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Mark Roseman is Professor of History at the University of Southampton. His last book, also published by Penguin, was THE PAST IN HIDING.
On a bitter evening early in 1942 a group of leading Nazis gathered at a lakeside villa outside Berlin to discuss 'the Final Solution of the Jewish question' over dinner. Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in Germany, invited comments on what constituted a Jew, a half-Jew and a quarter-Jew, and what should happen to each of the categories. Then, after handing round brandy and cigars, he proposed that 11 million Jews be exterminated from Europe, while those of part Jewish blood should in some cases be allowed to live but only after sterilisation. It seems Heydrich's proposals were accepted with enthusiasm. Details of the meeting have been obscure for many years, as only one set of minutes remains, and its authenticity has been questioned by some historians who point out that the extermination of Jews had begun long before 1942. Mark Roseman, an expert on German history and author of the prizewinning The Past In Hiding, accepts that the meeting chaired by Heydrich could not have been the moment at which a decision to launch the Holocaust was taken. For one thing, neither Hitler nor any of his immediate entourage was present. But after years of research and unearthing of archives, Roseman believes he has an answer. The meeting, though it produced 'one of the most shameful documents of modern history', formed only part of a murky scenario which involved the 'Jewish question' being passed from civilian administration to the SS. In order to reveal the full story, Roseman goes back to 1919 and the sense of injustice in Germany that helped propel Hitler to power years later. He details the emergence of Hitler's anti-Semitism and how he used it to infect an entire nation, with the co-operation of thugs such as Heydrich and the poison of propaganda chief Goebbels. The book packs an immense amount of detail into comparatively few pages and it makes essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about the mindset of those who organized the 20th century's greatest infamy. (Kirkus UK)
