The Final Solution, first published in 1953, is an authoritative account of the Nazi's systematic plan to exterminate Jews (and other groups) in the 1930s until the end of World War II in 1945. The book traces the beginnings of the Holocaust and the Nazi pogroms against the Jews-the Nuremburg Laws, the Week of Broken Glass, the ghettos and deportations-to the extermination camps and gas chambers of Auschwitz, and Nazi actions throughout Russia, western Europe and the Balkans. Appendices detail Reitlinger's estimates of the final death toll (although some of Reitlinger's figures are considered overly conservative today) and describe the fate of leading participants in "the final solution." Gerald Reitlinger (1900-1978) was an art historian and author of several books on the Nazi period, and served in the British army during the war. Today, The Final Solution remains one of the most objective and best-documented sources on the Holocaust.