Against the widespread understanding of the Holocaust as the culmination of a Nazi master plan of extermination, David Cesarani argues that the fate of European Jews was ‘rooted in anti-Semitism but it was shaped by war’ and that anti-Jewish measures, from economic persecution to murder, were often improvised, sometimes muddled reactions to the contingencies of the war. This critically acclaimed history chronicles the tragedy of Europe’s Jews, drawing on diaries, letters and recently released documents, to open a new perspective on the Nazi genocide.