Perpetrators of the Holocaust: a Historiography

Abstract

In late 1944 and early 1945 the British Foreign Office gave British soldiers a pocket guide to prepare them to conquer Germany and occupy it afterwards. The guide argued that Hitler had exploited Germany’s tradition of authority and glorification of war, and had moulded a new generation of brutal killers. The Germans, the guide concluded, differed sharply from the British people: ‘The likeness, if it exists at all, is only skin-deep. THE DEEPER YOU DIG INTO THE GERMAN CHARACTER, THE MORE YOU REALISE HOW DIFFERENT THEY ARE FROM US.’1