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Author McMillan, Dan, Ph.D.

Title How could this happen : explaining the Holocaust / Dan McMillan.

Publication Info. New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2014.

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 East Hartford, Raymond Library - Adult Department  940.5318 MCMILLAN    Check Shelf
 Glastonbury, Welles-Turner Memorial Library - Adult Department  940.5318 MCMILLAN    Check Shelf
 Middletown, Russell Library - Adult Nonfiction  940.5318 MCM    Check Shelf
 University of Saint Joseph: Pope Pius XII Library - Standard Shelving Location  940.5318 M167H    Check Shelf
Description xi, 276 pages ; 25 cm
Summary "The Holocaust has long seemed incomprehensible, a monumental crime that beggars our powers of description and explanation. Historians have probed the many sources of this tragedy, but no account has united the various causes into an overarching synthesis that answers the vital question: How was such a nightmare possible in the heart of Western civilization? In How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the vast body of Holocaust research into a cogent explanation and comprehensive analysis of the genocide's many causes, revealing how a once-progressive society like Germany could have carried out this crime. The Holocaust, he explains, was caused not by one but by a combination of factors--from Germany's failure to become a democracy until 1918, to the widespread acceptance of anti-Semitism and scientific racism, to the effects of World War I, which intensified political divisions within the country and drastically lowered the value of human life in the minds of an entire generation. Masterfully synthesizing the myriad causes that led Germany to disaster, McMillan shows why thousands of Germans carried out the genocide while millions watched, with cold indifference, as it enveloped their homeland. Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen explains how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and damaged personalities unleashed history's most terrifying atrocity"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-262) and index.
Contents Posing the question -- A genocide like no other -- Why Germany? -- A world of enemies -- Hardened by war -- Division and disaster -- Why Hitler? -- From dictator to demigod -- Why the Jewish people? -- Hatred as science -- The absent moral compass -- What they knew.
Subject Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) (OCoLC)fst00958866
Chronological Term 1918 - 1945
Subject Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Causes.
HISTORY / Europe / Germany.
HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century.
HISTORY / Jewish.
Political science. (OCoLC)fst01069781
Social history. (OCoLC)fst01122498
War -- Causes. (OCoLC)fst01170331
Judenvernichtung. (DE-588)4073091-8
Ursache. (DE-588)4062163-7
HISTORY / Europe / Germany / bisacsh.
Germany -- Social conditions -- 1918-1933.
HISTORY / Jewish / bisacsh.
Germany -- Social conditions -- 1933-1945.
HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / bisacsh.
Germany -- Politics and government -- 1933-1945.
Germany. (OCoLC)fst01210272
Germany. (DE-588)4011882-4
ISBN 9780465080243 (hardback: alkaline paper)
0465080243 (hardback: alkaline paper)
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