Since the 1990s research has entered a third phase, in which there has been a particular focus on the years 1939-45 (the subject of the third volume of this study). The discovery of new documents in the archives of the former Soviet bloc, the increasing public prominence given to the persecution and extermination of the Jews and others, from homosexuals to ‘asocials’, from slave labourers to the handicapped, by the Nazis, have all generated a large quantity of important new knowledge.
