With the monumental Third Reich and the Jews, Saul Friedländer ends a lifetime of study on the Holocaust. Published in two separate volumes: The Years of Persecution (1933-1939) and The Years of Extermination (1939-1945), Friedländer conducts a detailed analysis of the ideology, society, and politics of the Third Reich, which it serves as a framework for the impressive testimonies left by the victims of Nazi unreason, to which the historian gives up his pen.
If The Years of Persecution narrates the implementation of what will lead to the "final solution", in The Years of Extermination Friedländer describes the relentless advance of the Nazi machinery, driven by the evolution of war, and dissects the role of all were relevant in the course of the Holocaust, from the institutions to the allied or satellite governments, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and a good part of the non-Jewish population. The testimonies, the letters, the newspapers reveal how the victims, gripped by horror, despair and uncertainty, lived with impotence the extermination to which their people were subjected.
"A masterpiece of historiography that has the strength and quality of a work of art."
Frankfurter Allgemeine