Serious
reading?
My entire family experienced it firsthand. They saw how Hitler gained power; they heard his speeches and propaganda. They saw the reactions of crowds and individuals.
If you don't understand how the Holocaust was a MEANS, as much as an end, you should read something different. That's what I mean: people think they're getting the real story are not. It's being re-told so that it's all about Hitler's racist fantasies. That ignores a lot of things, not the least of which is the number of people Hitler had to enlist in his Reich in order to have so much power, and conquer a continent and a half, and how he pulled it off.
Sometimes, what you read is only as good as who wrote it, and their own biases.
It has also been written that Hitler didn't much care about the Jews at all, but needed a scapegoat and a group to loot. For various sociological reasons, the German Jews fit perfectly into the plan. I think that, too, misses a few things. The truth is somewhere in between.
I don't think it's necessarily valid to look at what Hitler, an insane, once-powerful dictator going down in flames, did in 1944 and 45, as a full indication of his initial motives and methods. Furthermore, Hitler himself was a figment of imagination, or rather, showmanship and propaganda. The motives and actions of all Nazis need to be taken into account, when looking at what happened and why.
The American Civil War didn't happen simply
because people south of the Mason-Dixon line hated black people, either. Or Jefferson Davis, or anyone else in particular, even if they were racists. It seems Robert E. Lee wasn't motivated by support for slavery at all. The same goes for Nazi Germany and those who built it. Like I said, too simple.
In moral terms, they were identical.
That much is true.