Official Secrets: What The Nazis Planned, What Western Governments Knew

As defeat loomed, the Nazis desperately tried to destroy documents which described the planning and implementation of the Holocaust. Yet we now know that the British had already intercepted and decoded many police and SS radio messges which fill vital gaps in the historical record...Richard Breitman's disturbing book is the first to make full use of this recently released evidence to illuminate some crucial questions. Did Hitler map out the Final Solution in advance or 'imiprovise' ever more extreme forms of persecution in response to changing circumstances? How far did 'ordinary Germans' join forces with SS fanatics in the extermination of Jews? What did the Allies know about what was happening in Europe? And why was so little of the decoded data used in the post-war trials?