The Third Reich at War

The History of the Third Reich #3

by Richard J. Evans

An absorbing, revelatory, and definitive account of one of the greatest tragedies in human history:

Adroitly blending narrative, description, and analysis, Richard J. Evans portrays a society rushing headlong to self-destruction and taking much of Europe with it. Interweaving a broad narrative of the war's progress from a wide range of people, Evans reveals the dynamics of a society plunged into war at every level. The great battles and events of the conflict are here, but just as telling is Evans's re- creation of the daily experience of ordinary Germans in wartime. At the center of the book is the Nazi extermi­nation of the Jews. The final book in Richard J. Evan's three-volume history of Hitler's Germany, hailed a masterpiece by The New York Times, The Third Reich at War lays bare the most momentous and tragic years of the Nazi regime.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Germany, War, European History, Military History

926 pages, Hardcover

Published March 19, 2009

About the author

Richard J. Evans is one of the world's leading historians of modern Germany. He was born in London in 1947. From 2008 to 2014 he was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, and from 2020 to 2017 President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He served as Provost of Gresham College in the City of London from 2014 to 2020. In 1994 he was awarded the Hamburg Medal for Art and Science for cultural services to the city, and in 2015 received the British Academy Leverhulme Medal, awarded every three years for a significant contribution to the Humanities or Social Sciences. In 2000 he was the principal expert witness in the David Irving Holocaust Denial libel trial at the High Court in London, subsequently the subject of the film Denial. His books include Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson History Prize), In Defence of History, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War. His book The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, volume 7 of the Penguin History of Europe, was published in 2016. His most recent books are Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History (2019) and The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination (2020). In 2012 he was knighted for services to scholarship.

Reviews

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is too much of an overview to suit my need for detail. The selection of which items to include is sometimes surprising.

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undoubtedly the war years are the greatest challenging to approach from a fresh angle, but with his focus on the inner workings of Nazi Germany, Evans rejuvenates the bombing war by placing us under the cross-hairs in a shelter. The guns of the Eastern Front rumble at a measured distance, felt mostly in their effect on the Home Front. Similar whispers of a different sort trail out of the Holocaust - another well-trodden ground, yet one which keeps yielding fresh ashes.

Could Germany win the war ? the first wave of rationing between the Poland Campaign and Christmas says no. Did Germany believe it could win ? Below, only if every citizen was as monolithically fervent as Goebbels' propopganda wished him to be. In reality, the encoroaching deprivations were shouldered as an individual or close-knit primus vindendum . Above, the statistics surrounding the failure to create a war economy spelled frank defeat as early as 1942, while the popularity of Hitler and the egime could no longer be cranked up sporadically by victory.

[Loring Wirbel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final book in Evans' Third Reich trilogy was bound to be the most crisply written, if only because the subject matter demanded it. With a long and complex war to cover in less than 800 pages, the author simply didn't have the time to expand into realms that occasionally bogged down the first two books.

Evans makes clear in the introduction that this is not a book about the war itself, nor about the Holocaust. That is particularly evident in the former point. While detailed observations of the Eastern Front are provided, useful for American readers who don't hear enough about Stalingrad or Kursk, we get almost no sense of the Allies' move into North Africa, Sicily, and Northern France. FDR and Churchill are not merely bit players in this book, they are dim images, scarcely viewed over the horizon. The book is more Holocaust-centric, but focusing less on particular suffering that the Holocaust-tome industry has provided, and more on mass-murder as a government bureaucracy.

Even though many of these events have been covered ad nauseum, Evans gives us a fresh look at how the Nazi infrastructure swelled during the invasions of Poland and France, and how the beast slowly died from 1942 on. He shows that there were no written orders turning a Jewish eastern deportation into a death-camp industry, but that the interpretation of the hints of the Fuhrer left little doubt that facilities like Treblinka would be created, used, and destroyed as efficiently as possible.

While all three books in Evans' series gives unique insights into Nazi Party evolution, the third book scarcely wastes a word in bringing us to the inevitable climax of terror. Goebbels and Goring emerge as real characters, and the evil of Heydrich is adequately described, though Himmler still seems a mystery.

Evans cuts the average German in the street less slack than some historians. While the murder of Jews was not front-page news, most citizens knew of it and chose not to know. Most citizens chose to bring Hitler to power in a bid to recapture imaginary German honor. And far too many Germans continued to believe in Nazi philosophy, and in a secret global Jewish-Freemason conspiracy, long after the war is over.

While "Third Reich at War" can be read on its own, the trilogy is best read in its entirety, even though the first two books are a bit slower moving than this one. The author dissects how a movement, a party, and a nation at large can fall victim to a belief system that is overtly deranged. Useful lessons for us all.

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Of the three volumes, I think the first remains in all aspects the best. But the whole trilogy is excellent and a sound corrective to Kershaw. It is the best and most judicious survey of the whole topic in English that I am aware of. That said, it is a long trilogy, and it is nice to have it behind me rather than before me.)


This book, as expected, is excellent -- and marks the entire trilogy as a valuable achievement. Evans is best when dealing with the more granular -- his treatment of the broader events of military/geopolitical history is solid, but appears derived. This is not, however, to detract from the value and interest of this book. In particular, Evans now represents the fullest and most modern refutation of the 'structuralist' approach favored by Kershaw, Broszat, and others -- according to which the Nazi's merely 'stumbled' into their crimes and misadventures. (See my reviews of Kershaw and MacGregor Knox)

His broad thesis here is as follows: The astounding success of German arms from 1939 through Summer of 1941 was ultimately due to their speed, boldness, and audacity -- applied to an unprepared opponent. But then in the summer of 1941, when the Central Group confronted the bulk of the shaken Soviet army before Moscow -- which was slowly beginning to firm -- Hitler blinked. He diverted troops to Group South to the Caucasus to secure the Romanian oil fields -- and by the time he returned them in the Fall -- the Soviet troops had stiffened, the rains had begun..., and winter was upon them. Momentum was stopped cold. And at this point, it became a war of attrition (371f.)

But a war of attrition is something the Germans could never win. To give just two sets of statistics: Airplane production. By 1943, Germany was producing about 26,000 aircraft per year. But in that same year, the British produced 35,000, the Russians produced 37,000, and the U.S. about 100,000. Combined allied machine gun production that year was over 1.1 million; Germany production just 165,527 (332f.). The GDP of the Allies to that of the Axis (combined) was never less than 2:1 and, by 1944, was more than 3:1

And so, by 1941 Winter, the War was essentially lost -- a massive push the following year (Stalingrad) notwithstanding.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Third Reich at War: 1939-1945, by Richard J. Evans, is the final book in The History of the Third Reich trilogy, and an excellent conclusion to the series. Evans has written a magnum opus on the Nazi's rise to power (The Coming of the Third Reich), their rule (The Third Reich in Power), and finally, the world war they initiated, and eventually lost (this title). The Third Reich at War examines the Nazi's opening of the Second World War, beginning with political maneuverings before the war, Hitlers incessant want for confrontation with the Allied powers, and continuing with the reordering of Europe, the war with the USSR, and the eventual destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, and the long road to complete defeat following. Evans also, throughout the book, examines the Nazi's ideological push to reorder Europe in its own image, working to destroying people groups like the Jews and Gypsies completely, smashing Communism and propping up Fascist governments in France, Norway, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and so on.

Evans does an excellent job examining first the complete and total victory of German armies at the wars introduction. The lessons learned in Poland in regards to Blitzkrieg were utilized first in Western Europe to great effect, defeating France, Belgium and the Netherlands quickly. Yugoslavia and Greece fell soon after that, and the USSR was successfully pushed far back in the opening year of Operation Barbarossa. Denmark and Norway fell to Nazi troops as well. However, the German army suffered from a number of issues, not least the interference of Hitler and the upper brass of the Nazi party. German army staff also began to take too much stock in what they considered to be their "invincible" fighting force. This zealous mirage came to a screeching halt at Stalingrad, and it was only downhill from there as Soviet troops, who quickly recovered the loss of much of their industrial base and a million dead and more captured of their soldiers, to push the German's back farther and farther, eventually overrunning most of Eastern and Central Europe.

Europe under occupation is also examined. No history of Nazi Germany is complete without a close examination of their brutal racial ideology, and the attempted (and in some cases successful) destruction of the Jewish population in conquered territories. The German occupation was marked by extreme martial brutality. Partisans who fought the Germans often had to watch local populations wiped out in reprisal for the death of German soldiers. Jews were often targeted straightaway, and sent to concentration camps and death camps all over Europe. Evans details the invention of gas trucks, gas chambers and crematoriums used to kill millions of innocent Jewish peoples, elderly and crippled Slavs, political prisoners and Soviet POW's. Evan's also examines the companies behind these disturbing innovations, with car makers, furnace companies and industrial-chemical firms creating the products of death (some, like the makers of the gas vans and crematoriums, were aware of what they were doing, some like the makers of Zyklon-B pellets, may not have been).

Germany's allies and puppet states often eagerly participated. Vichy France sent thousands to death camps in Poland. Dutch SS also took part in brutal and sadistic killings. Local populations in Eastern Europe who felt mistreated by the Soviets often willingly participated, with Ukrainian militias, residents of the Baltic states and so on engaging in deadly raids on Jewish villages in an attempt to participate in the Final Solution. Romania eagerly participated in early days, and the 400+ thousand Jewish Romanians killed in World War II by that regime was second only to Germany. Croatian government officials and the Catholic Church collaborated to send Croatian and Serbian Jews to the camps of the Third Reich, with Serbia being one of the areas eventually considered "free of Jews." Some, however, resisted. Fascist Finland refused to send Jews to Germany (except for a small number of foreign partisans) even as it allied with Germany to take on the Soviets. Belgium residents, church groups and so on conspired to hide many of their Jewish residents from German SS. Denmark was able to send almost 90% of its Jewish population to neutral Sweden, with the help of the local German governor, who wished to avoid local insurrection (he ironically proclaimed the area "free of Jews" later on).

The economic issues of the Third Reich are examined in detail as well. Albert Speer took over much of the Reich economy in 1941 and oversaw massive improvements in efficiency, military production, and economic exploitation of conquered territories. However, Speer and other German armaments and economic politicians foresaw Germany's defeat as early as 1941, as the Soviets, Brits and Americans easily outproduced Germany in most categories. As the German's tightened the screws on their allies, and governments in Europe that were previously collaborationist began to realize Germany was going to lose, acts of resistance began to grow. French, Polish, Soviet and Yugoslavian partisans began to have an effect on German logistics and supplies to the front, and helped to tie down German soldiers in policing duties. Bombing from allied long range bombers began to eat away German industry. The USA's entry into the war really kicked the wind out of most of the German people's hope for a favourable conclusion. Finally, the Soviet victory in the grinding war of attrition in the steppes of Russia destroyed the morale of the German army, erased its image as an invincible fighting force, and turned many German's away from supporting the Nazi regime.

Finally, the conclusion of the war brought to horrifying light the atrocities of the German regime and those of its allies. Millions of innocent men, women and children were killed by brutal extra-judicial killings in Eastern Europe, by industrial death camps built to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe, and by starvation. Indeed, the Nazi regime planned to starve out the Slavic population of Europe by re-prioritizing supplies for the German armies in the area. The Reich's plan to create a New Order in Europe, by controlling the economic and political spheres of most of the continent, are detailed. There was no place in this Order for those considered racially inferior, ideologically intolerable, or suffered from disabilities. As Allied and Soviet troops advanced into the Reich and its occupied territories, these atrocities began to come to light. After their destruction in 1945, much of the upper echelon of Nazi society was put to death in the Nuremberg Trials.

Evans book is a detailed look at this tumultuous period of history. As in the past books, he mixes first hand accounts of the Reich's history by local people's, soldiers, politicians and occupied citizens with detailed history, archival sources, policy papers and so on. Evan's trilogy, and this book, seem to be the most detailed work on the Third Reich yet available (outside of academic sources). It's depth, clarity, tone and detail all combine to make a work so fascinating and so intricate that it is a truly interesting read. He details all of the aspects of this time period in the Third Reich, no matter how difficult and disturbing. This trilogy should be rightly considered the best work on Nazi Germany written so far (and that is saying something, dozens of books are released a year on this topic). If you are going to pick up a couple of books on Nazi Germany, make sure they are Richard J. Evans The History of the Third Reich series. These books are highly recommended.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard J. Evans concludes his trilogy on Nazi Germany with The Third Reich at War. It might seem a fool’s errand for even a gifted historian to publish another book about World War II, and Evans admits that he’s covering ground much more familiar than the bulk of his earlier works. Hitler’s stupendous early military victories in Poland, France and the Balkans, his failures to subdue Britain and catastrophic invasion of the Soviet Union, and the long, slow and painful turning of the tide are all chronicled here, ably if not outstandingly. The book rarely spends much time on military tactics (only Stalingrad and Kursk, the two largest battles on the Eastern Front, receive detailed analysis) because Evans shows more interest in the effects of battles rather than their blow-by-blow details. A war that’s reduced to tactics and tanks risks becoming merely a game; a war's immense human cost is worthy of study outside chat rooms filled with History Channel buffs. And Evans does an exemplary job detailing the horror the Second World War wrought both in Germany and the countries it attacked and occupied.

