“For what reasons did the Nazis decide to destroy an entire people? Why did they send millions of men, women and children to concentration camps, gas chambers, hang them, shoot them, starve them, beat them to death - kill them in every way imaginable and unimaginable? Where does this genocide rank among all the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis? I have been thinking about these questions for 25 years, producing television documentaries about Nazism and World War II. In the course of this work, I traveled to many countries and met with hundreds of eyewitnesses to those events - those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, those who watched from the sidelines, and those who committed these crimes. Among the materials collected for my films, only a small part was previously known. The Holocaust is the most heinous crime in human history. We need to understand how such fanaticism became possible. And this book, based not only on new materials, but also on recent research and documents of the time, is my attempt to do this." Lawrence Rees