This new Seminar Study presents a straightforward, matter-of-fact analysis of the encounter between the Third Reich and the Jews. David Engel sets out to clarify the basic facts and to explore the possible reasons why 5.8 million European Jews died in its course. As with a murder investigation, he sifts the evidence relating to motives, means and opportunities for the killing of European Jewry. In the process he raises some vexatious and sharply contested questions: Why was it a German government that perpetrated the mass murder? What led that government to the conclusion that all Jews had to die? Could the murder have been prevented or its scale reduced had victims or bystanders acted differently?