Certainly, the most destructive war in history bore an immense cost. And Evans brings it home: from the war’s very beginning, German bombers terrorized Poland as soldiers massacred civilians, losing any pretense towards honorable conduct. This method continued into Operation Barbarossa, which quickly descended into an all-out race war between the Germans and Slavic Russians, whom Hitler saw as the embodiment of “Judeo-Bolshevism.” Soldiers often massacred prisoners, and those Red Army troops who were captured suffering starvation, killing and forced labor in Germany; civilians were subject to rape, pillage and murder (which the Soviets, when the war’s tide turned, repaid in kind). Meanwhile the SS Einsatzgruppen swarmed behind the line of advance, massacring hundreds of thousands of Jews. The latter was the first staged Hitler’s “Final Solution,” an increasingly organized, systematic destruction of European Jewry and other “undesired” groups that resulted in an unfathomable death toll. But, as Evans makes clear, the regular Army was perfectly capable of committing their own atrocities: the “clean Wehrmacht” was itself waist-deep in blood, while the German people raised little outcry against the Holocaust.

One throughline of previous volumes is Evans’ commentary on the ambivalence of ordinary Germans towards the Nazis. This carries through here, even at the apex of fascism’s national madness. Certainly Germans were ecstatic at Hitler’s early, bloodless conquests, but the onset of war with Poland was received with a grim resignation by most Germans. The regime’s propaganda convinced them that it was a war of national defense, not imperialist aggression, and the population responded with acceptance rather than enthusiasm. As the war dragged on, the German public began to see through the regime’s lies: civilians traded caustic jokes about incompetent generals and the Nazi leadership (jokes which seemed less funny to Hitler’s henchmen as the war went sour) while desertions rose and volunteering reached a standstill. Germans were willing to defend their country against Western “encirclement” and Stalin’s Bolshevik hordes, but they were less excited to die in the charnel house of Eastern Eruope for a dimly defined New Order whose main characteristic seemed to be killing.

And as Allied bombings brought destruction home to Germany, Evans argues, the public’s resolve grew weaker still. In this Evans does differ from most accounts of the war, which often argue that Allied terror bombing stiffened rather than weakened German resolution to resist. But the government’s inability to protect its own people further demonstrated how little Hitler and his circle cared about the average German (a point brought home by the Fuhrer’s rantings about Germany’s failure to serve him). As thousands perished in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and other infernos, public disillusionment turned not against the Allies (although downed pilots were often lynched by angry mobs) but against the Third Reich itself. Unable to cope with destruction or food shortages, the regime resorted to bombastic propaganda which no longer seemed attached to reality - and fanned the public’s ambivalence.

But “ambivalence” doesn’t mean open hostility, either. Most Germans inured themselves to the war with “dull conformity,” unhappy with the regime but not willing to act. Organized resistance against the Nazis was nearly impossible at any rate: the few who tried were arrested or summarily executed by a police state that honed repression to a science. Catholic bishops protested the T4 extermination of the mentally disabled but were silent on the destruction of Jews; the military complained about Hitler’s tactics but proved reluctant to move against him so long as victories piled in. The most effective resistance cell, the leftist “Red Orchestra,” provided valuable intelligence to the Soviets but did little to directly challenge the regime. Youth movements like the “Swing Kids” and Sophie Scholl’s White Rose provided minor headaches at best. When the military finally steeled itself to move against Hitler (the 20 July plot), their coup was so mismanaged that failure became inevitable. In turn, the failure of Stauffenberg and Co. triggered a massive wage of purges, excelling even the Night of the Long Knives, that eradicated perceived and real enemies to the Reich. Thus Germany was forced to fight to the last man as the Allies converged on it, with Hitler playing out the Reich's absurd final act in the Fuhrerbunker.

By war’s end, Hitler had laid waste to an entire continent. Jews, Romani and other groups had been virtually exterminated; tens of millions of Russian and other Soviets had been killed; countries from France to Belarus were leveled; Germany’s public had been traumatized, its cities destroyed and image irrevocably stained. It took years of occupation, education and self-reflection for Germans to accept their complicity in Hitler’s regime and rebuild themselves into a liberal democracy. Perhaps it’s trite for Evans to end on a message that what happened to Germany could happen anywhere; the precise events that gave rise to Hitler are hard to replicate, even if modern rightists provide shuddering reminders. Even so, it’s useful to recall that Germany, an advanced country with proud traditions of art, intellectualism and progressive thought, fell under sway of reactionary, racist madness that its people did precious little to impede or oppose. Sadly, it’s a lesson humanity seems determined to ignore.

[Hadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final volume of Evans' trilogy on the Third Reich, starting with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and concluding with its end in May 1945.

The atrocities of 1940-1945 had their start in 1939 with the invasion of Poland: enslavement, mass murder, all were well-established policy and based upon racial ideology. This was done with the support of the Nazi party, the army, and masses of ordinary civilians. It was Nazi beliefs on race that accompanied the need to avoid the national humiliation and material deprivation which they remembered so bitterly after the end of the First World War. The creation of a racial underclass and the plans for genocide began, says Evans, in Poland 1939.

By 1941, the invasion of the Soviet Union changed wars of movement into wars of attrition. While the combined forces of Germany and its allies outnumbered the Soviet forces in June 1941, by the end of July some 10% of the invading force was dead, wounded, or missing. Evans even goes so far as to say that with the Nazis so decisively outproduced and outnumbered, the war was lost by December of that year. But they fought on out from their prejudices and again from the fear of 1918.

While still a broad overview, Evans includes some useful descriptions; of the Battle of Kursk, the T-4 forced euthanasia program, popular culture, aerial bombing, and the narrative of Albert Speer's command of the German war economy - before Adam Tooze et al. challenged that. He includes useful testimonies, letters, and diary extracts.

That said, Evans doesn't have much of a conclusion or idea behind the narrative of the war years - besides the standard. The first volume was most useful in that way, in his understanding of how the different social groups of Germany worked or made themselves live with Nazism. But here?

[Blamp Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please be aware that the following includes some disturbing and graphic (violent) text.

This year (complaints/observations of my own, or of people I have spoken to / seen in the news)
And back then (quotations from the book)



I ordered my lunch on UberEats and it took 45 minutes! God I was STARVING by the time it FINALLY--
"Over 300,000 Red Army prisoners had died by the end of 1941. Wilm Hosenfeld was shocked by the way in which the Russian prisoners were left to starve, a policy he found ‘so repulsive, inhumane and so naively stupid that one can only be deeply ashamed that such a thing can be done by us’."


Amazon's next day delivery service is bloody hopeless now, takes way longer--
"German jeep and truck production was still relatively low despite the motorization drive of the 1930s, and motor vehicles in any case were restricted in their use by the shortage of fuel. In these circumstances, the German and allied armies relied heavily on horses– at least 625,000 of them on the Eastern Front– for basic transport, hauling artillery pieces, carrying ammunition and pulling supply carts."


Yeah, it's just so easy now to just get a vasectomy or take the pill, so then after you've had kids you don't have to worry about accidentally--
"On 14 July 1933 the regime had introduced compulsory sterilization for Germans considered to be suffering from hereditary weaknesses, including ‘moral feeble-mindedness’, a vague criterion that could encompass many different kinds of social deviance. Some 360,000 people had been sterilized by the time the war broke out. In 1935, in addition, abortion on eugenic grounds had been legalized."


Racism is still prevalent here in Australia. It's, like, 2020 and we're still treating some people like--
"The General Plan for the East, now the official policy of the Third Reich, proposed to remove between 80 and 85 per cent of the Polish population, 64 per cent of the Ukrainian and 75 per cent of the Belarussian, expelling them further east or allowing them to perish from disease and malnutrition."


The government border system - is that run by Nazis? We're not even allowed to--
"‘We [soldiers] and the SS were merciful yesterday, for every Jew we caught was shot right away. It’s different today, for we again found the mutilated bodies of 60 comrades. Now the Jews had to carry the corpses out of the cellar, stretch them out neatly, and then they were shown the atrocities. Then after inspecting the victims they were beaten to death with truncheons and spades. Up to now we have sent about 1,000 Jews into the hereafter, but that’s too few for what they’ve done.’"


The media is so biased and shouldn't be allowed to--
"On 3 May 1943, Goebbels issued a confidential circular to the German press demanding that more attention be devoted to attacks on the Jews. ‘The possibilities for exposing the true character of the Jews are endless,’ he opined. ‘The Jews must now be used in the German press as a political target: the Jews are to blame; the Jews wanted the war; the Jews are making the war worse; and, again and again, the Jews are to blame.’"


I've never eaten at such a terrible restaurant, portion size was okay but, goodness me, it tasted like absolute--
"‘I myself,’ he recalled, ‘came across a Russian lying beween piles of bricks, whose body had been ripped open and the liver removed. They would beat each other to death for food… They were no longer human beings. They had become animals, who sought only food.’ It evidently did not occur to Höss to give it to them. Of the 10,000, only a few hundred were left alive by the following spring."


