Description: This is the first extensive study of how anti-Semitism pervaded and shaped Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, and how it pulled together diverse elements of a delusionary Nazi worldview. In an era when both anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories continue to influence world politics, Herf offers a timely reminder of their dangers.
Brief description: Jeffrey Herf is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. Among his books is Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich.
Review Quotes: Jeffrey Herf has written a brilliant book that reorients our understanding of the Holocaust. Arguing that racial antisemitism, however vicious, was an insufficient basis for genocide, Herf demonstrates that a major shift occurred in Nazi propaganda during the war: Jews were now presented as a political threat to the German nation, and as the instigators, through their puppets, America, England, and the Soviet Union, of a deadly world war against Germany.--Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus