The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath takes a fresh, probing look at one of the greatest human tragedies in modern history. Author David M. Crowe begins with a detailed overview of the history of the Jews, their two-millennia-old struggle with a larger Christian world, and the historical anti-Semitism that created the environment that helped pave the way for the Holocaust.

But it would take more than traditional prejudices to bring Europe to the edge of the Shoah. It would take someone like Adolf Hitler, who blended his own hatred of the Jews with contemporary ideas about eugenics, Aryan racial superiority, and German nationalistic frustration with the post-1918 Weimar democratic experiment, to bring to life the Nazi racial policies that led to the Final Solution—the mass murder of all of the Jews in Europe. Crowe analyzes the complex origins and evolution of these policies not only toward the Jews, the Nazis' principal victims, but also toward the Roma, the handicapped, and other groups deemed racial or biological threats to Hitler's goal of creating an Aryan-pure Europe. He discusses the spread of these policies in Germany as well as throughout Europe and concludes with a detailed discussion of liberation, Displaced Persons and the founding of Israel, the major war crimes investigations and trials, and continuing international efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.