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Why?: Explaining the Holocaust Reprint Edition

by Peter Hayes (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 418 ratings
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Featured in the PBS documentary, "The US and the Holocaust" by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein

"Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources." ―Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal

Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn’t more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies, what lessons?

An internationally acclaimed scholar, Peter Hayes brings a wealth of research and experience to bear on conventional views of the Holocaust, dispelling many misconceptions and challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations.

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Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0393355462
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0393355468
  3. Edition
    Reprint
  4. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  5. Publication date
    January 2, 2018
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
  8. Print length
    432 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Clearly written, cogently argued…courageously confronts some of the thorniest issues raised by the Shoah, making Why? Explaining the Holocaust an indispensable work for specialists and informed readers alike."
― Michael N. Dobkowski, Jewish Book Council

"[Hayes] show[s] a sophisticated and judicious mastery of the most up-to-date historical scholarship…This timely, level-headed book is a model of public engagement."
― Robert Eaglestone, Times Higher Education

"Hayes has written a valuable book for today’s challenges, with perspective and sensitivity, that is, indeed, authoritative, readable and revealing."
― St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Explain? Impossible. But Hayes’s timely, accessible book sheds light on the horror. In certain circumstances it reminds us that humans can rationalize anything."
― People

"I recommend this book for a lucid, well-crafted introduction to the history of the Holocaust. Unlike most works on the history of the Holocaust… Hayes’ book concentrates… on helping readers to understand why the Holocaust occurred when it did, in the manner it did and with the results it produced. It offers readers a window onto how historians go about finding answers to these questions."
― David Engel, Jewish Telegraphic Agency

"A fascinating, remarkably lucid, compulsively readable explanation of how the mass murder of Europe’s Jews came about and how it transpired in the middle of the twentieth century."
― David I. Kertzer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Pope and Mussolini

"Calmly argued, alert to the most recent scholarship about the Holocaust, and full of good sense, Peter Hayes’s new book carries an essential title asked universally: Why? Why did such a thing happen? Taking up this most difficult of challenges, his pages answer questions that many analysts dare not even ask, let alone answer. That is why this work should be required reading, both for specialists and for those who seek more recently to understand."
― Michael R. Marrus, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto and author of Lessons of the Holocaust

"This book is outstanding―beautifully written, with enviable clarity of argument, countless instructive details, and memorable, evocative images. On every issue around which there has been either controversy or confusion―from the interrelationships between the Holocaust and the mass murder of individuals with disabilities to the motivations of the perpetrators, the economics of the killing operations, the special situation of Poland, the experiences of slave laborers, or the dimensions of Jewish resistance―Peter Hayes helpfully distills the debates and provides judicious, orienting assessments. A masterful, indispensable, landmark work."
― Dagmar Herzog, distinguished professor of history and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York

"An original, informative, and essential addition to the field of Holocaust studies. It should be required reading for every introductory course on the Holocaust."
― Lawrence L. Langer, author of Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory and Using and Abusing the Holocaust

"Peter Hayes poses eight key questions about the Holocaust and then analyzes and answers them with enviable mastery, succinctness, and clarity. Hayes’s arguments are presented with a scholarly authority that is judicious, compelling, and accessible. A gem of a book."
― Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

About the Author

Peter Hayes is professor of history and German and Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor of Holocaust Studies Emeritus at Northwestern University, and chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (January 2, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393355462
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393355468
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 1 year and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 418 ratings

About the author

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Peter Hayes

Peter Hayes

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Peter Hayes holds degrees from Bowdoin, Oxford, and Yale and was from 1980 to 2016 Professor of History and German and from 2000 to 2016 Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor at Northwestern University. His publications have won several prizes and been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Slovak, and Spanish. His acclaimed study of IG Farben, Industry and Ideology, received the Biennial Book Prize from the Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association. In his monumental history of the Nazi economy entitled The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze called Industry and Ideology "the best book on IG, indeed the best book on business in the Third Reich." Hayes has long supported the work of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, notably in preparing How Was It Possible? A Holocaust Reader, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he formerly chaired the Academic Committee. Also an award-winning teacher, he lectures widely on German and Holocaust history in the United States and abroad.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
418 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Foothiller16
5.0 out of 5 stars A really interesting book
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2023
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This is well written and makes an academic presentation understable to the non-academic world. Many readily apparent reasons that remain a puzzle. How can evil like the holocaust exist. The evil can be seen as both banal (in terms of the people themselves) and yet so deep within a population. This stirred to the max by an evil that is so extreme -- it is hard to fully comprehend. If you wish an intelligent discussion of the Holocaust -- this is a good book for you.

