Almost 6 million Jews were annihilated during World War II by premeditated official plan. The swift descent of a modern European state from anti-Semitic ideology to genocide and the response, resistance, and eventual destruction of Europe's Jews are the counter themes of the Holocaust. The destructive process is traced from the impact of racial myths on German thought to extermination in the gas chambers. Under Himmler and Heydrich, the Nazi apparatus of terror transformed economic and legal restrictions against the Jews into inhuman labor camps and ghettos. These in turn became a way stations to the death camps. Dramatically woven into the chronicle are the political and military events in Europe that clinched Nazi power and determined the fate of the Jews of Europe: Hitler's triumph in Germany, the Anschluss, the agreement at Munich, the invasion of Poland, and the fall of Western Europe. Each Nazi aggression diminished the possibilities of either Jewish escape or resistance. In the author's view, however, it was mainly the invasion of Russia in 1941 that unleashed the destructive nihilism at the center of Nazi ideology and doomed the Jews of Europe. Total extermination of the Jews and the war against the Soviet Union were conceived at the same time. Mass-murderers in the Einsatzgruppen followed the German armies into Russia. The extermination centers in Poland began operating as the war spread. Almost every nation in Europe was pulled into Germany’s “Final Solution.” Each reacted in terms of its own history, its attitude towards its Jews, the changing tide of war, territorial ambitions, and the strength of Germany’s military presence. In Denmark and Bulgaria, most Jews were saved; In Romania and Hungary, half perished; In Poland, Greece, Holland, and Czechoslovakia almost all were destroyed. The Nazi program of destruction was masked as “resettlement in the East.” Cunning deceptions were used to delude Jews and prevent organized resistance. But Jews did resist - in many places and under scarcely credible conditions: in the Nazi ghettos, in the swamps and forests of Eastern Europe, in the death camps themselves. They struggled to create human communities in the anteroom of hell.

The preparation -- The past is prologue -- Hitler -- The apparatus of terror -- The Jews in Germany: 1933-1938 -- The year 1938 -- Eichmann in Austria -- Munich -- The struggle to leave Europe -- The invasion of Poland -- Heydrich's order of September 21, 1939 -- Dwindling communities: 1939-1941 -- The attack on the west -- The Nazi ghetto: Warsaw -- The Einsatzgruppen -- Nazi-occupied Russia -- The "final solution" -- The Warsaw ghetto uprising -- Resistance in the forests -- The deportations -- Scandinavia -- Holland and Belgium -- France -- Italy -- The greater Reich -- Yugoslavia -- Greece -- Slovakia -- Bulgaria -- Romania -- Hungary -- The Brand mission -- The beginning of the end -- Rescuers and bystanders -- The return.