Despite the undoubted significance of the regional administration of the Holocaust, which was revealed in a number of excellent, far-ranging studies made possible by the opening of archives in eastern Europe in the 1990s, the importance of Berlin in holding in place the continental frame of mass murder now appears to have been critical. In this regard, the intentionalists, who stressed the part played by Hitler and his fanatic antisemitic ideas, proved to have the sounder arguments. At the same time, however, a key premise of the functionalists, who underscored the dynamic role of circumstance in the formulation of Nazi anti-Jewish policies, has been largely established. Between the Anschluss with Austria in March 1938 and the first gassing of Jewish civilians in Auschwitz and Belzec four years later, the aim of Nazi policies changed dramatically as a result of new civil and military conditions, the pronounced ideological quality to the war with the Soviet Union after June 1941, and social dynamics in which perpetrators at all levels of the empire grew comfortable with the implementation of wholesale murder.
