In the book, Kren and Rappaport contend that the primary purpose of the disciplines of history and psychology is to increase understanding of human behavior. A better understanding of the present may be gained by reconstructing and analyzing the past. The book delves into the discipline of psycho-history, seeking to explain the Holocaust (or Shoah as the Jews remember it) as an event in human history that was brought about by hidden factors and repressed tendencies which came to the forefront following Hitler’s perception of Germans as a superior or Aryan race- and deeming all other peoples as inferior. His victory was spurred on by the influence of economic circumstances and a Germany wanting to escape from depression. Modern psychoanalysis seeks the sources of adult behavior in early experiences centralizing upon sexual development. Thus a theory has been postulated that the Germans were repaying the Jews for the injustices done to them earlier. They saw the Jews as relentless exploiters and capitalists; the reason for Germany’s economic failures. They wanted to exterminate the Jewish race. Starting from Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Nazi party systematically worked to deprive the Jewish population of all their rights, property, freedom and self-respect. Laws, decrees and obtrusive actions were undertaken to this effect. This was aided by the fact that most of the Nazi leaders had disturbed child-hoods and reveled in the power they had come into. By a relentless display of hatred mainly for the Jews, other parties willing to aid or shelter them were forced into inaction for fear of the same wrath being visited upon them. Even before the 2 nd World War, Germany had gone through an era where thousands of useless or bad- meaning unproductive- German children and mentally or physically disabled adults were killed in an effort to reduce the masses only to productive members of society. Most German children were abused or maltreated in these times of economic hardship- and grew up with a taste for vengeance. The sad part of the story was that the rest of the world decided not to intervene until Hitler’s ambitions became clear and he attacked neighboring countries- declaring war upon them with the view of establishing a new and larger German empire.

In facing up to the Nazi persecution, the Jews had decided to confront Nazism with an attitude that, for them, was virtuous traditionalism: “Obey, do not provoke, and the crisis will pass" was the thinking- except in some few cases where ghetto leaders and Nazis cooperated.