More has to be done by governments across the globe to protect the population from Covid19 (there are some obvious examples of where government response hasn't been nearly adequate), and to assist those affected by--
"Over the whole period of the camp’s existence, at least 1.1 million and possibly as many as 1.5 million people were killed at Auschwitz; 90 per cent of them, probably about 960,000, were Jews, amounting to between a fifth and a quarter of all Jews killed in the war. They included 300,000 Jews from Poland, 69,000 from France, 60,000 from Holland, 55,000 from Greece, 46,000 from Czechoslovakia (the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), 27,000 from Slovakia, 25,000 from Belgium, 23,000 from Germany (the ‘Old Reich’), 10,000 from Croatia, 6,000 from Italy, the same number from Belarus, 1,600 from Austria and 700 from Norway. At a late stage in the war, as we shall see, some 394,000 Hungarian Jews were taken to the gas chambers and put to death. More than 70,000 non-Jewish Poles were killed, 21,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 people of a whole variety of nationalities, mainly East Europeans."


Nationalism is sweeping the globe again. We're more introspective, more selfish, than we've been in a very long--
"Speaking in Posen in October 1943, Heinrich Himmler declared: ‘Whether 10,000 Russian women collapse with exhaustion in the construction of an anti-tank ditch for Germany only interests me insofar as the ditch gets dug for Germany.’"


We are really lucky where we are to have low rates of infection; elsewhere there's been--
"One young soldier reported that his company had been given only a single loaf for six men to last three days. ‘Dear Mummy… I can’t move my legs any more, and it’s the same with others, because of hunger, one of our comrades died, he had nothing left in his body and went on a march, and he collapsed from hunger on the way and died of cold, the cold was the last straw for him.’ On 28 January 1943 the order was issued that the sick and wounded should be left to starve to death. The German troops were in effect suffering the same fate that Hitler had planned for the Slavs."


I've heard it said that nations need strong leaders willing to make the really hard--
"The power of nationalism had also been broken, so thoroughly that when elderly Germans came towards the end of the century to look back on the Third Reich and ask themselves why they had supported it, they could no longer remember that one of the main reasons had been because they had thought that it made Germany great again."


OMG work is like a prison--
"At Sachsenhausen and Natzweiler, mustard gas, which had caused such suffering in the First World War, and which, it was feared, might be used in Allied bombing raids, was injected into some inmates, while others were made to drink it in liquid form, or forced to inhale it. Some had wounds inflicted on them and infected with the gas."


