Very much worth reading;

"It influenced enormously Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust published four years later. The book received great critical acclaim in Germany, and provoked controversy elsewhere for "letting Germany off the hook". Bauman's thesis was that the Holocaust was a product of modernity rather than being specific to German nationalism. As Dr Richard Kilminster, another Leeds sociologist colleague, explains: "When the book was published in Germany, it caused a sensation. He argued that the Holocaust could only happen because of modernity's technology and bureaucracy. What modernity did was to generate unintended consequences of bureaucratic complexity and created the conditions in which moral responsibility disappeared."