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Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe
Examines the progress of Nazi racism from simple propaganda through the mass murders during the second World War using eyewitness accounts and official documents to describe its course
350 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1951
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About the author
Léon Poliakov
59 books12 followersLéon Poliakov (Russian: Лев Поляков) was a French historian, cofounder of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, and director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique).
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November 7, 2024
When one reads about the Holocaust, there are often two questions that arise: (1) How did the
German people allow mass extermination and genocide to happen; and (2) Why did the majority of Jews go passively to the gas chambers. The author, who has written extensively on this subject, attempts to answer, at least in part, those lingering mysteries of passivity. He states that both the German man-on-the-street and the Jews can be visualized as passive in this horror. But passivity has a negative side (Germans) and a positive side (Jews), although I had trouble with the latter.
This book delves into the beginning of public anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany through the various methods that were used for the "final solution". The author also touches on the other "inferior" groups of people who were caught in the maelstrom ....Gypsy, Polish, Romany, homosexuals, et al.
There was much here with which I was not quite as familiar: the Europa Plan and the Window Document, being just two, which were part of the mass extermination. This is a very descriptive and well researched book on a subject that is so horrific that is is beyond the grasp of most individuals. It is not for the faint of heart.
German people allow mass extermination and genocide to happen; and (2) Why did the majority of Jews go passively to the gas chambers. The author, who has written extensively on this subject, attempts to answer, at least in part, those lingering mysteries of passivity. He states that both the German man-on-the-street and the Jews can be visualized as passive in this horror. But passivity has a negative side (Germans) and a positive side (Jews), although I had trouble with the latter.
This book delves into the beginning of public anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany through the various methods that were used for the "final solution". The author also touches on the other "inferior" groups of people who were caught in the maelstrom ....Gypsy, Polish, Romany, homosexuals, et al.
There was much here with which I was not quite as familiar: the Europa Plan and the Window Document, being just two, which were part of the mass extermination. This is a very descriptive and well researched book on a subject that is so horrific that is is beyond the grasp of most individuals. It is not for the faint of heart.
September 2, 2025
A FRENCH HISTORIAN’S SUMMARY AND COMMENTARY ON THE HOLOCAUST
French historian Leon Poliakov wrote in the Introduction to this 1951 book, “This book is devoted to the most tragic page in Jewish history---the extermination in cold blood of six million Jewish men, women, and children, with the result that the total number of the European Jews was reduced by two-thirds. Such bloodletting with without precedent in European history … When one realizes that we are dealing here with a highly civilized nation that for many years was a torch-bearer of Western society, one realizes that we are concerned with an anti-Semitic problem that is intrinsic to our entire Western civilization, an aberrant and pathological phenomenon… the general interest of mankind, as well as the more particular question of the future of the European community, demand that we study closely the Nazi war on the Jews.”
He wrote in the Foreword to the 1974 Revised edition, “This book was first published a quarter of a century ago. Rereading the original text… I came across many passages which I felt I might have written differently today. In retrospect, some of the opinions I held in 1949 and 1950 seem a little naïve to me now. In other instances, I felt I might have kept tighter rein on emotions which are considered unacceptable in historians. But then I wonder whether the book really would have gained by such changes. Under the circumstances, I decided to leave my 1951 text essentially unchanged. The only major alterations come toward the end of the book. I am giving less space to the attitude of the Vatican. As long as Pope Pius XII was alive, discussions of his silence during the Holocaust era were tempered by circumspection… But after that, the subject was debated with increasing vehemence, culminating in the worldwide scandal set off by in 1962, after the death of Pius XII, by Rolf Hochhuth’s ‘Deputy.’ This theatrical catharsis put an end to the great debate, and frankly, I do not see why that Pope’s attitude should rate more commentary or sterner condemnation than the passivity that characterized the Christians of his generation in general.”
