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David Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Sixty-five years after the end of World War II, our knowledge of the Holocaust seems to have reached a plateau, but debates about its place in history show no sign of abating. Donald Bloxham's work is focused on influencing this debate, redirecting it in several ways. Like Yehuda Bauer in his work, Rethinking the Holocaust,1 Bloxham writes from a global perspective that includes frequent references to other genocides for comparative analysis. He is keen to place the Holocaust in the context of an increasingly violent and antisemitic greater Europe (chapters 1-3). A second theme is his emphasis on the developmental nature of the Holocaust, contingent on and conditioned by geopolitical factors, resources, and the ability or willingness of other actors to advance or decelerate the removal of Jews and other victim groups from Europe (chapters 4-6). A third theme focuses on the role of ideology in the execution of the Holocaust: just how central was it, compared to other causes (chapter 7 and passim)? A concluding chapter provides an intellectual history of Holocaust scholarship with its shifting explanatory paradigms. Here the author scrutinizes the uniqueness claim that has been advanced by some Holocaust scholars and finds it wanting, a view that is suggested by the book's title.
In Part I, Bloxham provides an overview of Europe between the Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878 and the outbreak of World War II, six violent decades during which modernizing forces and romantic nationalism were at work to destabilize first the multiethnic Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires and next the young democracies of continental Europe. Many variants of discrimination, forced assimilation, expropriations, as well as sporadic violence against minorities became the norm, often with state support. Jews and Romani, seen as "stateless minorities" were the most likely to be targeted. The Eastern Crisis added another victim group: European Muslims in Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria. For the most part, the multiple forms of oppression and persecution endured by Europe's minorities fit the paradigm of ethnic dominance. Ethnic destruction in the form of genocide and ethnic cleansing required more than chauvinist or racist ideology, however. As demonstrated by the genocide of the Armenian and Assyrian Christians in 1915/1916, interstate...