In 1941, as Nazi Germany began its disastrous campaign against the Soviet Union, Hitler's other campaign, to exterminate European Jewry, was also commencing in earnest. What began with organized executions carried out by the Einzatsgruppen evolved into systematic genocide, reaching its frenzied final moments just as the Wehrmacht was meeting defeat on the military front. These campaigns—and Germany's failure—were inextricably linked, Yaron Pasher tells us in Holocaust versus Wehrmacht. Pasher argues, in fact, that the major share of the logistical problems faced by the Wehrmacht during World War II stemmed from Hitler's obsession with securing the resources—especially from the Reichsbahn railway—needed to implement the "Final Solution." To a degree never fully recognized or understood, Hitler's anti-Semitic ideology was his war's undoing.
