans' status in Nazi Germany before the deportations began. If we look here for parallels in other national settings, this is where we must begin: in a state that made anti-Semitism appear 'legal' and even 'just' to ordinary Germans. Integrating Nazi persecution and Jewish responses, Schleunes captures the reader in a web of paradox, contradiction, and tragedy.''--Claudia Koonz, author of Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics ''The 1970 publication of Karl Schleunes's The Twisted Road to Auschwitz was a landmark in Holocaust historiography. His interpretation of the Final Solution as a product of unplanned evolution rather than premeditated 'grand design' triggered a debate that has energized Holocaust scholarship over the past two decades. The reissue in paperback of this true classic is a most welcome event to anyone teaching or studying the Holocaust.''--Christopher Browning, author of The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office ''A useful addition to the literature on Nazi Germany. In tracing the meanderings and contradictory path of the Nazi's Jewish policy, the author has helped to clarify further the background of later exterminations, and, at least indirectly, provided yet additional evidence that the Third Reich was neither monolithic, nor efficient.''--Dietrich Orlow, Journal of Modern History''In his classic study, Schleunes meticulously examines the incremental erosion of Jewish Germans' status in Nazi Germany before the deportations began. If we look here for parallels in other national settings, this is where we must begin: in a state that made anti-Semitism appear 'legal' and even 'just' to ordinary Germans. Integrating Nazi persecution and Jewish responses, Schleunes captures the reader in a web of paradox, contradiction, and tragedy.''--Claudia Koonz, author of Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics