By the author of the acclaimed and ground-breaking Ordinary Men, The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed, careful, and comprehensive analysis to date of the descent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews into mass murder. Arguing that genocide was not a preconceived plan but rather a discovered possibility, Christopher Browning explains how the decision to murder the Jews en masse emerged in stages and by a process of elimination that gradually foreclosed plans for their expulsion from Europe. Only in the interval between late September and late October 1941 did the desire to 'remove' the Jews intersect with the discovery of acceptable means of killing them on a large scale and with the euphoria of expected victory in Russia, all of which followed on from two years of 'race war' and 'racial imperialism' in eastern Europe that prepared 'ordinary Germans' for this fateful task. Thoroughly researched and lucidly presented, this book is a groundbreaking work in the history of the Holocaust, one that will undoubtedly be studied for decades to come.