Historians face such questions all the time when the subject is the Holocaust.
The discussion, free and open to the public, is sponsored in part by the Woodward Lectures. Prof. Friedlander is considered one of the leading contemporary historians of the Holocaust. In volume one, Prof. Friedlander describes and interprets the steady increase of anti-Jewish measures in Germany after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. He demonstrates the interaction between intentions and contingencies, betweendiscernible causes and shifting circumstances to suggest that there was no master plan for the destruction of the Jews from the outset. By bringing together entirely different levels of reality, as perceived by those to whom he gives voice, Prof. Friedlander creates a richly textured, complex, and subtle narrative of the Nazi era.