He explains, “each new Nazi success was followed by the hatching of a new ‘solution’ along territorial lines… But these plans were never put into execution; meanwhile events followed one another in their implacable course. With the outbreak of war, the situation of the Jews rapidly worsened. Now their fate was decided not by legislative acts, but by police measures, a change that marked an essential stage in the evolution of Nazi totalitarian state.” (Pg. 31)
He recounts, “as a parallel to these [Jewish] deportations to the east, the ‘Center for Jewish Emigration’ was trying to expel German Jews to other destinations. Legal emigration had become almost impossible; a small stream of emigrants nevertheless continued to flow… A few … tried to go … with Palestine as their destination, but the British government refused to let these visaless travelers enter the Jewish National Homeland. This is not the last time that we shall confront the bitter paradox of the Gestapo’s pushing the Jews toward their salvation, only to have His Majesty’s democratic government bar the way to the future victims of the crematory ovens.” (Pg. 37)
He notes, “Inevitably, one asks: Why did the Jews let themselves be taken in such large numbers at the first cast of the net? First of all, it took a certain amount of time to prepare the roads to freedom. Also, the Germans tried to keep their actions secret and unexpected. The foreign Jews were the first ones to be arrested and they lacked the necessary connections and contacts; their accent increased the danger of their being detected. Moreover, for the average person to use false papers… meant violating a rather deeply rooted taboo against illegality. Finally, the real meaning of the deportations was often unknown to the victims to the very end. One might also say that the Jews underestimated the extent of German insanity; the existence of a veritable industry of death seemed scarcely credible. For these reasons, the great majority disregarded such warnings as there were… One needed an extraordinary power of intuition to glimpse, through all the orders and instructions and established categories of things, the future lying in wait for deportees.” (Pg. 174-175)
He suggests, "under the circumstances, hitting on the idea of using this gas [Zyklon B] on condemned human beings probably required little imagination. It somehow followed naturally, from Hitler’s curses in ‘Mein Kampf’ to the threats uttered by Goebbels, just this kind of death and no other was wished for the Jews…. Hitler in Mein Kampf: ‘If at the beginning of… the war 12,000 or 15,000 of these Jewish corrupters of the people had been plunged into an asphyxiating gas… the sacrifice of millions of soldiers would not have been in vain.’” (Pg. 199)
He observes, “the hangmen, big and small, felt a vague uneasiness; their fear of punishment, which sharpened as the war progressed, found an echo in some deeper disquiet… We do not mean that the SS men were tormented by pangs of conscience. Not all, however, attained the attitude of sovereign indifference that was held before them as an ideal. Himmler… never mentioned extermination in his numerous speeches with but one exception, when he was addressing a small group of faithful SS chiefs… 'I should like to talk about … the extermination of the Jewish people. This is something that is easy enough to talk about… Well, we set about doing that, and eighty million brave Germans turn up and each has his "good" Jew. Obviously, the rest are pigs, but this one is a first-rate Jew. Not one of those who talk like this has seen the corpses… Most of you know what it is to see a pile of 100 corpses, or 500, or 1000. To have gone though that… that is what has made you tough and strong.’” (Pg. 214)
He states, “The martyrdom of the Jewish people in the camps, the cruelest ordeal to which a human collectivity has ever been subjected, gave certain exceptional natures an opportunity to elevate their moral qualities to the heights of sublimity; they preserved their individual humanity in spite of and against everything. The circumstances were such, however, that their heroism could… be expressed only in a stoic and resigned acceptance of a fate worse than death… For the value of moral example… was reduced to nothing in the camps. A Gandhi would have been the object of general laughter.” (Pg. 220)
He continues, “an act of disobedience became impossible… as the result of a flagrant violation of the laws of self-preservation. Between the imperatives of self-preservation and obedience, the latter proved the stronger. It was as if, under the terrible pressure of life in the camps, by a kind of psychic osmosis, the utter obedience that had been so consciously inculcated in the SS was communicated to their victims.” (Pg. 221)
He states, “The mass deportation of peoples was the keystone of the Nazi plans for the non-German peoples. The turning topsy-turvy of the ethnographic map of Europe, of which the Nazis dreamed, would best assure the suppression of ethnic or national entities and with the least amount of bloodshed. Shrewdly dispersed across Siberia, South America, or Africa, these peoples could quickly lose all feeling for their formal national allegiance. At least this is the way the Nazi theorists figured. How practicable would have been the forced migrations of … hundreds of millions of persons, what would have been the immediate loss in human life, are questions which the course of events has fortunately left unanswered.” (Pg. 277)
He summarizes in the closing chapter, “Let us hasten to add that the church’s tireless humanitarian efforts in the face of the Hitler terror, with the approval or under the stimulus of the Vatican, can never be forgotten. We do not know what were the exact instructions sent by the Holy See to the churches in the different countries, but the coincidence of effort … is proof that such steps were taken.” (Pg. 295)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the Holocaust.
