How did the history of Nazism find its way into the historical non-fiction book around 1980? In my talk, I will analyse the beginnings of the best-known book series on the history of Nazism and the Holocaust, S. Fischer’s “Schwarze Reihe”. The paperbacks were first designed with their iconic black-and-white cover in 1977, and over 200 titles were published up until 2011. Studies by well-known historians such as Raul Hilberg, Götz Aly, Ernst Klee and many others were published here. In order to historicize the book series and the work of its editor Walter Pehle, I will describe the beginnings of the „Schwarze Reihe“. In doing so, I will focus on three overarching developments at the end of the 1970s: diversification of the non-fiction paperback market along with its audience, new topics on the market for historical non-fiction, and the changing relationship between journalism and historiography.