Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Author: Mary Fulbrook

Fulbrook takes on one of the most fraught issues in modern times: the role of ordinary Germans in enabling the rise of Nazism as well as the exclusion, persecution, and extermination of millions of people across Europe. The question often asked of the Nazi era―What and when did ordinary Germans know about the crimes being committed in their name?―is, Fulbrook argues, the wrong one. The real question is: How did they interpret and act―or fail to act―upon what they knew; and how in the process did they become complicit?

Hardcover

488 pages