«A commendable attempt to understand why people stood by and did nothing when confronted with Nazi barbarism, written by one of the greatest historians of modern Germany.»

Darren O'Byrne, The Critic

«[a] terrific work of historical scholarship»

Richard Lofthouse, QUAD

«[A] brilliant new book... Fulbrook brings a lifetime of scholarship and reflection, as well as a fearless courage, to the task.»

Nicholas Stargardt, Literary Review

«Mary Fulbrook superbly weaves contemporary accounts of experiences from Jews and non-Jews into a rich tapestry that shows how Germany under Hitler gradually turned into a society capable of the Holocaust.»

Ian Kershaw

«With her signature insightfulness, historian Mary Fulbrook addresses the fascinating but troubling problem of 'bystanders' to the Holocaust. She probes how social dynamics in Hitler's early years pushed non-Jews to conform, and how after the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 most fervently did so. By the late 1930s, more Germans became complicit in Nazi crimes and, during World War II, German, Austrian, and Baltic 'bystanders' eagerly engaged in violence, participating in genocide. This gripping account is a must-read for anyone interested in how bystanders became accomplices and later perpetrators, and how democracy could be destroyed.»

Marion Kaplan, Professor Emerita of Modern Jewish History, New York University, author of Between Di

«It is a great achievement of Mary Fulbrook that she succeeds in making this great failure clear and plausible through a micro-analysis of scenes from the period of German society from 1933 to 1945.»

Dorothee Wierling, H-Soz-Kult

«Fulbrook's latest study attempts to explain how Germany became a society able to perpetrate the Holocaust by rejecting, or at least challenging scholars to rethink, the idea of bystander...Fulbrook argues that by the beginning of the war in Europe, many Germans were primed to be accomplices in atrocities in Eastern Europe, thereby becoming complicit in the 20th-century's largest genocide. Recommended.»

Choice