And, yes to those non-believers-- the Holocaust happen. The Nazis were stupid enough and so arrogant to keep records.
4 people found this helpful
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David Shores
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Insight into an Incomprehensible Topic
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2020
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Each year I read at least one book about this depressing topic. I believe that we have a responsibility to understand what happened so that we can prevent it from happening again.
This is such a complex subject that we can never fully understand it. Here are a few things I learned from THIS book:
1. The Library of Congress has more than 16,000 books about this topic.
2. My main interest was the first three chapters: “Why the Jews”, “Why the Germans”, and “Why Murder”.
3. Regarding “Why the Jews”, the author describes (pages 24-27) six “nineteenth century sweeping changes that transformed European society”. Many Jews became prosperous because of these changes. This led conspiracy theorists to think that Jews must have cheated.
4. Regarding “Why the Germans”, the author describes (pages 36-41) Germany as a land “in the middle”, both geographically and politically. They had democracies to the west and autocracies to the east. Two major factors making Germans susceptible to Nazi ideology were their humiliation due to losing WW1 and their desperation resulting from the depression of 1929.
5. Regarding “Why Murder”, the author describes (pages 74-75) a “three-stage-discovery” from 1933-1941. The Third Reich discovered just how much they could do to persecute the Jews without encountering serious resistance from other Germans or other countries. They learned that it was more efficient to kill them than deport them.
Peter Hayes does an outstanding job of describing many of the factors that led to the Holocaust. I would like to see a comparison with the Armenian genocide that occurred during WW1. The author states (on page 1) that “Small wonder that incomprehension is the default position in the face of the enormity of the Holocaust, even though that stance blocks the possibility of learning from the subject”
17 people found this helpful
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HStoner
4.0 out of 5 stars Professor Hayes' book is a good, reasonably concise
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2017
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As the long "selected bibliography" to Professor Hayes' book illustrates, this is a subject on which there is a voluminous body of literature. Professor Hayes' book is a good, reasonably concise, overview of several aspects of the Holocaust. Professor Hayes attempts to answer several questions: Why did the Holocaust happen? Why did people participate in executing the "Final Solution?" Why did the victims react as they did? How did other nations and peoples react and why did they react as they did?

I found the book weakest on explaining why the Holocaust happened and why the people who carried it out did so. I suspect that this is because, at base, the crime is simply too horrible to explain satisfactorily. I found the book much more informative in describing how the victims reacted and in explaining how they had no genuine alternative courses of action. While there are other works that address particular groups and nations in greater detail, Professor Hayes gives an informative summary of how and why other nations reacted to the Holocaust, including the US, the non-Jewish people of Poland, and the Catholic Church.

The book contained information that was new to me. I had not known that, in relative terms, Sweden did more from 1942 on to provide sanctuary for Jews in Nazi-occupied territories than any other nation. I was not aware that Franco's Spain provided refuge for some Jews seeking to escape the Nazis. Contrary to what I have read in other works focused more on the military history of WWII, Professor Hayes makes a persuasive case that pursuit of the "Final Solution" did not materially detract from the Nazi war effort.

Despite the horrific subject, the book is very readable. I recommend it to everyone. Professor Hayes ends the book with a persuasive case of why we should still study the Holocaust over 70 years after the fact. It seems indisputable that the majority of the German people and much of the power elite had no clue what would happen when Hitler was given power in 1933. To quote from the book, "Beware the beginnings."
11 people found this helpful
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Mary S
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book.
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2024
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This book offers six questions regarding the holocaust revolving why the Jews were chosen to be mass murdered and why the Germans were the perpetrators. Such an intricate and deep history of the evolution of German law to accommodating a genocide. Worth the read!
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No private time
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant a must read
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2023
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Being none Jewish, my understanding on the Holocaust is limited to documentaries and survivors telling their real stories.
The author is on YouTube doing a presentation on the Holocaust and this book.
I have to be honest it's a lot of information.
For myself it's a little over my head, leaving oneself with questions on my own relatives.
who participated in the Pacific WW2 and those who turned out to be too old to serve.
It's remarkable that 75 years ago this happened.
This is a must read. I have copies going to family members, it should be shared in High schools.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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M. S. Hutchinson
5.0 out of 5 stars Possibly the best one volume explanation of the genocide.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2021
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I've read much of the history of this appalling crime against humanity. This one volume explanation is excellent. It is clear, well argued, well structured and provides a synthesis of his own and others' work in this gruesome episode in history. It also writes off done of the disgraceful sensationalist myths and lies from others that either exaggerate or deny the basis of the genocide. Sadly the world has not learned the lessons that emerge.
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RAFAEL LÓPEZ MONTES
5.0 out of 5 stars Clarificador.
Reviewed in Spain on December 31, 2019
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El autor analiza desde varios puntos de vista el auge del nazismo. Recomendable. I
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Daniel Fainstein
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente síntesis
Reviewed in Mexico on May 6, 2017
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Excelente obra que sintetiza las principales preguntas sobre el tema con bibliografía actualizada y claridad conceptual.
Una muy recomendada introducción al tema del Holocausto
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Marian Atkinson
5.0 out of 5 stars A 'Must Read".
Reviewed in Canada on May 28, 2017
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This is a fantastic analysis of 'why' the Holocaust. I've been reading on this subject since the 1960s; this is the best explanation I have found. Well written; well researched; well laid out and explained. Thank you Mr. Hayes. I couldn't put this book down. I recommend this book to all who are interested in trying to understand how such a horror occurred and how it could occur again. There are shadows of the present in these echoes of the past as nationalist parties are more and more vocal in Western societies; as antisemitism is becoming more overt as reported on our news broadcasts every day; as antisemitic violence, vandalism and demonstrations are becoming daily occurrences. As the author wisely states 'Beware the Beginnings'. Is this 'beginning' again?
2 people found this helpful
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Patricia Roy
4.0 out of 5 stars Very informative disgusting & shocking - but a reality check about the ...
Reviewed in Canada on May 20, 2018
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The reading is heavy, quite scientific from the historical & political position. Very informative disgusting & shocking - but a reality check about the capacities of humans to dehumanized for all explained reasons that are so well elaborated
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