Auschwitz-Birkenau has come to symbolise the brutality of the Nazis, and last month the 60th anniversary of its liberation was marked by international commemoration. Historians, though, are still divided about the meaning of the Shoah in the context of the development of western civilisation. Enzo Traverso examines the wider historical context looking beyond Nazism, World War II, and totalitarian systems, making links to eugenics, Social Darwinism, Taylorist production techniques, and other ideologies and practices. He concludes that "rather than a phenomenon without precedent, it was a unique synthesis of elements at work in our civilisation. Despite its pathological manifestations, Nazism was deeply rooted in the history, culture and technology of the modern world, and in modern forms of organisation, production and domination."