In the Shadow of Hitler is the first comprehensive state study of how southern Jews-and non-Jews-dealt with the coming of the Good War and the Nazi persecution of European Jews. In 1982, the Orthodox congregation of Ahavas Chesed in Mobile, Alabama, reconsecrated a Torah scroll from the Altneuschule in Prague, Czechoslovakia, that had been seized by the Nazis in the midst of the Holocaust. The Nazis, over the course of their occupation of Czechoslovakia, confiscated from Jewish communities throughout Bohemia and Moravia 1,564 Torahs, among numerous other Judaic ceremonial.

Alabama's Jews and Nazism, 1933-38 -- The refugee crisis, 1938-41 -- Zionism in Alabama, 1933-45 -- The Alabama press, Nazi antisemitism, and the holocaust -- The war -- Antisemitism and racism during the war -- Postwar Alabama.