Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Guide
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Alfred Rosenberg’s Diary 1934-1944
Part III: Related Documents
Part IV: A “Final Solution” in “the East:” Rosenberg and the
“Jewish Question”
1.Ideology Applied: Rosenberg’s Antisemitism and the Nazi
System
2.New Opportunities: “Operation Barbarossa” and the Onset of
Genocide
3.A European Project: Rosenberg and the Holocaust
4.From Selective Memory to Lost Record: The Post-war Fate of
Rosenberg‘s Diary
List of Related Documents
Bibliography
About the Editors
Index
Jürgen Matthäus is director of the Applied Research Division at the
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust
Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Frank Bajohr is director of the Zentrum für Holocaust-Studien at
the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich.
Only two of Hitler’s intimates kept diaries of interest.
Goebbels’s volumes have long provided valuable insights into
the gossip, rivalries, and self-serving arguments of the Reich
leadership; now we have the thoughts of Alfred Rosenberg.
This splendid volume is the result of years of effort by the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) to locate and
secure more than 400 pages of loose-leaf paper covering the years
1936 through 1944, as Rosenberg rose from the Nazi Party’s
ideologue and author of The Myth of the Twentieth
Century (1930) through his appointment as ruler of the
Occupied Eastern Territories in July 1941, thus ushering in the
wholesale programs of looting and mass murder. This
remarkable and important book is the result of a partnership with
Munich’s well-known Institut für
Zeitgeschichte. Rosenberg’s diary, translated into
English by Matthäus (USHMM) and Bajohr, from the Munich Institute,
is supported by lengthy footnotes, illuminated by 60 pages of
additional documents from the Museum’s voluminous holdings, and put
in context with pages of related sources. Admirably, the book
is being digitally prepared for online access. A valuable
resource that belongs in every collection on the Third Reich and
the Holocaust. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.
*CHOICE*
The diary reminds us, yet again, that just like other Holocaust
perpetrators, Rosenberg was simply a human being who committed
monstrous acts.
*The Wall Street Journal*
The Holocaust is the biggest human tragedy of the twentieth
century. Although we know a lot about the horror itself, there are
still aspects to learn. The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and
the Onset of the Holocaust by Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr
begins to fill this gap. Experts and university students will
particularly benefit from this book.
*The Washington BookReview*
Discovered in the United States in 2013, the diary of Alfred
Rosenberg, never intended for publication, shows the unvarnished
personal rivalries within the highest Nazi circles and the
obsessive hatred of the diarist (for Jews, the Catholic Church,
France. . .). The text clarifies specific events such as the
Stalin-Hitler pact, the looting of art by the Nazis in occupied
Europe, and the initial implementation of the extermination of the
Jews. Reading these pages is chilling. But the past is sometimes
chilling.
*Le Figaro*
One of the most important publications on Nazi history of the last
years. . . .This book will be part of the future canon of the
literature on Nazi history.
*Die Zeit*
Entrusted to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, we
finally have this exceptional document. . . .[T]he Nazi leaders
rarely expressed themselves, with the exception of Goebbels, in
private writings.
*Libération*
Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr have produced the most complete
version yet of the diary of Alfred Rosenberg, one of Adolf Hitler's
closest associates. . . .The diary and supporting documents that
the editors provide (excerpts from Rosenberg’s publications and
correspondence) suggest that Rosenberg’s place in the Third Reich
was more important than previously acknowledged. . . .[The editors
offer] . . . a superb assessment of current Holocaust scholarship.
. . .[and] have recaptured Rosenberg’s significance to the Third
Reich and especially to the ‘Final Solution.’
*Holocaust and Genocide Studies*
Alfred Rosenberg saw himself as the arbiter of Nazi ideology and
the architect of German ‘living space’ in his native European
East. Though fitted out with corresponding titles, he
became neither, but instead one of the most massive plunderers of
all time. This diary—expertly introduced,
contextualized, and annotated by two outstanding scholars—conveys
Rosenberg’s ideational fixations, cold-blooded murderousness,
childlike submission to his Führer, and carping engagement in the
rivalries of the Reich’s leadership. Readers will find
ample confirmation of Goebbels’ remark that Rosenberg’s beliefs
were ‘so cold and confrontational that one shudders.’
*Peter Hayes, Northwestern University*
This first English-language edition of Alfred Rosenberg’s diary
brings into sharp and stunning relief how the Nazi party‘s
self-declared chief ideologue transformed the regime’s sweeping
goals into radical reality. Eager to excel in the struggle against
his competitors among Hitler’s closest followers, Rosenberg played
a key role in organizing the systematic looting of art, in the
exploitation of occupied Eastern Europe, and in the passing of the
threshold from the persecution of Jews to genocide. The editors
provide compelling new insights not only into the interrelation
between ideology and practice in the Third Reich, but also into the
crucial importance of Rosenberg’s attempts as Reich minister for
the occupied Soviet Union to establish his realm of influence as
the center for the murderous execution of the “Final Solution” in
Europe.
*Sybille Steinbacher, University of Vienna*
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