Although there is an immense amount of literature on the "final solution" - the Nazis' attempt to exterminate European Jews during the Second World War - many critical questions about the Holocaust still remain unaddressed. These collected essays set out to clarify the reasons for the attempted genocide of the Jews, and to provide new answers to this period of history which often seems inexplicable. The book draws on important new evidence, much of it from archives in Eastern Europe which have only recently become accessible. Contributors are among the leading experts in the field. The essays focus on the preconditions and antecedents for the "final solution" and the immediate origins of the decision to murder Europe's Jewish population. They consider, too, the impact of the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 on the evolution of a genocidal policy and the response of the peoples and governments in Germany, occupied Europe, the free world and the Jewish communities under the Nazis and in the West. The results of this study are often controversial, and challenge many accepted views.