Synopses & Reviews
The Holocaust has long seemed incomprehensible, a monumental crime that beggars our powers of description and explanation. Historians have probed the many sources of this tragedy, but no account has united the various causes into an overarching synthesis that answers the vital question: How was such a nightmare possible in the heart of western civilization?
In How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the vast body of Holocaust research into a cogent explanation and comprehensive analysis of the genocides many causes, revealing how a once-progressive society like Germany could have carried out this crime. The Holocaust, he explains, was caused not by one but by a combination of factorsfrom Germanys failure to become a democracy until 1918, to the widespread acceptance of anti-Semitism and scientific racism, to the effects of World War I, which intensified political divisions within the country and drastically lowered the value of human life in the minds of an entire generation. Masterfully synthesizing the myriad causes that led Germany to disaster, McMillan shows why thousands of Germans carried out the genocide while millions watched, with cold indifference, as it enveloped their homeland.
Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen explains how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and damaged personalities unleashed historys most terrifying atrocity.
Review
Jewish Book CouncilMcMillan...focuses in vivid and engaging prose on two critical questions: Why Germany ? and Why the Jewish People?”
Choice
[McMillans] argument that the causes of the catastrophe were multifaceted is well grounded and quite compelling. Equipped with excellent endnotes, the work is well suited for general readers, students, and scholars.”
Publishers Weekly
This thoughtful work examines why the Nazis came to power and how they could engage in murder on such an unprecedented scale.”
Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler and The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitlers Germany, 1944-1945
Dan McMillans book is clearly written, well-structured, and rests on good acquaintance with recent research. It offers a thoughtful and intelligent answer for a non-specialist readership to the vital but often strangely ignored question: what caused the Holocaust? It deserves to be widely read.”
István Deák, Seth Low Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, author of Essays on Hitlers Europe
An important and much needed book. In explaining why the Holocaust happened, Dan McMillan explores not only the motives of Hitler and his fanatical followers, but also of the millions of ordinary Germans and other Europeans who shared responsibility for this tragedy. Beautifully written, persuasive, and often very touching, this book should be read by everyone who wants to understand how such a monstrous crime was possible.”
Robert O. Paxton, Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University
How could a cultivated nation like Germany unleash a murderous frenzy against the Jewish people? Many authors have described the killings. A few authors have warned that explaining is in itself a profanation. But Dan McMillan takes a different course. With eloquence and clarity he sets the Shoah in a broad historical context. McMillan shows how step by step, ideas and institutions came into place in western nations, especially in Germany, that made the killings conceivable, then possible, and even likely, but never inevitable. This book is an impressive achievement.”
S. Jonathan Wiesen, Southern Illinois University, author of Creating the Nazi Marketplace
This is one of those rare books that is accessible to the general reader while offering significant new perspectives to academic specialists. I marveled at the richness and clarity of McMillans insights, his efficient syntheses of scholarly debates, and the intellectual depth of the questions he poses. His arguments are thoughtful, well informed, and grounded in wide-ranging literature. This book deserves a broad audience.”
John Cox, Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies, University of North Carolina Charlotte, author of Circles of Resistance: Jewish, Leftist, and Youth Dissidence in Nazi Germany
This is an outstanding book. Dan McMillan has provided a compelling explanation of why the Holocaust happened in prose that is elegant, vivid, engaging, and fully accessible. The first comprehensive essay on the causes of the Holocaust, this admirably concise book offers a remarkable combination of scholarly rigor, new perspectives, and keen insights delivered in a passionate moral voice. McMillan has made a powerful contribution to the way all of usscholars and laypersons alikeunderstand the Holocaust.”
Synopsis
A rising historian crystallizes decades of research about the Holocaust to provide a comprehensive explanation of its causes
Synopsis
The Holocaust is the defining event of the twentieth century and perhaps all of modern history. Yet for too long, we have ignored the vital question of how and why such a monstrous event could have happened at all. Now, in
How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the existing Holocaust research into a cogent explanation of the genocides causes, revealing how a once progressive society like Germany could commit murder on such a massive scale. Countless barriers stand between stable societies and genocide, McMillan explains, but in Germany these buffers began to topple well before World War II. From Hitlers meteoric rise to deep-rooted European anti-Semitism to the dehumanizing effects of World War I, McMillan uncovers the many factors that made the Holocaust possible.
Persuasive and compelling, How Could This Happen illustrates how a perfect storm of bleak circumstances, malevolent ideas, and societal upheaval unleashed historys most terrifying atrocity.
About the Author
Dan McMillan holds a Ph.D. in German history from Columbia University and a law degree from Fordham University, and has worked as a history professor and a prosecuting attorney. He lives in New York City.