WHY?

Despite the outpouring of books, movies, museums, memorials, and courses devoted to the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the 20th century still seems elusive even 70 years later.

Given the sheer volume and increasing specialization of the research, many readers need a comprehensive view directed squarely at answering the most central and enduring questions about why and how the massacre of European Jewry unfolded. As world-renowned Holocaust historian Peter Hayes wisely notes in this clear, and valuable work, numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions. Why?, in contrast, dispels many misconceptions and answers some of the most basic — yet vexing — questions that remain: why the Jews, and not another ethnic group? Why the Germans? Why such a swift and sweeping extermination? Why didn’t more Jews fight back more often? Why didn’t they receive more help? Hayes brings a wealth of scholarly investigation and experience to bear on conventional, popular views of the history, challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations, and arguing that the convergence of multiple forces at a particular moment in time led to catastrophe. Peter Hayes is Professor of History and German and the Theodore Ziv Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor of Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University, and Chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Museum. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including the prize winners Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era and Lessons and Legacies I: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, and most recently The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (ed. with John K. Roth), and Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik (with Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, and Moshe Zimmermann).