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The Third Reich At War (2009)

by Richard J. Evans(Favorite Author)

4.31 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1594202060 (ISBN13: 9781594202063)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

series

The History of the Third Reich

review 1: "The Third Reich at War" is a worthy final act to Evans trilogy on Nazi Germany. Beginning with the events that launched World War II, the book takes the reader from the early phases of the war through to the days following the final surrender. Like the other books, it is not a military history—though it does inevitably speak to key moments in the conflict and to the actions of soldiers at the front with some detail—but is more a social history, exploring the role played by Nazism and the war affected the German people at home and at the front.In many ways, this book is the most difficult of three—not because of the writing, which is still engaging and draws heavily from diaries, correspondence and other source material to paint ever day life under the fascist dictat... moreorship—but for the subject matter. Having now finished the trilogy, I see each book aligned along a key theme: in the first book, it was a general complacency; conformity, either outward or ideological, imposed by the regime dominated the second book; and the last book is one of complicity. This not to say that Evans argues that the vast majority of Germans were staunch ideological Nazis—far from it, as he continues to highlight their minority status, particularly among those old enough to remember the time before Hitler seized power—but the ubiquity of the atrocities committed, both within Germany and on so-called non-Aryans (particularly Jews) in conquered territories is breathtaking when combined with the somewhat surprising breadth of knowledge about them. Evans states in his closing paragraph that the Third Reich demonstrates in the extreme the “the possibilities and consequences of the human hatred and destructiveness that exist, even if only in a small way, within all of us” and raises the always present moral dilemma of action versus inaction. His book manages to convey that convincingly throughout without making it explicit until the final pages.For those that have an interest in this period, this is a book that should be read in order to fully understand the time without the comforting, almost clinical distance that comes from just assessing tactics and strategy.
review 2: It took me a while (7 months) to read it all. It´s not an easy book to read even to someone that likes history books like me, not because it is boring but because it has a lot of subjects about the third reich (economy, military, the holocaust, industry, political advertisement,social, the use of media, etc) in one book.It is very (if not the most) complete book I read about this subject, and it really gives you a good image about the german mobilization during the war. less

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