The road to the Holocaust

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. In his latest book, The Hitler Years, Holocaust 1933-1945, Frank McDonough offers a heart-rending year-by-year narrative of the Nazis escalating persecution of the Jews, from Hitler's rise to power to the death camps. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Frank describes how a campaign of intimidation that began with acts of thuggery on the streets of Germany evolved into genocide. Frank, your book opens with a chapter entitled 1933, Persecution Begins. Why did you decide to begin the book at this point?

point and how developed was Hitler's thinking on the persecution of Jewish people at this point? Well, this book is part of a series. It's called the Hitler Years and it includes the Weimar Years. So every single book in this series begins with the first year that is covered by that series because every chapter in all of these books covers a year.

So it starts in 1933 because that's when Hitler comes to power. That's the first year of Hitler in power. It's called the Hitler years. So it starts then and each chapter covers a particular year. So there's a chapter on every single year.

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