Skip to main content

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions

Explaining Hitler

1. Is Claude Lanzmann, whose film Shoah is considered by many to be the greatest documentation of the Holocaust, correct when he claims that any attempt to explain Hitler is obscene, because it in some way endeavors to absolve Hitler of his monumental guilt?

2. If Hitler's radical evil was an exception--beyond the basic level of human malignancy--is there any hope of making sense of his actions?

3. If we demonize Hitler do we distance him, in a falsely comforting way, from ourselves and the continuum of human good and evil?

4. If interpreters downplay Hitler's personal role in the Holocaust--blaming the entire German population, for example, or a relatively small group of anti-Semitic zealots and bureaucrats--are they granting him "the posthumous victory of the last laugh?"

5. What do the many conflicting interpretations of the historical evidence about Hitler tell us about the inherent nature and reliability of all historical assessment?

6. Although Rosenbaum concedes that we can never reach consensus about Hitler, in what ways does Explaining Hitler succeed in elucidating Hitler's evil?

Explaining Hitler
by Ron Rosenbaum

  • Publication Date: July 1, 1999
  • Paperback: 496 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial
  • ISBN-10: 006095339X
  • ISBN-13: 9780060953393