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The Third Reich in Power, 1933 - 1939: How the s Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation Paperback – International Edition, 25 May 2006
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The second book in his acclaimed trilogy on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich in Power: How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation explores how Hitler turned Germany from a vibrant democracy into a one-party state.
Before Hitler seized power in 1933, Germany had been famous for its sophistication and complexity. So how was it possible for a group of ideological obsessives to re-mould it into a one-party state directed at war and race hate? How did the Nazis win over the hearts and minds of Germany's citizens, twist science, religion and culture, and transform the country's politics to achieve total dominance so quickly?
From the Nuremberg Laws to the Olympic Games, Kristallnacht to the Hitler Youth, this gripping account shows how a whole population became enmeshed in a dictatorship that was consumed by hatred and driven by war.
'Impressive ... perceptive ... humane'
Ian Kershaw
'Excellent ... powerful ... it makes an indelible impression'
Robert Service, Sunday Times
'Likely to be the standard work for some years to come'
Spectator Books of the Year
'A rich and detailed description of just what the Third Reich did in every compartment of the state and every corner of society ... Evans's magisterial study should be on our shelves for a long time to come'
Economist
'Written with great style and human sympathy'
Daily Telegraph Books of the Year
'Evans brilliantly conveys how the Fuhrer reignited Germans' pride as he led them to catastrophe'
Neal Ascherson, Observer
Sir Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. His previous books include In Defence of History, Telling Lies about Hitler and the companions to this title, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich at War.
- Print length960 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin
- Publication date25 May 2006
- Dimensions12.9 x 4.1 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-100141009764
- ISBN-13978-0141009766
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- Publisher : Penguin; International Edition (25 May 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 960 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0141009764
- ISBN-13 : 978-0141009766
- Dimensions : 12.9 x 4.1 x 19.8 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 353,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 489 in Political History of Fascism & Nazism
- 1,786 in Political Ideologies & Doctrines
- 1,826 in History of Germany (Books)
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Reviewed in Germany on 19 September 2011Das Buch war in einem sehr guten Zustand, die Lieferung prompt. Wir haben das Buch verschenkt und damit eine große Freude ausgelöst.
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Reviewed in Germany on 7 November 2024Ein neues Buch sieht anders aus.
Ein neues Buch sieht anders aus.
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Pallav Swaroop BhatnagarReviewed in India on 6 May 20165.0 out of 5 stars It was the world not Hitler.
Have already read this book once before, and is an in depth study about what were the situations that brought Hitler and the Nazi party to the helm of Germany's Reich.
batmanReviewed in Canada on 29 April 20135.0 out of 5 stars terrifying
So you live in a modern advanced country and a party is elected that will straighten everything out. I says it will right all the wrongs that have been forced on the country. The party turns out to be a bunch of bullies who then start persecuting anybody that did not conform to their ideals. Jews, homosexuals, deviants (criminals and post traumatic war wounded) gypsies, and socialists. This is a great book that tells us what the Nazis did after they got into power, but before the war. People should read it and reflect upon their society. Probably we should all be scared of right winger's "logic". "Homeland Security" has a certain creepiness about it. Having a prison that contradicts everything America stands for is wrong. Sometimes losing a court case because of the constitution is alright. Read this book at your peril.
D. SchotmanReviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 May 20135.0 out of 5 stars Impressive in scope, deep in detail and clear about many chaotic events
Richard Evans - The Third Reich in Power, 1933 - 1939: How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation
In this second volume of the trilogy (counting 2560 pages together) Evans continued the story where he left off in volume one, which is in 1933, directly with the elimination of the SA and the murder of Rohm and works his way up from there to end right before the invasion of Poland in 1939. Where the previous volume clearly illustrated the problems of the Weimar Republic, the constant threat of communists succeeding in taking power (the legacy of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the fear that Germany will face the same fate), in this volume the Weimar Republic came to an end (accidentally killed off by their own chancellor Von Papen, making the grave mistake to use Hitler for conservative purposes, living in the illusion that Hitler could be kept in check) and the Nazi firmly established in power. The era of the Third Reich that was expected to last a thousand years begun.
This volume, I believe works out three important narratives. The first one, is the departure from only persecuting communists and political dissidents to a wide range of unwanted groups, which are all dealt with in their own way. Particularly towards the end of the first volume, Evans clearly seem to try to emphasize the importance of understanding the fact that the Nazi's were at first only persecuting Communists as they were the most important political competitors. In this volume the main targeted soon become the Jews who are step by step further isolated, deprived, stripped of their possessions, jobs, status and prime position within the Wiemar Republic. All of course leading up to what eventually results in the final solution. The second narrative is worked out the most detailed and is about how the Nazi's not only managed to bring the entire society under control, but also how they successfully brainwashed the entire society and drenched everything with Nazi ideology. The details of this are truly shocking and once again brings up the question, how could a society that was so cultivated and we'll developed (read Peter Watson's The German Genius for some more background) could let this happen. It is really strange that so few people really stood up for it or that people didn't see how they were used in what was in fact the buildup of a war economy, which is the third narrative worked out in this book. Evans shown how people were fooled by promises as a car, jobs, while they were working in war production, and not even one car ever came off the assembly line and was the infrastructure only improved so that the army could avoid possibly logistic problems. The book ends with the Anschluss of Austria and the first expansions and the reclaiming of land that was lost in WW1 at the North-Southern borders of Germany.