We need to find out who is responsible for the pandemic and--
"The Allies concluded that the best way to stop the genocide was to concentrate everything on winning the war as quickly as possible. Bombing the railway lines to Auschwitz and other camps would only have achieved a temporary respite for the Jews, and distracted attention and resources from the larger purpose of overthrowing the regime that was killing them."



~~~~~~~~~
Every now and then when I'm feeling upset I read some highlighted sections from this book, as it reminds me that things I face could be worse. I find a little perspective goes a long way. This is not meant to detract from struggles we all face but I find it useful to consider the struggles of others when coming to terms with my own (and to be fair my own struggles are feeble - I've led a very easy life so far). Indeed, it can be empowering to remember what humans can overcome and overthrow - but it also serves as a reminder of what a lack of humanity can achieve.

For me, the book (the third in a trilogy of books on Nazism) strikes a superb balance between detailing perspectives of "everyday Germans" and those at the top of the regime. These are dense tomes though, and incredibly shocking and disturbing. Topics are discussed thematically, not chronologically, and mostly deal with Germans and their perspectives. If you're after a quick and sharp overview of WWII this is probably not for you.

Highly recommended.

[fourtriplezed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I genuinely ask the question, what more could anyone ask for in a 3 volume history of the Third Reich? Exceptional.

[Rodrigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es la mejor historia del Tercer Reich que he leido. Muy bien informada, rigurosa, bien escrita y atenta a la línea establecida por el autor desde el inicio.

[Boudewijn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is (in the words of the writer) about the Germans and Germany, not about the Second World War. Having read a lot of books about the Second World war, I have found it very refreshing and interesting. It covers a lot of topics that are usually not touched upon in a book about this area. It handles the German conquests, the treatment of the Jews and other minorites by the Nazi's, every day life for the Germans during the war and economic, social and cultural consequences. If you're into history and especially the Second World War, this is a book for you.

[Patrick Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updated: Dec, 2023: Re-read this for a class I'm teaching. Now that I'm much further removed from the world of graduate school, it's hard to identify with some of the historiographical posturing(always somewhat caricatured) in my initial review. I still stand by the positive comments.

Also -- and this is neither criticism nor praise-- it is impossible to read the trilogy back to back in a few weeks without noticing that Evans uses the word "moreover" perhaps more frequently than any other writer.

Sir Richard Evans is the leading Anglophone proponent of a certain school of history. This might be termed neo-empiricism or neo-Rankeanism. He has famously defended his approach, in somewhat curmudgeonly fashion, in his book 'In Defence of History', which is widely assigned to first year undergraduates in history departments throughout the Anglophone world (and perhaps beyond). Suffice it to say that, as an academic historian of a rather different period, I have serious methodological disagreements with Evans' 'just the facts, ma'am' approach to historiography. Even if I had no other objections to this approach, it would, applied to my own period, make the writing of history virtually impossible.

However, it cannot be denied that, when applied to an area with such a plethora of documentary evidence as the Third Reich, this approach produces results. This book is stunning. It is also very easy to read, or at least as easy as any 950 page book can be. Evans is not an exciting or colourful prose stylist in the manner of Hugh Trevor-Roper (or Peter Brown, to use a less loaded example), but he writes with a consistent clarity that will be accessible to any general reader. Finally, Evans has, in the best sense, a clear view of the moral duties of a historian. This is a masterpiece that will endure for many years.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three thick volumes is the new minimum for a survey of Nazi Germany geared toward the general reader. The final installment of this series seamlessly continues the story to its conclusion, which is welcome indeed. Being steeped in Nazi history for the duration of three long books is a fatiguing exercise in misery; one can only imagine what it must have been like to actually live (or die) amongst the carnage of such a hideous moral vacuum. "The Third Reich at War" does a spectacular job answering the basic questions of how and why the Nazi regime (and greater Germany itself) was able to indulge in genocide, unprecedented levels of military violence, and all other manner of horrors. Highly specific geopolitical considerations and deep analysis of military tactics are largely glossed over in favor of a wider (and more inclusive) cultural perspective; this is principally an effort to illuminate the forest without entirely dispensing with the trees.

The pace and style throughout is consistent, smoothly erudite, and unflaggingly interesting. It is especially helpful to have previous histories and perspectives reevaluated and subtly adjusted (or refuted) by diligent and meticulous data mining. The overall effect is one of volatile history settling - at long last - into a semblance of substantiated truth.

[Themistocles · Rating 2 out of 5]

After Evans' two first books in the trilogy, this came as a disappointment. I had very high expectations to read about the conditions in the Third Reich during war, learn something new about the social, economical, political etc process that took place during the war years. Instead I got a mash-up of various topics that totally lack focus and do not add much to the historiography of the third reich.

The first 400 pages, for instance, are almost wholly devoted to the war in the East and the Jewish question (excuse me???!!!). From thence on it gets somewhat better, but not much. Evans starts hopping around, dealing with various issues - from the naval war (including the U-boat story, all in a few short pages!) to the battle of Kursk, to a statistical analysis of the men comprising a typical german division. Trying to cover all those issues (that need book(s) of their own to be described) in a short chapter or two ends up, unsurprisingly, as wholly inadequate.

There are some nice snippets here and there but, in the whole, I didn't feel I learned much new about any of the issues that he touched. What's more, in a few places Evans seems to want to overthrow common beliefs - which is fine, and he may be right in his conclusions, but his explanations are not nearly enough.

Oh, and what is it with translating the "Fuehrer" into "Leader" and other such german terms (like Volksturm) that have survived as they are? This is plain silly… hence we get "Hail, Leader" instead of "Heil, Fuhrer", the Leader Bunker etc etc. Why would he chose to do something like that, other than differentiating himself from the rest of the authors, eludes me, but the result is silly, to say the least.

What a shame…

[Luiz Rossetto · Rating 5 out of 5]

