★ 11/27/2023

Historian Stone (The Liberation of the Camps) argues in this powerful study that “in many ways we have failed unflinchingly to face the terrible reality of the Holocaust.” Surveying the wide body of research on the subject, he contends that public consciousness has wrongly been dominated by “the perception of ‘factory-like’ genocide”—a misleading idea that serves to replace the brutal, up-close murders of the Holocaust with an imaginary bureaucratic killing machine. To counter this inaccurate vision, Stone analyzes the “ideology” of the Holocaust—from its roots in European antisemitism, through the brutal Nazi race regime that was quickly adopted by collaborators in countries invaded by Germany, to its aftermath when some Jewish people who refused to emigrate from Europe were kept in “displaced persons” camps all the way through 1957, and into the following decades of mass trauma and attempts at commemoration. His astute investigation, which adeptly moves between “microhistories” and large-scale events, shows how the Holocaust was primarily made possible by the widespread adoption of racist thinking and the long-term nurturing of “genocidal fantasy” in Europe—the latter of which is still poorly reckoned with today, since the emotional frenzy of genocide is rarely brought to the fore in “sanitized” Holocaust historiography. Concluding with a dire warning that the modern nation-state is a catalyst for racist and genocidal thinking that is today often targeted at migrants, Muslims, and other maginalized groups, this is an urgent new perspective on a much-studied calamity. (Jan.)

[An] incisive analysis of the genocidal endgame that unfolded from Nazi antisemitism." — Wall Street Journal

“This vital history shatters many myths about the Nazis’ genocide. ... Drawing on the latest scholarship in English and German, Stone’s brisk, energetic book fizzes with ideas. Indeed, even if you think you know the subject, you’ll probably find something here to make you think. ... An excellent book.” — Dominic Sandbrook The Sunday Times

"Rescu[es] the Holocaust from distortion and cliché. . . . Historian Dan Stone seeks to amend—and expand—our understanding of the genocide. . . . A concise and accessible history that extends beyond the death camps.” — New York Times Book Review

"A stunning, original, concise analysis, culling the latest research and the most observant eyewitness accounts of the time. The parallels to fascism today are extremely unsettling. Few scholars could write this masterful synthesis and even fewer would take on a closer examination of its darkest features and unsettling questions about the broader significance of Holocaust education today." — Wendy Lower, author of Hitler's Furies, a National Book Award finalist

"A holocaust history for our times, passionate as well as scholarly, and written with a sharp eye to the growing threat of the radical right in the present. Stone is not afraid to question the verities that have become attached to this most catastrophic epoch of modern history, and he challenges readers to confront its scope and enormity anew." — Jane Caplan, Emeritus Professor of European History, University of Oxford

"Stone's remarkable book offers both a narrative overview and an analysis of the events, challenging many common assumptions and often returning to how this terrible history remains ‘unfinished.’” — Matthew Reisz, The Guardian

"Stone is one of the foremost historians of the Holocaust. . . . Breaks new ground and ties the Holocaust to modern times in ways that are valuable and important." — Dan Carlin, Hardcore History podcast

“A significant new history of the Holocaust from the director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway. . . . Stone delivers a gripping account. . . . A painfully revealing, vital history.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A book that turns on their head some of the widely-held notions about that terrible era of genocide 80 years ago." — Tony Rennell, Daily Mail (London)

"An important and challenging work." — Colin Shindler, Jewish Chronicle

“A brilliant study, lucid, powerful, moving, and full of original insights. Few general studies of the Holocaust have so successfully integrated the international, indeed global, dimensions of the Nazi genocide and its aftermath.”  — Mark Roseman, Pat M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor in History at Indiana University

“A timely account of the Holocaust and its many consequences. Troubling and thought-provoking for a world in which post-war certainties are now dissolving. It deserves the widest possible readership.”  —  Richard Overy, professor of history at the University of Exeter and New York Times-bestselling author of Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945

“One of the best new publications presenting more complicated narratives of the Holocaust ... Dan Stone's The Holocaust: An Unfinished History, is an outstanding survey that updates the history of the European genocide of the Jews in a thought-provoking and informative way. ... Powerful.” — Jeffrey Veidlinger, Times Literary Supplement

"Drawing on his extensive own research and a vast range of work by historians from across the last eight decades, Stone sets about showing how our mental picture of the Holocaust is dangerously wrong. ... A vital and provocative book." — Chris Kissane, The Irish Times

"An outstanding book: well written, deeply felt, always perceptive and exhibiting considerable knowledge of decades of Holocaust scholarship. It will become the standard work in English on the subject for some time to come." — Bill Niven, History Today

"Outstanding. … Deeply haunting. ... An engaging and accessible read that never hurries or shields the reader from its dark subject matter." — Angus Reilly, The Telegraph (UK)

“Stone [is] one of the foremost Holocaust historians in the world. . . . Instead of presenting Holocaust history as a tidy affair wrapped in a bow with neat moral messages, Stone proposes that we examine its unfinishedness, its unknowability, and its very incompleteness. . . . By confronting these uncomfortable truths, Stone hopes to jolt us out of complacency. We have not, he suggests, sufficiently learned the lessons of the Holocaust.” — New Republic

“[A] sobering and meticulous exploration of aspects of the Shoah that have remained, until now, under-analyzed. And these aspects of the Holocaust are especially salient today. . . . Stone also examines, with great sensitivity, the deep trauma that survivors carried with them their entire lives. . . . Stone’s disturbing findings, tragically, resonate all too clearly.” — Commentary

★ 2023-09-28
A significant new history of the Holocaust from the director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway.

Stone, a professor of modern history and author of The Liberation of the Camps, emphasizes that we must stop thinking about the Holocaust as solely a German affair. “The genocide of the Jews,” he writes, “could not have been so thorough and so brutal without almost ubiquitous collaboration across Europe and beyond.” Historians agree that the trauma of Germany’s World War I defeat led to a legion of revanchist splinter groups. The Nazis were not taken seriously until 1932, when they became Germany’s largest party, and Hitler took power peacefully in 1933. No one has yet explained his obsessive hatred of Jews, but his party—and most Germans—went along. Stone delivers a gripping account of prewar Nazi legal persecution. About half of Germany’s Jews fled before emigration was banned in October 1941, although many found refuge in neighboring countries “that were later occupied.” Mass murder began with the 1939 invasion of Poland, and Stone’s blow-by-blow account may be more distressful than previous ones because he refutes their myths. Nearly half of the victims died of starvation or disease or were shot in “face-to-face killings reminiscent of colonial massacres.” In the gas chambers, victims died in agony, but fanatics such as the SS did not do all the work. Ordinary civilians and soldiers participated with frightening enthusiasm. Years later, many decent people claimed that refusing would have provoked terrible retaliation, but that is a myth. No group or country that declined to cooperate suffered. Stone concludes that today, “fascism is not yet in power. But it is knocking on the door.” The solution, he writes, is not necessarily more Holocaust education, unless it addresses a society that takes equality and tolerance for granted.

A painfully revealing, vital history.