Before The Holocaust

Revises the standard assumptions among historians of Nazi Germany that physical violence against Jews reached a first peak in November 1938 with the Kristallnacht before escalating into the mass murder of the Holocaust Draws on a plethora of newly discovered archival sources and documentary evidence of antisemitic violence, crimes, and abuses against Jews in Germany in the first half of 1933 Categorizes and catalogues specific types of violence, crimes, pillory marches, and other abuses Examines discussions, arguments, and debates amongst Church, administrative, judicial, and conservative party elites, analysing their decisions to remain silent, setting the scene for the later atrocities of Kristallnacht and the Holocaust