The introduction to Volume I considers the shift in Holocaust historiography since the end of the Cold War to focus on eastern Europe and, increasingly, on neglected areas such as south-eastern Europe. Noteworthy too is the increasing diversity in methodologies, including digital humanities, gender history, family history, microhistory, transnational history, and spatial, geographical, and material approaches. Each of these strands approaches sources differently, meaning that what historians consider to be a usable source has also changed a great deal. This diversity reflects also the changing face of the historical profession itself and the world in which it operates. Our awareness has grown that the Holocaust was a continent-wide crime committed by willing participants everywhere. The historiography is moving in two opposite directions: towards more microhistories, but also towards greater understanding of the continent-wide scale of the Holocaust, with a particular focus on the hitherto unacknowledged extent of participation in the killings by non-Germans all across Europe. How to reconcile them and bring all of this research together is the challenge of our hyper-productive times.

This general introduction introduces the significance and thinking behind the Cambridge History, and the challenges in defining and delimiting the Holocaust. It discusses the way in which the Holocaust’s massive impact on postwar thought has shaped the approach to the Cambrideg History. Finally, it makes sense of the structure of the four volumes.

This chapter recaps historiography on the role of Hitler in the Nazi system in general and in the Holocaust in particular; elucidates meanings of “order/authorization/wish” in the context of decision-making; discusses the predominant depiction of Himmler and Heydrich as “architects” of genocide and the role of leaders who are generally neglected in mainstream historiography (Backe, Rosenberg); reflects on center and periphery as useful concepts for process analysis against the background of empirical/regional studies since the mid 1990s.

This semi-autobiographical essay offers the perspective from the 1970s to the present of a leading historian of Nazi Germany. It shows how a series of paradigms in one way or another obscured the Holocaust, while at the same time underling the importance of the scholarship on the Final Solution that took off in the 1960s. A particular focus of the essay is the debates around fascism and the difficulty of acknowledging the centrality of racism within the fascist model.

The Weimar Republic, established in Germany at the end of World War I, was not a success and led to the rise of radical politics and the birth of the Nazi party. The racial antisemitism of Nazi ideology is discussed, as is Hitler’s control of Germany and his quest for a “Final Solution” to the so-called Jewish problem, leading to the creation of ghettos, Einsatzgruppen (killing squads), concentration camps, and the killing centers of the Holocaust.