We must accelerate this process with cold ruthlessness, and in so doing we are rendering an incalculable service to a human race tormented by Jewry for millennia. They combined Germanic precision with a sociopath’s mindset and a Hollywood art director’s wardrobe (Come on! This book tells a terrible story not least because, as Evans makes abundantly clear, there were so many other ways in which Germany’s history could have been played out. The third volume, The Third Reich at War, was published by Penguin in the UK in October 2008 ( ISBN 978-0-7139-9742-2, 912 pages), and in the US in March 2009 ( ISBN 978-1-59420-206-3, 944 pages). Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.

THE COMING OF THE THIRD REICH | Kirkus Reviews THE COMING OF THE THIRD REICH | Kirkus Reviews

According to Ian Kershaw, it is "the most comprehensive history in any language of the disastrous epoch of the Third Reich". This led to the denouncement of the Weimar Republic government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the " November Criminals". Administrators and prison experts had argued in the last years of the Weimar Republic for the indefinite imprisonment or security confinement of habitual criminals whose hereditary degeneracy, it was assumed, rendered them incapable of inprovement.With tremendous authority, skill and compassion, Evans re-creates a country torn apart by overwhelming economic, political and social blows; the First World War, Versailles, hyperinflation and the Great Depression. But the Third Reich also stands as a wider warning of what havoc 'racism, militarism and authoritarianism' can wreak. This was also the time when the Weimar Republic was experiencing strong political difficulties and the theories of Social Darwinism, Nationalism and Eugenics were gaining in popularity. They annexed huge portions of Russia and laid down draconian laws under the military legend Hindenburg. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans

Antisemitism was no more widespread than in many other countries, representative institutions were thriving, political parties and elections an accepted part of constitutional practice. All political opposition was wiped away with street violence, killings and finally formal dissolution of the parties. Narrative history fell out of fashion for many years in the 1970s and 1980s, as historians everywhere focused on analytical approaches derived mainly from the social sciences. This opening installment begins, briefly, during the reign of Bismarck and the unification of Germany.I enjoyed, for instance, the story of Victor Klemperer, a Jewish professor who’s diary reminisces on the Great Inflation were particularly illuminating. The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian’s art and the book by which all others on the subject will be judged.

The coming of the Third Reich : Evans, Richard J : Free The coming of the Third Reich : Evans, Richard J : Free

Evans paints a heartbreaking scenario of the many opportunities (albeit with hindsight) whereby Hitler could have been stopped. Capitalism, they hoped, would inevitably collapse and the ‘bourgeois’ republic would be replaced by a Soviet state along Russian lines. Appointing a government led by the leader of the party which had won the elections would now look too much like going back to a parliamentary system of rule.

Both Friedlander and Goldhagen have wrestled with this question; Evans pretends that it doesn’t exist. In the life of every World War II buff, there comes a point where he or she must ask this question: Have I read enough books about the Nazis? I place myself in between both, although a student of history my degree did not focus on 1920-30s Germany.