What differentiates The Zone of Interest from other lesser films centered around the Holocaust is its refusal to engage in the tropes. The atrocities of the Nazis are so inhumane that filmmakers humanize these characters. Whether it is Winslet in The Reader falling in love with a boy, all while “accidentally” committing genocide due to her inability to read, or Tom Cruise in Valkyrie playing a real- life German soldier who conspired to kill Hitler.

Counterfactual notions like this occur throughout the book, though they hold little value either as conjecture or informed speculation. Obviously, every aspect of history (and not just in Europe) might be radically different had such-and-such not gone the way it did. For the most part, however, Kershaw moves adroitly through decades of turmoil in Europe. He’s skilled at connecting 20^th-century leaders with our current crop.

All of these seemingly random acts point to the fact that white supremacy isn’t just a “white is better” belief ingrained in misguided and stubborn opinions; but rather that white supremacy takes many forms. Some white supremacy groups are specifically anti-government; others don’t mind other ethnicities too much, but despise Jews; others are rooted in religious fanaticism (see Christian Identify above); while others still renounce the rigidity of religion (see Hitler and his ambivalent stance on Catholicism and religion in general).

Images, and the words that oftentimes accompany them, have a tendency to take on lives of their own.  The mustache sported so famously by Hitler represents many things.  It represents fear, violence, extermination, destruction, hate.  The very fact that someone would use an image as loaded as that of Hitler to make a statement about an economic policy is irresponsible.  That being said, the policies born from economic theories have had huge impacts on the lives of millions upon millions of people.