She describes how the Nazi state transformed into a "dual state," where traditional legal structures existed alongside a "Prerogative State" that operated outside the law to carry out the genocide.
Dawidowicz is a primary proponent of the "Intentionalist" school of thought. She asserts that Hitler had a preconceived, systematic plan to eliminate the Jewish people long before the outbreak of World War II. According to her research, the "Final Solution" was not a spontaneous development born of wartime logistics, but the fulfillment of a long-standing ideological obsession rooted in Hitler's earliest political writings. Structure of the Work The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945
Upon its release, the book was praised for its exhaustive research and its ability to synthesize complex political history with deeply personal narratives. While later "Functionalist" historians argued that the Holocaust evolved through bureaucratic momentum, Dawidowicz’s work remains the definitive defense of the idea that the genocide was a deliberate, planned "war" against a specific people. She describes how the Nazi state transformed into
The War Against the Jews: 1933–1945 is a seminal historical work by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, first published in 1975. It remains one of the most significant accounts of the Holocaust, distinguished by its focus on the dual perspective of the Nazi perpetrators and the Jewish victims. Dawidowicz argues that the destruction of European Jews was the central, defining goal of Adolf Hitler’s regime, rather than a byproduct of the war itself. The Intentionalist Argument According to her research, the "Final Solution" was
This section shifts focus to the Jewish experience. It examines the internal life of the ghettos, the moral dilemmas faced by Jewish Councils (Judenräte), and the various forms of resistance and spiritual endurance. Key Themes and Insights