This is a thorough and serious analysis of Friedlander's thinking, as one of the most important Holocaust scholars of our time. This volume provides an in-depth discussion of Saul Friedlander's recently published second volume of his landmark history of the Holocaust, "Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination 1939-1945". This book - the sequel to his volume on the pre-war years, "Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1939: The Years of Persecution" (1997) - has received wide acclaim and was awarded the prestigious Friedenspreis in Germany as well as the Pulitzer Prize for History (USA) in 2008. This volume brings together a range of internationally acclaimed historians to address the manifold conceptual and historiographical issues raised in Friedlander's monumental work. The aim of this book is not simply to evaluate Friedlander's work on its own merits, but rather to use his text as a means of exploring the contours and future of Holocaust historiography.
Of central concern is to situate his work within the broader terrain of Holocaust studies and European history, as well as to explore the ways in which his book opens up new directions in the knowledge, study and understanding of the Shoah in particular and twentieth century genocide in general.