Can anybody recommend an accessible 'light' history of the road to the final solution, please? I thought the old Ballantine series might have one but apparently not... Thanks in anticipation.
As you're aware, 'light' ain't easy, but I'm plumping for this. The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution - Mark RoseMan Long while since I read it, but it's a well-written focus on how they saw things. Slender, but taut & interesting book. Realised the other day I'd not read a holocaust history for years, when I spent a while devouring them. Don't think I'm alone in reaching a point where it all gets a bit much.
Funnily enough, I had thought of lending the interested party the Branagh film. Does Roseman cover the pre-war background?
I honestly can't remember. ISTR more about 'the decision' itself. If 'the rise' is the interest, then it's got to be Shirer, Hohne, Study in Tyranny, Kershaw etc, hasn't it? Though I'd put a shout in for Bullock's Parallel Lives. Light it is not; brick of a book, but if the putative interest is 'how the F do these things happen', it's so well written that it tells a dual tale of C20th extremism like very few others. Think Shirer is probably the one, though. (Again, maybe a bit hefty, far from holocaust specific, but an excellent 'engager'.) 'Holocaust primer' is a good query, though. Am not nailing it, but now thinking quite hard. Difficult to separate the thing itself from the party & it's personalities, isn't it.
