History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust

by Klaus P. Fischer

Overview

Klaus Fischer charts the tortured history of German-Jewish relations over a millennium, from migration and ghettoization in the Middle Ages to enlightenment and emancipation in the eighteenth century to varieties of anti-Jewish prejudices in the Second Reich to the rise of pathological Judeophobia in the years 1918 to 1933. The aim of the book is to provide a historical explanation for this change in consciousness that began with a religious prejudice, moved to social and political discrimination, and ended up in annihilatory rage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826413277
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/01/2001
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Klaus Fischer is a cultural historian of Modern Europe with expertise in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Born in Germany in 1942, he arrived in the United States in 1959 as a 17-year-old emigrant. He attended Arizona State University and then the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received his PhD in 1972. He is the author of Nazi Germany: A New History and The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust.

Editorial Reviews

"A detailed, well-written, sober and analytical study that deserves the widest possible circulation. . . . Although the rise of Nazism has been told many times, Fischer makes a clearly reasoned, well-researched attempt to put a horrible crime and a horrible epoch into an appropriately complex historical context. . . . [A]n indispensable guide."-Publishers Weekly

"Fischer is fair, balanced and well informed, having read widely and proving able to synthesize a broad array of secondary sources. . . . [A] stimulating and intelligent book."-Jewish Studies

"In his follow-up to Nazi Germany: A New History, Fischer traces the long history of Judeophobia in German culture from the Middle Ages to the present, including its Christian, xenophobic, social, and biological-racial strains. . . . Fischer writes with a clear mastery of both primary and secondary sources, synthesizing a wide spectrum of literature into a fine, scholarly work. Highly recommended."-Library Journal

"Truly a significant work, for Fischer gives a balanced account of a complex subject, making it painfully clear just how Germany became capable of genocide."-Booklist

From the Publisher

Reprint of a 1998 book about which Book News wrote: Arguing that while the Holocaust was unique in its scope, it was the product of historical forces that are not necessarily unique to Germany, the author traces the rise of Judeophobia (his revision of the term Anti- Semitism) in Germany as an ideological, delusional psychosis that had roots stretching back to at least the middle ages. The story of Judeophobia is told in chapters devoted to the Second Reich, the early part of the 20th century, the Weimar Republic, and finally the National Socialists. He discusses the Nazi regime as the symptom of a pathology and explores the question of how regular German citizens could have allowed the Holocaust to happen. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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