Achieving “living space” for the German people was one of Hitler’s central aims. The concept was developed in the late nineteenth century and popularized in the 1920s after Germany lost territory at the end of the First World War. Hitler saw the concept as essential for the survival of the German people. The object was not just space, but imperial space that could be exploited for resources and whose population would serve German needs. This “greater economic area” was to be self-sufficient (autarkic) as far as possible, creating a German-centered economic bloc to reflect what some German economists assumed was the way the world economy was developing. The war against the Soviet Union was intended to complete this program of imperial expansion and provide room for the surplus German population as well as generous supplies of food and raw materials.

This chapter conveys the origins, course, impact, and consequences of Kristallnacht, locating the events of November 1938 in the longer-term trajectory of Nazi domestic and foreign policy; explores the extent and forms of popular participation in the violence and popular responses to the destruction; pursues the shorter- and longer-term impact of Kristallnacht for the victims (though emigration will be dealt with in Volume III); examines the shifts in Nazi policy in the wake of Kristallnacht, and the shifts of institutional power that accompanied it, and again considers the relationship between antisemitism and foreign policy.

This chapter establishes and problematizes the category of “survivor” and the ways in which its meaning changed over the postwar decades. The definition of survivors is “unstable,” and includes diverse groups, not just those who lived through the camps or ghettos, but also those in exile or hiding. The chapter discusses how trauma affected not just survivors, but also their children and grandchildren, in complex ways. It analyzes the ways in which the experience of the Holocaust affected family life and the intergenerational transfer of knowledge and culture, as well as the (re)construction of Jewish communal life.

This chapter reviews the Nazi plunder of art works, Judaica, and other cultural objects during and before the Second World War, showing how it operated as both a top-down and a bottom-up practice. It then traces the diverse efforts around the world to gain restitution or compensation for these plundered goods. Beginning with Allied efforts to locate and return stolen artworks during the closing days of the war (the so-called “Monuments Men”) and continuing through the evasive policies of Germany and Austria after the war, up to the renewed litigation, in Europe and America, starting in the 1990s, the chapter demonstrates the long and difficult road survivors and descendants walked to try to retrieve their stolen property. All too often such efforts failed.

This chapter concerns the situation of Jewish families, focusing on physical and emotional experiences and reflecting on elements of daily life. It emphasizes familial roles, hierarchies, and relations: between spouses, among children, and between children and parents. It tracks the phenomena of family solidarity and family atomization.

This chapter offers an intellectual history of theological responses to the Holocaust, focusing on the way Jewish and Christian religious thinkers sought to make sense of Nazi mass murder. Focusing mainly on the USA, it follows post-Holocaust theologians’ explorations of the problem of evil. It demonstrates that, while theological explorations of the Holocaust saw a high point in the 1970s, since then they have declined in favor of historicization, whereby theological explorations of the Holocaust have given way to the historical study of the religious responses of Jews and Christians to Nazi crimes as they were unfolding.

This chapter treats the daily life experiences of Jews who survived the Second World War in the interior regions of the Soviet Union. Included among this group were Soviet citizens who evacuated eastward ahead of invading German armies as well as refugees from Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, and Czechoslovakia.

Nazi Germany’s policies profoundly altered both private and public lives of religious Jews in Germany and then across Europe. Despite targeting Jews as a “race,” anti-Jewish measures forced the Jewish religious leadership to seek new ways to assist their communities. Maintaining Jewish religious practices during the Holocaust became increasingly challenging and eventually impossible for most Jews.

What made National Socialist Germany such a violent society? Focusing on the interrelationship between Hitler, the Nazi Party, state, and society, this chapter sketches the historiographical tradition of thinking about this question. Beginning with early analyses of the Nazi regime, as in Ernst Fraenkel’s Dual State (1941) and Franz Neumann’s Behemoth (1941), it follows the tradition through the debates between intentionalists and structuralists, as well as newer approaches that focus on the war years, even seeing these years as representing a “second stage of the National Socialist Revolution” (Hans-Ulrich Thamer). Early work on the destructive dynamic of Nazi society focused on the first six years of the Third Reich, with scholars differing over the degree to which Hitler was a strong or weak dictator, with the best analyses emphasizing not just the “above” of dictatorship or the “below” of popular mobilization, but the interaction between Hitler, state, and society. The outbreak of the Second World War changed the dynamic significantly; it saw a dramatic expansion of the state in the form of occupation administrations and concentration and extermination camps.

This chapter examines the legacy of the Holocaust in all dimensions of Israeli life. It considers the evolving policy landscape, including decisions regarding commemoration, education, and the prosecution of collaborators. It also traces the evolution of the cultural and political status of “survivors.” Initially, resistance fighters were treated as heroes, while ordinary survivors were viewed as passive weaklings unable to defend themselves. Both stances were part of a Zionist understanding of Israeli identity. Over time, especially in the 1960s with the Eichmann Trial and in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, a more nuanced, mournful view took hold that acknowledged the importance of survival itself as essential for Jewish identity in a precarious world.

This chapter explores Hitler’s role in the Nazi Party, with a particular focus on Hitler’s relationship to antisemitism. It carefully examines the evidence concerning Hitler’s views towards Jews, and argues forcefully for the emergence in the 1920s of a vision that was already at least implicitly genocidal and certainly murderous. It thus makes a forceful case both for continuity in Hitler’s ideas leading to the Holocaust, and for the primacy of his vision in determining the later policy towards Jews adopted by the Nazi regime.