Empire of Destruction: The History of Mass Murder Committed by the Nazis

Perhaps the most "challenging" book of all dedicated to the essence of the Hitler regime and the responsibility of the Germans. British historian Alex Kay argues that the extermination of people belonging to certain ethnic and social groups was not a byproduct of repressive policies in Nazi Germany but the main goal. The author explains how the regime specifically targeted certain ethnic and social groups as its victims, and stitches together the different representations of the crimes committed by the Nazis that usually exist separately in the collective consciousness: the blockade of Leningrad, the Holocaust, the extermination of the Polish intelligentsia, the child "euthanasia" program, etc. For the first time, we see the picture as a whole – and in all its unimaginably horrific details.