French historian Leon Poliakov wrote in the Introduction to this 1951 book, “This book is devoted to the most tragic page in Jewish history---the extermination in cold blood of six million Jewish men, women, and children, with the result that the total number of the European Jews was reduced by two-thirds. Such bloodletting with without precedent in European history … When one realizes that we are dealing here with a highly civilized nation that for many years was a torch-bearer of Western society, one realizes that we are concerned with an anti-Semitic problem that is intrinsic to our entire Western civilization, an aberrant and pathological phenomenon… the general interest of mankind, as well as the more particular question of the future of the European community, demand that we study closely the Nazi war on the Jews.”
He wrote in the Foreword to the 1974 Revised edition, “This book was first published a quarter of a century ago. Rereading the original text… I came across many passages which I felt I might have written differently today. In retrospect, some of the opinions I held in 1949 and 1950 seem a little naïve to me now. In other instances, I felt I might have kept tighter rein on emotions which are considered unacceptable in historians. But then I wonder whether the book really would have gained by such changes. Under the circumstances, I decided to leave my 1951 text essentially unchanged. The only major alterations come toward the end of the book. I am giving less space to the attitude of the Vatican. As long as Pope Pius XII was alive, discussions of his silence during the Holocaust era were tempered by circumspection… But after that, the subject was debated with increasing vehemence, culminating in the worldwide scandal set off by in 1962, after the death of Pius XII, by Rolf Hochhuth’s ‘Deputy.’ This theatrical catharsis put an end to the great debate, and frankly, I do not see why that Pope’s attitude should rate more commentary or sterner condemnation than the passivity that characterized the Christians of his generation in general.”
He explains, “each new Nazi success was followed by the hatching of a new ‘solution’ along territorial lines… But these plans were never put into execution; meanwhile events followed one another in their implacable course. With the outbreak of war, the situation of the Jews rapidly worsened. Now their fate was decided not by legislative acts, but by police measures, a change that marked an essential stage in the evolution of Nazi totalitarian state.” (Pg. 31)
He recounts, “as a parallel to these [Jewish] deportations to the east, the ‘Center for Jewish Emigration’ was trying to expel German Jews to other destinations. Legal emigration had become almost impossible; a small stream of emigrants nevertheless continued to flow… A few … tried to go … with Palestine as their destination, but the British government refused to let these visaless travelers enter the Jewish National Homeland. This is not the last time that we shall confront the bitter paradox of the Gestapo’s pushing the Jews toward their salvation, only to have His Majesty’s democratic government bar the way to the future victims of the crematory ovens.” (Pg. 37)
He notes, “Inevitably, one asks: Why did the Jews let themselves be taken in such large numbers at the first cast of the net? First of all, it took a certain amount of time to prepare the roads to freedom. Also, the Germans tried to keep their actions secret and unexpected. The foreign Jews were the first ones to be arrested and they lacked the necessary connections and contacts; their accent increased the danger of their being detected. Moreover, for the average person to use false papers… meant violating a rather deeply rooted taboo against illegality. Finally, the real meaning of the deportations was often unknown to the victims to the very end. One might also say that the Jews underestimated the extent of German insanity; the existence of a veritable industry of death seemed scarcely credible. For these reasons, the great majority disregarded such warnings as there were… One needed an extraordinary power of intuition to glimpse, through all the orders and instructions and established categories of things, the future lying in wait for deportees.” (Pg. 174-175)
