The Nazi Conscience Author:Claudia Koonz The Nazi conscience is not an oxymoron. The perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethnic community and denounced outsiders. The Nazi Conscience chronicles the chilling saga of a modern state so powerful that it extinguished neighborliness, respect, and,... more » ultimately, compassion for all those banished from the ethnic majority. "[M]any thoughtful men and women have posed no question more insistently than, 'How could it happen?' Claudia Koonz's powerfully written study of the inculcation of a Nazi racialist ethos in the years before extermination answers this question as persuasively as any other to date." —Charles S. Maier, author of The Unmasterable Past "[A] valuable and original book … This daring reinterpretation of the relationship between the Nazi leadership, its middle- and low-ranking cadres, and other sectors of the German population shows the gradual shift in public opinion toward the regime's worldview." —Omer Bartov, author of Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories« less