Print Price: $39.95

Format:
Paperback
336 pp.
11 b/w halftones, 138 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199550340

Publication date:
October 2009

Imprint: OUP UK

The Final Solution

A Genocide

Donald Bloxham

Series : Oxford Histories

The Holocaust is frequently depicted in isolation by its historians. Some of them believe that to place it in any kind of comparative context risks diminishing its uniqueness and even detracts from the enormity of the Nazi crime. In reality, such a restricted understanding of 'uniqueness' has pulled the Holocaust apart from history and set up barriers to a better understanding of the racial onslaught unleashed within the Third Reich and its conquered territories.

Working against the grain of much earlier writing, this innovative new history combines a detailed re-appraisal of the development of the genocide of the Jews, a full consideration of Nazi policies against other population groups, and a comparative analysis of other modern genocides.

The Holocaust is portrayed as the culmination of a much wider history of European genocide and ethnic cleansing, from the late nineteenth century onwards. Ultimately, Bloxham shows that an explanation for the Holocaust rooted exclusively in Nazism and antisemitism is inadequate when set against one that is both prepared to give due weight to the immediate circumstances of the Second World War in eastern Europe and to situate the Jewish genocide within the broader patterns of human behaviour in the late-modern world.

Readership : All those interested in the history of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the Second World War.

Reviews

• Review from other book by this author: "For the most lucid and broad-minded analysis of 1915 and the period leading up to it, read The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, a recent book by the young British historian Donald Bloxham."
  
  --(Salon )
  
• "In this book Bloxham provides a valuable corrective historical interpretation and a fascinating case study in the 'geopolitics of memory'. Anyone interested in Ottoman and imperial history, the fate of the Armenians, or genocide will find The Great Game of Genocide both informative and stimulating."
  
  --(David Cesarani, Literary Review )
  
• "... a detailed and sophisticated account....This first Class work offers much new material and is probably the most detailed and complex account in English of these terrible events."
  
  --(William Rubinstein, The Times Higher )
  
• "[a] meticulously researched study."
  
  --(History)
  
• "a uniquely important contribution to a bitterly divided field of historical inquiry... certain to generate controversy in and of itself."
  
  --(Middle East Journal)
  
  
• "an important and original contribution to the historiography of the Armenian genocide and to the analysis of its denial by the Turkish authorities."
  
  --(American Historical Review)
  
• "a work of critical historical inquiry of breathtaking and often disturbing clarity that nevertheless withstands the pitfalls of cynicism and unmediated moral outrage...essential reading for scholars of nationalism, the Ottoman Empire, modern Turkey, Europe and the Middle East."
  
  --(Nations and Nationalism)
  
• "a very important book... a comprehensive and complex explanation based on serious scholarship. It is not for those who want easy answers and facile assignments of blame."
  
  --(Modern Greek Studies)
  
• "...deeply researched and well written; Bloxham is an especially engaging stylist."
  
  --(Norman M. Naimark, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2)
  
• "The best discussion on the topic is now Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide : Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians"
  
  --(Nicholas Doumanis, Historical Journal)