Germanys war and the holocaust is a collection of essays about history and historiography action and representation facts and biases in the history of the german war machine and its savage behavior the underlying theme throughout all the essays is the functionalist versus the intentionalist schools of thought regarding the holocaust the functionalist generally german traditional and right wing although there are many notable exceptions such as hannah ardent sees the . The historiography of the holocaust has been written almost exclusively in two distinct narratives the first to which german historians have made an especially important contribution in recent years is concerned with the planning the organization and the perpetration of genocide. Omer bartov a leading scholar of the wehrmacht and the holocaust provides a critical analysis of various recent ways to understand the genocidal policies of the nazi regime and the reconstruction of german and jewish identities in the wake of world war ii germanys war and the holocaust both deepens our understanding of a crucial period in history and serves as an invaluable introduction to the vast body of literature in the field of holocaust studies. Germanys war and the holocaust disputed histories by bartov omer publication date 2003 topics holocaust jewish 1939 1945 world war 1939 1945 germany world war 1939 1945 campaigns eastern front atrocities national socialism historiography war crimes world war 1939 1945 atrocities germany armed forces . Introduction pt 1 war of destruction ch 1 savage war german warfare and moral choices in world war ii ch 2 from blitzkrieg to total war image and historiography pt 2 extermination policies ch 3 killing space the final solution as population policy ch 4 ordering horror conceptualizations of the concentrationary universe ch 5