How did one of the most culturally and industrially advanced nations in the world embark on a path leading to one of the most criminal enterprises in history - the extermination of Europe's Jews? Friedländer describes and interprets the steadily increasing anti-Jewish persecution in Germany after the 1933 Nazi accession to power. He demonstrates the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and changing circumstances, and shows how Nazi ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always left an opening for ever more radical moves.

volume 1 :The years of persecution, 1933-1939. Part I. A beginning and an end. Into the Third Reich -- Consenting elites, threatened elites -- Redemptive anti-Semitism -- The new ghetto -- The spirit of laws -- Part II. The entrapment. Crusade and card index -- Paris, Warsaw, Berlin ; and Vienna -- An Austrian model? -- The onslaught -- A broken remnant. Volume 2 : The years of extermination : Part I. Terror (Fall 1939-Summer 1941). September 1939-May 1940 -- May 1940-December 1940 -- December 1940-June 1941 -- Part II. Mass murder (Summer 1941-Summer 1942). June 1941-September 1941 -- September 1941-December 1941 -- December 1941-July 1942 -- Part III. Shoah (Summer 1942-Spring 1945). July 1942-March 1943 -- March 1943-October 1943 -- October 1943-March 1944 -- March 1944-May 1945.