The Best Books on the Holocaust
One history to read first, the two scholarly foundations, the book on how ordinary men became killers, and the two testimonies
The best single-volume history of the Holocaust for most readers is Saul Friedländer's The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (2007). It won the Pulitzer Prize, it is written by a historian who was himself a hidden child in France, and its method is the reason to read it: Friedländer sets the perpetrators' decisions and the victims' diaries and letters side by side, so that the history is never told from one side only.
The two scholarly foundations under everything else are Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, the first and still the most complete account of the machinery of murder, and Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men, the study of one reserve police battalion that is the standard answer to the question of how ordinary people took part. Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands sets the Holocaust in the wider mass killing of eastern Europe; Nikolaus Wachsmann's KL is the history of the camp system; and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and Elie Wiesel's Night are the two testimonies that everyone should read.
Every title below is checked against Open Library and publisher records, with editions, years and ISBNs verified rather than scraped. Where historians genuinely disagree, above all on when and how the decision for genocide was taken, the guide says so rather than picking a side.
The books
1. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 — Saul Friedländer (2008)
The Holocaust must be written as an integrated history, with the perpetrators' decisions and the victims' own voices on the same page.
The Pulitzer-winning standard history, and the one book that holds the whole of Europe and the individual voices together; first published in 2007.
Pick this if: Anyone who wants one serious history of the Holocaust. (Level: General)
2. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland — Christopher R. Browning (1993)
The men who shot Jews in Poland were ordinary middle-aged reservists, and conformity and habit explain more of what they did than ideology.
The standard study of how ordinary people became perpetrators; short, and the most argued-over book in the field. First published in 1992.
Pick this if: Anyone asking how it could happen. (Level: General)
3. Survival in Auschwitz — Primo Levi (1995)
Auschwitz was a system for destroying human beings before it killed them, and it can be described exactly.
The testimony most historians say changed how they read everything else; a chemist's precision, no self-pity. First published in Italian in 1947 as If This Is a Man.
Pick this if: Everyone. (Level: General)
4. The Destruction of the European Jews — Raul Hilberg (2003)
The Holocaust was carried out by a bureaucracy, and the process of destruction, from definition through concentration to annihilation, can be reconstructed step by step.
The foundational scholarly account of the machinery of murder; this is the third edition, in three volumes, first published in 1961.
Pick this if: Readers who want the reference work behind every later history. (Level: Advanced)
5. KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps — Nikolaus Wachsmann (2015)
The concentration camps were a single evolving system from 1933 to 1945, distinct from the extermination sites and central to the Nazi state.
The standard history of the camp system, and the correction to the common conflation of the camps with the death camps.
Pick this if: Readers who want to understand the camps as an institution. (Level: Intermediate)
6. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin — Timothy Snyder (2012)
The Holocaust took place at the centre of a zone where Hitler and Stalin between them killed fourteen million civilians, and it must be understood in that setting.
The influential and contested book that sets the Holocaust in the wider mass killing of eastern Europe; first published in 2010.
Pick this if: Readers who want the geographic and political context, and are prepared to weigh the criticism. (Level: Intermediate)
7. Night — Elie Wiesel (2006)
A fifteen-year-old's account of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and of what the camps did to faith.
The most widely read testimony of the Holocaust, in Marion Wiesel's 2006 translation; short enough to read in a sitting.
Pick this if: Everyone, and the usual first book for younger readers. (Level: General)
Which Holocaust book to start with
Start with Friedländer if you want the history and with Levi if you want to understand what it was before you read the history. The Years of Extermination is long and it is unrelenting, but it is the one book that holds the whole of Europe, the whole chain of decision and the individual voices of the murdered in a single frame; it is the second volume of a two-part work, and it stands on its own. Survival in Auschwitz is short, exact and free of self-pity, and it is the book most historians of the subject say changed how they read everything else.
Read Browning next. Ordinary Men follows Reserve Police Battalion 101, some five hundred middle-aged men from Hamburg who shot tens of thousands of Jews in Poland, and asks why; its answer, that conformity, deference and habit did more than ideology or coercion, is the most argued-over conclusion in the field, and the book is short enough to read in two evenings.
Then go where your questions lead. Hilberg is the reference for how the bureaucracy of destruction worked, and the one-volume student edition on this list is the accessible way in. Wachsmann's KL is the history of the concentration camps as an institution, from Dachau in 1933 to liberation, and corrects the common conflation of the camps with the extermination sites. Snyder's Bloodlands places the Holocaust alongside the Soviet famines and terror in the same territory, an argument some historians dispute and all of them engage with. Wiesel's Night is the testimony of a fifteen-year-old, and it belongs on any list.
What the historians argue about
The oldest argument is between 'intentionalists', who hold that genocide was Hitler's aim from early on, and 'functionalists', who see it emerging from the cumulative radicalisation of the regime and its local agents. Most historians on this list, Friedländer and Browning included, now hold a synthesis: ideology set the direction, and the timing and form of the decision in 1941 emerged from the war in the east. Exactly when the decision was taken is still debated.
The second argument is Browning's. Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996) used the same battalion to argue that a specifically German 'eliminationist' antisemitism explains the killing; Browning's afterword to later editions of Ordinary Men answers him, and most historians have sided with Browning. Goldhagen's book is not on this list for that reason, but a reader will meet the argument.
The third is comparison. Snyder's Bloodlands treats the Holocaust as the centre of a wider zone of mass killing by both Hitler and Stalin, and has been criticised for blurring the distinctiveness of the genocide; Friedländer's book is, among other things, the case for that distinctiveness. Reading both is the honest approach.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best single-volume history of the Holocaust?
Saul Friedländer's The Years of Extermination (2007), which won the Pulitzer Prize. It covers the whole of occupied Europe from 1939 to 1945 and sets the perpetrators' decisions alongside the victims' diaries and letters. Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews is the older scholarly foundation for readers who want the machinery in full.
What is the best book on why ordinary people took part in the Holocaust?
Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men (1992), the study of Reserve Police Battalion 101, whose middle-aged reservists shot tens of thousands of Jews in Poland. Browning's conclusion that conformity and habit mattered more than ideology is disputed by Daniel Goldhagen and defended in Browning's afterword; most historians side with Browning.
Which Holocaust memoir should I read first?
Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz (1947), for its precision and its refusal of self-pity, and Elie Wiesel's Night (1958) for its directness. Both are short. Most readers who go on to the histories say Levi is the book that made them understand what they were reading.
Is Bloodlands a good book on the Holocaust?
It is an influential one. Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands (2010) places the Holocaust within the mass killings by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in eastern Europe. Critics argue it blurs the distinctiveness of the genocide; read it alongside Friedländer, whose book makes the case for that distinctiveness.
Related guides
- Best Books on World War 2
- Best Books on World War 1
- Best Books on the Cold War
- The Best History Books: One Per Era
Sources consulted
- The Years of Extermination — Open Library record
- Ordinary Men — Open Library record
- Survival in Auschwitz — Open Library record
- The Destruction of the European Jews (3rd ed.) — Open Library record
- KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps — Open Library record
- Bloodlands — Open Library record
- Night — Open Library record
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