Description
Book SynopsisFor educated and tolerant Westerners, it is extremely difficult to imagine the dangerous power that anti-Semitism has enjoyed in modern Europe and impossible to grasp how it could have led to the unique horrors of the Holocaust. To study the origins and history of anti-Semitism by itself helps little. To fully grasp the dangerous potential of racism we must also know the relationships between the fantasies of the anti-Semites and the long-term historical development of various nations. In The Politics of Hate, John Weiss shows how anti-Semitism and racism developed as a major element in the European political process from the late nineteenth century to the Holocaust. Concentrating on the experience of Germany, Austria, France, and Poland, Mr. Weiss traces the combination of ideas and national cultures that brought venomous consequences to political life and spelled difficulty and then doom for Jews. In a separate chapter on Italy, he explains why anti-Semitism never took hold there, and why even during World War II, under Nazi control, Jews in Italy were relatively protected. The reasons for these developments—why Germany initiated the Holocaust, why the Austrians supplied so many killers, why a million French fascists could not damage the Jews until the Vichy government came to power, why anti-Semitism was far stronger in Eastern than in Western Europe—help us understand why the politics of racial hate succeed and what can be done about it.
Trade ReviewA thoughtful survey...a useful overview of the rise—and, it is to be hoped, fall—of European race hatred. * Kirkus *
A succinct yet detailed examination...offers a more nuanced portrait than most.... An important and illuminating contribution. -- Stanislao G. Pugliese, associate professor of modern European history, Hofstra University
Wonderfully insightful.... Written with verve and eminently readable..an inspiration. -- Frederick M. Schweitzer, professor of history and director of the Holocaust Center at Manhattan College
A concise, lucid, clear-headed account . . . acute . . . a refreshing and important book, a timely warning. -- Robert Wistrich, head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The book is informed by wide reading. . . . Its ideas are provocative and well argued. * CHOICE *
More than just another holocaust history. . . . A fine survey of how the politics of hate actually evolve. * Midwest Book Review *
