Despite the outpouring of books, films, memorials, museums, and courses devoted to the subject of the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such a ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the 20th century seems still to elude people. Numerous myths have sprouted, many designed to console us that things could have gone differently if only some person or entity had acted more bravely or wisely. "Why?" dispels many such myths—from the notion that anti-Semitism brought Hitler to power to the belief that a large number of major perpetrators escaped punishment—and debunks the most prevalent ones, including the recurrent claim that the Holocaust never happened. Peter Hayes brings scholarly wisdom to bear on popular views of the history, challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations and arguing that a convergence of multiple forces at a particular moment in time led to these events.