I think it is only fair to laud Evans' achievement. The book is truly remarkable in scope, depth and coverage. The book is written in such lucid and fluid language and reads away very easy, which is remarkable considering the fact that it is a really complex and big topic. I believe that all the three volumes will function as the best possible introduction, currently available on the market in any language and are a really good springboard to further exploration of WW2, further detailed narratives of certain battles, the work of Kershaw, Hastings, Beevor, etc. which is exactly what I am going to do after I complete volume three. I have not completed Volume three but already now I think this rank high as the best and clearest set of books I ever read about WW2.
H. SchneiderReviewed in the United States on 29 May 20105.0 out of 5 stars Thugs on top
This is the middle volume of a Nazi trilogy. Part 1 is the way to power, part 3 is the war. The middle part covers the years 1933 to 1939. Evans has decided to arrange the vast material by subject matter rather than chronologically. This proves to be a wise choice. We have the option to choose individual chapters like independent shorter books. The book is highly recommended to anybody who has an interest in the subject. It serves as a myth buster in several interesting ways. My review will give a short summary of key points of the chapters.
Chapter 1 is about fear and terror. Unruly internal competition is killed off early; opposition parties are banned, their leaders and activists arrested and many killed; growth of SS, Gestapo, special courts for `crimes against the people'; denunciation as tool of control; block wardens; concentration camps; manipulation of plebiscites by intimidation and falsification. Never believe anybody who claims that Hitler unified the German people!
Chapter 2 on propaganda addresses that question. Goebbels' aim was winning the mind of 100% of the people, not just the 37% who had voted for the Nazis at their peak. All media are brought under full control. Art is dealt with on a broad scale. Apart from the conflicts with artists, there was the internal struggle among the Nazis. We catch ourselves taking sides with Goebbels, who was willing to support some modernists. The boss himself was a pure square in art matters.
Chapter 3 deals with education and religion. Very interesting: the narration on religious groups and the Nazis' attempts to replace allegiance to churches with something else. Simplified views of Nazism like to claim that it was atheist. In fact, the Nazis tried to unify German churches, which were split on a roughly 2:1 relation between Protestants and Catholics. Their power base was among Protestants. They tried to take over this church and then lure the Catholics into the fold. This failed, mainly due to resistance from inside the church. The Catholic Church first helped the Nazis to power (by the Center Party's refusal to resist), but then put up many small non-cooperation hurdles. In the end, the Nazis tried to develop their own neo-pagan style, which never fully succeeded. Sad truth: the only religious group that wholeheartedly resisted Nazism on all levels was Jehova's Witnesses.
In the field of education, the 30s saw a steep decline in academic standards and also in student numbers. The drop in birth rates during WW1 plus the party's anti-intellectualism, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism combined towards creating a bleak outlook for Germany's academic future. Applied research was treated differently and especially militarily relevant subjects were lavishly funded, but outside universities.
Chapter 4 on the economy shows how the myth of the end to unemployment was based on a combination of partly successful Keynesianism with fortunate trends of the time, plus statistical manipulations, and not to forget: the re-militarization of Germany, including conscription. All state interference was related to re-armament. The economy was initially left to run as a `free market', but markets were manipulated and directed. Re-militarization was the overriding concern. By 1936 it became clear that the speed of the development was behind schedule, so the economy was more radically transformed into a war economy. Technocrats like `economy czar' Schacht were sidelined.
Chapter 5 deals with various fields of social engineering. A backbone of support for the regime was the so-called Mittelstand. That means, in a narrower sense, all independent small businesses, including land-owning farmers. In a larger sense it would include professionals, civil servants, and white collar workers. Enthusiasm and illusions were grand among these people. Reality clashed with the overriding re-armament policy, which damaged many small businesses.
The living standards of the working classes had not improved over the pre-depression level by 39. Consolation prizes were given via the Strength through Joy program, which was widely recognized for what it was: eyewash, substitute for real improvements. At the same time the corruption level of the Nazi run labor organization was spectacular. Only Third World dictators can be that shameless.
Chapter 6 is about `racial hygiene'. Germany's laws favoring compulsory sterilization for carriers of inherited illnesses, and for other undesirables, were by no means unique in the international scenario. From here it would progress towards euthanasia in later years. Minorities were systematically harassed: Gypsies, homosexuals, mixed descendants of various combinations (like offspring of black French soldiers after the Rhineland occupation, or kids of German colonialists with African women), and then mainly Jews. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 introduced drastic interferences in personal lives by excluding Jews from social activities. After the 1936 Olympics, anti-Jewish violence grew towards the peak of Reichskristallnacht in 38, the `night of broken glass'. `Drive Jews out of Europe within 10 years' was the declared vision, before the goal shifted to annihilation.
Chapter 7 describes war preparations. War had been Hitler's declared goal always, and all declarations to the contrary were just obfuscation, as was the peace agreement with Poland, the naval pact with Britain, the Hitler-Stalin-Pact. Step by step the thugs went forward: quitting the League of Nations, a triumph at the Saar plebiscite, diplomatic support for Italy's Ethiopia expansion, occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland, material support to Franco's insurrection in Spain, invasion and annexation of Austria, the invasion and annexation of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, the annexation of the Lithuanian region of Memel. Britain and France watched. Then came the invasion of Poland... (to be continued).
Superb organization of the huge subject make the book a brilliantly brief overview, despite it's over 700 pages. What is missing? I would have wished for a special chapter on the military and its reconstruction. There are aspects that are totally neglected, like the cooperation with the Chinese Nationalists.
Jean ThomasReviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 September 20235.0 out of 5 stars Well written.
Packed with information. A lot of which was new to me.






