His most recent book is The Violin: A Social History of the World's Most Versatile Instrument, published by W. W. Norton and Company in December 2012.
[3] By "objective social reality", Schoenbaum argued the Nazi regime had achieved greater degree of industrialization and urbanization, while by "interpreted social reality", the Nazi regime was able to break down the traditional lines of class, religion and regional loyalties to achieve an unparalleled degree of unity amongst the German people.
[6] In 1996, Schoenbaum wrote a highly critical book review in the National Review of Daniel Goldhagen's bestseller Hitler's Willing Executioners where he charged Goldhagen with grossly simplifying the question of the degree and virulence of German Antisemitism, and of only selecting evidence that supported his thesis.
[8] Finally, Schoenbaum argued that Goldhagen failed to explain why the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933 was relatively ineffective or why the Kristallnacht needed to be organized by the Nazis as opposed to being a spontaneous expression of German popular anti-semitism.
[9] Using an example from his family history, Schoenbaum wrote that his mother-in-law, a Polish Jew who lived in Germany between 1928 and 1947, never considered the National Socialists and the Germans synonymous, and expressed regret that Goldhagen could not see the same.