He suggests, "under the circumstances, hitting on the idea of using this gas [Zyklon B] on condemned human beings probably required little imagination. It somehow followed naturally, from Hitler’s curses in ‘Mein Kampf’ to the threats uttered by Goebbels, just this kind of death and no other was wished for the Jews…. Hitler in Mein Kampf: ‘If at the beginning of… the war 12,000 or 15,000 of these Jewish corrupters of the people had been plunged into an asphyxiating gas… the sacrifice of millions of soldiers would not have been in vain.’” (Pg. 199)
He observes, “the hangmen, big and small, felt a vague uneasiness; their fear of punishment, which sharpened as the war progressed, found an echo in some deeper disquiet… We do not mean that the SS men were tormented by pangs of conscience. Not all, however, attained the attitude of sovereign indifference that was held before them as an ideal. Himmler… never mentioned extermination in his numerous speeches with but one exception, when he was addressing a small group of faithful SS chiefs… 'I should like to talk about … the extermination of the Jewish people. This is something that is easy enough to talk about… Well, we set about doing that, and eighty million brave Germans turn up and each has his "good" Jew. Obviously, the rest are pigs, but this one is a first-rate Jew. Not one of those who talk like this has seen the corpses… Most of you know what it is to see a pile of 100 corpses, or 500, or 1000. To have gone though that… that is what has made you tough and strong.’” (Pg. 214)
He states, “The martyrdom of the Jewish people in the camps, the cruelest ordeal to which a human collectivity has ever been subjected, gave certain exceptional natures an opportunity to elevate their moral qualities to the heights of sublimity; they preserved their individual humanity in spite of and against everything. The circumstances were such, however, that their heroism could… be expressed only in a stoic and resigned acceptance of a fate worse than death… For the value of moral example… was reduced to nothing in the camps. A Gandhi would have been the object of general laughter.” (Pg. 220)
He continues, “an act of disobedience became impossible… as the result of a flagrant violation of the laws of self-preservation. Between the imperatives of self-preservation and obedience, the latter proved the stronger. It was as if, under the terrible pressure of life in the camps, by a kind of psychic osmosis, the utter obedience that had been so consciously inculcated in the SS was communicated to their victims.” (Pg. 221)
He states, “The mass deportation of peoples was the keystone of the Nazi plans for the non-German peoples. The turning topsy-turvy of the ethnographic map of Europe, of which the Nazis dreamed, would best assure the suppression of ethnic or national entities and with the least amount of bloodshed. Shrewdly dispersed across Siberia, South America, or Africa, these peoples could quickly lose all feeling for their formal national allegiance. At least this is the way the Nazi theorists figured. How practicable would have been the forced migrations of … hundreds of millions of persons, what would have been the immediate loss in human life, are questions which the course of events has fortunately left unanswered.” (Pg. 277)
He summarizes in the closing chapter, “Let us hasten to add that the church’s tireless humanitarian efforts in the face of the Hitler terror, with the approval or under the stimulus of the Vatican, can never be forgotten. We do not know what were the exact instructions sent by the Holy See to the churches in the different countries, but the coincidence of effort … is proof that such steps were taken.” (Pg. 295)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the Holocaust.
June 27, 2022
Un saggio molto interessante perché scritto nel 1950, a pochi anni dalla fine del secondo conflitto mondiale. Molto interessante soprattutto la parte documentale. Risulta datato il punto di vista dell'autore sul ruolo dello Stato d'Israele. Resta il dubbio perplesso che l'autore pensi a una predisposizione "genetica" oltre che culturale del popolo germanico a una certa forma di antisemitismo
May 3, 2020
Solidly researched well written introduction to the Holocaust
January 7, 2013
this book contains a lot of knowledge and info that most books about this subject lack today.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews