"In The Politics of Hate, John Weiss shows how anti-Semitism and racism developed as a major element in the European political process from the late nineteenth century to the Holocaust. Concentrating on the experience of Germany, Austria, France, and Poland, Mr. Weiss traces the combination of ideas and national cultures that brought venomous consequences to political life and spelled difficulty and then doom for Jews.

In a separate and contrasting chapter on Italy, he explains why anti-semitism never took hold there, and why even during World War II, under Nazi control, Jews in Italy were relatively protected.".

"The reasons for these developments - why Germany initiated the Holocaust, why the Austrians supplied so many killers, why a million French fascists could not damage the Jews until the Vichy government came to power, why anti-Semitism was far stronger in Eastern than in Western Europe - help us understand why the politics of racial hate succeed and what can be done about it."--BOOK JACKET.