The main thread of this book is that it discusses the exact nature of the link between anti-Semitism and genocide – whether it was a direct relation of cause and effect or just a vague kind of solidarity, claiming that at first sight it was a hatred of exceptional intensity that stemmed from a deep heritage of prejudice.

He makes a surprising correlation that at the beginning of the 20th century circumstances in Germany and surprisingly France were not dis-similar and that there was an unofficial alternative religion to that of Catholicism, in the guise of Freemasonry; a concept that Adolf Hitler tried unsuccessfully tried to impersonate with little success. Philippe claims that tradition and Christian culture reformulated the technology that was to make the destruction of the Jews in Europe possible and in doing so discusses the religious background to anti-Semitism.

In underlining the crucial point of racism in Nazi ideology and the logic of violence that reinforced the grip of anti-Semitism he dismisses the assumption that the Nazi identity was synonymous with the German national identity. In not condemning the entire German population as being inherently Jewish he portrays the little known thought that anti-Semitism was never exclusively German and analyzes how and why such terror befell the Jewish people and why it happened in Germany when hostility towards the Jews was widespread across much of Europe, though he does successfully repute the idea of collective guilt.

The multiple strands of Nazi anti-Semitism that he discusses are portrayed as both apocalyptic and racial and as a weapon used in the struggle for a Nazi identity, containing not only negative views of the Jews but also positive views of the Germans and suggesting why so many Germans either accepted Hitler’s fantasy of the struggle between Germany and the Jews or displayed passivity and indifference toward the fate of the Jewish people.

From many years before the outbreak of World War I, he brings a historical perspective to how anti-Semitic thought embraced a country whose thirst for power cultivated its memory while encouraging its own aspirations for power and in doing so claims that Germany was a victim of circumstance, bravely claiming that “in 1930’s Germany, an abrogation of emancipation would already have been on the cards, given an authoritarian restructuring of the political regime, even without Adolf Hitler’s accession to power” (Pg 29). He portrays Nazism as a virus sweeping through all parts of German life from the home, the farm and the church to the large industrial companies that went some way in supporting his cause.

Philippe makes the surprising claim that war was needed to produce the nucleus of a genocidal community from within the then apartheid society that existed in Germany at this time in correlating the move between the policy of excluding the Jews and their forced expulsion to the policy of extermination of all Jewry in Europe while making the distinction that the ‘Final Solution’ was little more than a part-solution as it only had the viability to work within the lands that the Nazi Party and later the Nazi War Machine controlled. He further asks why Nazism settled on a policy of extermination when other alternatives such as enforced emigration were not only considered but in part, adopted, questioning how this led to genocide.

He does, with some clarity make the point that it wasn’t only the fate of the Jews that lie in the hands of Adolf Hitler’s unconceivable policies but also the Gypsies, Russians, the Disabled, Homosexuals and some Germans who also suffered similar circumstantial fates.

Even though it has its faults and is a slightly difficult book to read, this shouldn’t deter the books success as one of the few books that strikes a blow against the historical censorship of politicians and governments alike that has traditionally blurred the history books and insulted the memory of those that perished….on both sides.

Douglas Brough currently lives in the South East of England, near enough to the continent for him to be able to study the real truth behind the events of the last century. A member of the G.W.A, one of the worlds largest human rights organizations, his main passion is of the human rights abuses and historical inaccuracies portrayed as fact. Studying with the Open University (yes I thoroughly recommend them) for a degree of History and Religion he still finds time for his children as well as reviewing the latest off the shelf history books whilst working on his own first book.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.