The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Allen Lane History)
by Richard J Evans
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Manufacturer: Allen Lane
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780713997422
ISBN: 0713997427
Label: Allen Lane
Number Of Pages: 912
Publication Date: 2008-10-02
Publisher: Allen Lane
Studio: Allen Lane
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fine study of Nazi aggression
Comment: This magnificent book completes Evans' trilogy on the Third Reich. It covers all aspects of the war including the home front: morale, the role of women, the effect of the bombing, food, wages and conditions. He also examines the roles of the air force, navy and army, and gives us shrewd portraits of the leading personalities in the Nazi state.
Nazi ideology blamed the Jews for all ills, including the Second World War itself, and saw communism and socialism as essentially Jewish. Hitler created a genocidal mentality and justified a genocidal policy.
The Nazis committed countless atrocities. They killed thousands of handicapped children. They killed as many Gypsies as they could. They deported Jews from all the countries they occupied to death camps like Auschwitz. They murdered six million Jews and four million Soviet prisoners of war. The war they started killed 50 million people.
Evans nails the lie that Nazism was in some sense socialist; he shows how "Germany was still a capitalist economy, dominated by private enterprise." Hitler's policies were not `autarchic', which means `self-sufficiency as an economic system'. Nazism was not contained in one country but expansionist, predatory and aggressive. It never relied on its own national resources but on stealing other people's equipment and materials. Nazi Germany extracted more than 30% of the wartime national production in the occupied countries of Western Europe.
Nazi Germany "invaded Russia, unprovoked, and caused an almost unimaginable degree of death, suffering and destruction." But Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union caused his downfall.
The battle of Stalingrad was the decisive turning-point of the whole war. As Evans writes, "What happened on the Soviet Front dwarfed anything seen in France, Denmark, Norway or the Low Countries. From 22 June 1941 onwards, at least two-thirds of the German armed forces were always engaged on the Eastern Front. More people fought and died on and behind the Eastern Front than in all the other theatres of war in 1939-45 put together, including the Far East... It was in the end on the Eastern Front, more than any other, that the fortunes of war were decided."
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Summary: Brilliant combination of detail and abstraction
Comment: With this third volume, Professor Evans brings his rightfully acclaimed "History of the Third Reich" to a very fruitful end indeed. All the major developments from 1939 till 1945 are at least touched upon in a very insightful and balanced manner, blending social history, the biographies of well-known heavyweights of the Nazi regime such as Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler or Speer and the lesser known experiences of ordinary Germans into one complex but highly readable narrative, exposing a good deal of the inner workings of Hitler's dictatorship rather than taking an overly abstract bird's eye view on this disastrous epoch.
Abstaining from any form of moralising, which is unnecessary anyway in the face of the well-known enormity of the crimes committed, there is, of course, a heavy emphasis on the horrifying genocidal activities of the Nazis and the political arena, yet economic, cultural and military events are also accounted for in a convincing way. Most of the major controversies concerning the historiography of Nazi Germany like Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" are mentioned, although Evans does not always take up a clear position and understandably refrains from making any new untested hypotheses, for which a book of this scope cannot be intended anyway.
For students of modern history the book offers a remarkably well-crafted starting-point to develop their own research interests, providing also a detailed bibliography of the major works on the Nazi era. The only real downside perhaps, along with a certain tendency towards oversimplifying complex military events, is an apparent lack of explicit theoretical reflection on his own position within the field of historical research on the part of Evans, like his rejection of the Great man theory of history, which is responsible for his concentration on social history. As a consequence, lay readers not familiar with the major currents in historical research may not be able to fully comprehend and appreciate Evans' findings. Reading the preface to the first volume, in which Evans explains his methodology in greater detail, is therefore strongly recommended.
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Summary: A Materly Piece of Work
Comment: Evans emulates his standards set in the two proceeding titles which describe how the Third Reich arose; how it acted when in power and finally the story of its triumphs, defeat and eventual total destruction. He conveys his studies in a scholarly, yet particularly approachable manner. He never seccumbs to moral platitudes, or indeed takes a partisan or doctrinair political line when discussing the evils and cruelties perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Above all the sense of the authors own palpable humanity speak out as a striking counterpoint to the brutality of the time.
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Summary: A superb finish!
Comment: Like the previous reviewer I waited for this third instalment with impatience. I was not disappointed, impassioned writing tempered by impeccable scholarship and judicious use of the vast sources on the subject. I can do no better than refer prospective readers to the excellent and substantial review by Nicholas Stargardt in the Times Literary Supplement of 10 October 2008 (pages 8-9).
As for me, I was glad to see the author has been able to incorporate references to recent works by other scholars. For instance, Evans cites extensively the highly praised and enormously informative book by Adam Tooze "The Wages of Destruction" (2006) on the economic history of the Third Reich. However, Evans does not always agree with that author and when it comes to what, palpably, went on at the infamous Wannsee Conference I am emphatically with him (see page 265) in holding that the major purpose of that meeting was to "discuss the logistics of extermination".
A brilliant and essential book, and page-turningly readable too. In particular the interspersion of contemporary everyday diary entries (like those of schoolteacher Luise Solmitz) illuminates and adds greatly to our feeling of actually being inside the Reich during the war years.
Of wide-scope studies in English of Hitler's ghastly regime there are now, I think, three which stand out amongst the dauntingly large number of works of special value and interest for the general reader: Ian Kershaw's masterly two-volume biography of Hitler; Richard J. Evans's now completed three volumes, and, lastly (and surprisingly in view of the usual reputation of economic history as off-puttingly `heavy') Adam Tooze's brilliant and clearly written in-depth analysis of the fatal flaws underlying the Nazi drive to war.
Insofar as there can ever be a definitive, overarching summation of the Third Reich, it seems to me that these three authors come nearest to supplying it!
[Postscript: Michael Burleigh's 'The Third Reich: A New History' (Macmillan, 2000) is also very highly recommendable though its emphasis on Nazism as a political religion is not universally accepted among professional colleagues. Nevertheless it remains, in my view, a powerfully persuasive interpretation.]
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Superb Study now Rounded Out.
Comment: Richard Shaw's superbly crafted, eminently readable and scholarly third volume has been well worth the wait (on order since 2006). The trilogy must now surely take its place among the truly great historical narratives of this, or any, century. For historians - or indeed anyone - who wishes to expand his general and underlying knowledge of this ghastly period of history, Richard Shaw's opus is surely without peer.The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Allen Lane History)
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