Years Of Persecution

“In Germany they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up… They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up… Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” Reverend Martin Niemoller wrote these impactful words in 1946 addressing group responsibility for the Nazi’s actions during their regime. Perhaps inspired by the same words Saul Friedländer would come address similar topics in his historical narrative Nazi Germany and the Jews Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933 – 1939. Published in 1997, the book, along with its companion volume published in 2007, served as shining examples of research and analysis on how the Nazis came to power in one of the most developed nations at the time. With a policy-driven view …show more content…
Friedländer makes a powerful case that there was no long term plan pointing the Nazis to genocide and that the complacency of general citizens led to the enactment of more and more extreme policies. In actuality he makes several references to the forced emigration of the German Jewish population being the goal of early policy makers. This contributes to his most powerful argument on the differences between the extremist and generalist sections of anti-Semitism in the German public. The more general public not enforcing the policies but, also not opposing them. This couples well with Friedländer’s assertion that people were confident in Hitler as a statesman. With him drawing many similarities with the shrewdness and timing with which Hitler enacted his …show more content…
Friedländer’s work on The Years of Persecution is an testament to his dedication to the topic and subject matter at hand. That being said, I believe that the book’s weaknesses are not insurmountable but, they are considerable. When recommending texts on the Nazis there are other scripts that provide an easier chronology of the Nazi rise. However, if the conversation were to shift to the policy based argument I would certainly recommend this narrative. With the information I have sought, reviews read, and the time taken to think about the finer points of what Dr. Friedländer had to say I believe that his second volume in the series, The Years of Extermination, is more deserving of attention. In a pattern I have seen with current novelizations, this first volume seems to be laying the groundwork for something sinister and not in this story. With the amount of knowledge obtained before this level of reading, the lead up to the harshest years of the Nazi’s persecution of the Jewish people seems an intentional way to entice readers to continue on to the second book. With that however, comes the at times dense trudge toward finishing this book as the end tends to unravel, as if a rope had been severed in the middle. My recommendation of this would be well thought out before