Many historians view the Holocaust as a consequence or by-product of the horrific brutality that occurred in World War II. This volume contends the opposite: that the war was a direct result, not the cause, of Hitler's racial persecution and genocidal programme. When Nazis confiscated Jewish bank accounts and businesses, for example, those assets were used to finance Germany's rearmament. Toward the end of the war, when Germany desperately needed trains for the war effort, Hitler instead used the railroads to ship Jews to their death, at great expense to the military. World War II acted as a veil behind which Hitler implemented his plans for systematic mass murder.