This ambitious pan-European overview explores the most significant causal factors, political developments, and societal forces that contributed to the perpetration of the Holocaust. Drawing on wide-ranging current scholarly expertise, this volume seeks to explain the genocidal scope and European dimensions of the crimes committed by Nazi Germany and its allies, collaborators, and facilitators across the continent during the war. It broadens the range of Holocaust research beyond the German initiators and organizers, however central these remain. Contributions look beyond simple or monocausal explanations in terms of, for example, Hitler's role or ideological antisemitism. Combining in-depth studies of specific locations and developments with overviews of thematic issues and wider questions, the second volume of the Cambridge History of the Holocaust offers concise analyses of the complex developments, varied interests, and interrelated events that were rooted in previous history and continue to influence the present within and beyond Europe. Cumulatively, this book presents a complex, multifaceted approach to understanding the uneven unfolding and escalation of the Holocaust.