"The Holocaust is frequently depicted in isolation by its historians. Some of them believe that to place it in any kind of comparative context risks diminishing its uniqueness and even detracts from the enormity of the Nazi crime. In reality, such a restricted understanding of 'uniqueness' has pulled the Holocaust apart from history and set up barriers to a better understanding of the racial onslaught unleashed within the Third Reich and its conquered territories." "Working against the grain of much earlier writing, this innovative new history combines a detailed re-appraisal of the development of the genocide of the Jews, a full consideration of Nazi policies against other population groups, and a comparative analysis of other modern genocides."--BOOK JACKET.

Documentary traces -- 1. A European history of violence -- Europe on the brink -- The First World War era -- Ethnopolitics, geopolitics, and the return to war -- 2. Germany and the final solution -- Nazism and Germany -- Genocide in Germany's eastern empire -- The patterns and limits of the European genocide -- 3. Perpetrators and their environment -- Why did they kill? -- 4. Civilization and the holocaust -- Locating genocide in the human past.