I feel strongly that the history of the Holocaust needs to be in the context of World War II. It matters where the armies are, whether the German military is pushing forward or falling back, and how the neutrals were weighing their fortunes. To monitor the progress of the war–as it was understood in the US–you can read Henry Morgenthau’s military briefings, which are in the Morgenthau diaries, and you can refer to “War News Summarized,” a daily column that ran in the New York Times summarizing the reports of the day.