The Origins of the Final Solution is the most detailed, careful, & 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 & by a process of elimination that gradually foreclosed plans for their expulsion from Europe. Only in the interval between late September & late October 1941 did the desire to 'remove' the Jews intersect with the discovery of acceptable means of killing them on a large scale & with the euphoria of expected victory in Russia, all of which followed on from two years of 'race war' & 'racial imperialism' in eastern Europe that prepared 'ordinary Germans' for this fateful task.