São três tijolos de mais de 1000 páginas, mas vale a pena dedicar um tempinho pra ter um panorama abrangente sobre o período nazista.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

When reading this book, the third volume of Richard Evans’s massive study of the Third Reich, scenes from the TV show "The Man in the High Castle" kept flashing before my eyes. That show (based on a Philip K. Dick book) posits a Nazi victory in World War II, and depicts how the postwar Greater German Reich affects the people who live under it. The problem with Evans’s book is that it fails to paint such scenes for the actual Third Reich. Rather, it is an endless litany of dead innocents and how they were killed, mixed with occasional talk of political and military happenings, along with a tiny bit about daily life for average civilians. And while listing how millions of innocents were killed is certainly a task that could fill many, and longer, books, after a while it becomes merely a chronicle of atrocity, not a work of synthesized history.

Thus, I will not specifically review this book, because if you want to know more details about Nazi crimes, you now know where to go, and there is little analysis to add. At times I had to force myself to return to the book, not because the writing is bad (it is very competent), but because it was depressing. This emphasis on innocents killed by the Nazis is a change from older writing. For example, if you read Robert Ergang’s "Europe Since Waterloo," 800 pages, published in 1954 and a standard textbook of the 1950s and 1960s, there is no talk at all of the Holocaust—not by name, certainly, since the name is a neologism first widely used in the 1970s, nor by any other mention. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws are mentioned in passing, but no other mention at all is made of the Jews, or of any other group that was the focus of Nazi persecution. The 1946 Nuremberg Trials are covered, but there is little discussion of the charges, other than “war crimes, atrocities, and acts of aggression on a vast scale.” Some of this difference in emphasis is due to many new sources of evidence since 1954, based on efforts made since the 1960s; some of it is due to changing fashions. William L. Shirer’s classic" The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," published just a few years later (in 1960), covers the Holocaust in some detail. But Evans’s book swings the pendulum too far to the other side; it drowns broader history, and critical history, in a sea of undifferentiated blood.

Of course, there is theoretical societal value in the feeling of being overwhelmed by atrocity—it impels the reader to a visceral conclusion of “Never Again.” Unfortunately, there is little indication that theoretical value is ever transformed into action. From Rwanda to Syria, millions of people are slaughtered all the time. Even in Europe, a lethal combination of Muslim dominance and supine Europeans has created a resurgence of anti-Semitism that has led many of Europe’s remaining Jews to flee, justifiably afraid of the future. Never again is, very often, instead right now, and that is true in no time or place more than America today, where every year millions are killed through abortion. We have met the Nazis, and they are us.

My purpose here is to draw the analogy, exact in all relevant ways, between the modern American system of abortion and similar Nazi killings. The parallel is not to the Holocaust itself. It is true that the Holocaust (correctly defined as the attempt to exterminate Jews) is generally analogous to our abortion practices, differing most obviously in that more people have been killed by abortion (although it is idle and foolish to rank evils based on the number of dead, as if we were grading on a curve). But the Holocaust is not the most direct Nazi analogue to our abortion program. That non-honor goes to the earlier Nazi efforts to kill the mentally and physically handicapped, generally labeled the “Aktion T4” program, which in the late 1930s killed something more than 100,000 people, many children, and laid the groundwork for the subsequent Holocaust.

The T4 program was strikingly similar to the abortion regime currently imposed on the United States. It used ideological justifications, language, procedures, and practices remarkably similar to our abortion industry, and it was participated in and defended by the same types of people, using much the same arguments, as our abortion regime. While superficial differences arising from time, place, and victims exist, there were are only two material differences. First, the ideological justification of the Aktion T4 program was an unhinged emphasis on collective national purification; for those who imposed and impose abortion on America, the ideological justification was and is primarily an unhinged emphasis on individual autonomy, so-called “choice” (with a side order of collective purification, through killing “populations that we don’t want to have too many of,” as Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently slipped up by commenting). And unlike abortion, which has lasted for decades, the Aktion T4 program was stopped relatively quickly, by effective action taken at great personal risk by Catholic bishops, whose successors today, with a few exceptions, are mealy-mouthed, weak and fearful men.

As Evans relates, the genesis of the T4 program was the forced sterilization program begun by the Nazis as soon as they came to power. That program was designed to eliminate “hereditary weakness,” and was no different in kind than the program being implemented at the same time and earlier in the United States, led by the Progressives and such people as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (“planned” there meaning “the elimination of the ‘feebleminded’ and of black people”). The Nazi sterilization program included allowing abortions, otherwise illegal, for “racial health” (and Jews were actively encouraged to obtain abortions). As always, fond of taking things to their logical conclusion and having the power to do so, the Nazis very early on considered expanding this to killing of mental patients and other “defectives,” using the same ideological justification as underlay the sterilization program. By 1935, Hitler was telling his doctor, Karl Brandt, that he planned to radically expand the program during wartime, when it could be done without garnering attention. Long before that, though, propaganda began to be disseminated about “life unworthy of life,” and the necessary administrative structure put into place, including pressure to transfer institutionalized patients to facilities run not by the Church, but by the SS.

As he had promised, as soon as war arrived in 1939, Hitler moved to implement his program of murder, under the aegis of the “Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses.” (Whether it’s handicapped people or guns, allowing grasping big government types to register anything is always a mistake.) The killing program was run directly from the Chancellery, Hitler’s personal administrative apparatus, rather than through the Party or the civil service, in order to speed the process up and avoid inconvenient objections from those with moral qualms. The focus initially was on children—those “suffering from Down’s Syndrome, microcephaly, the absence of a limb or deformities of the head or spine” and so forth. Not children in institutions, though—rather those at home, living with their parents, who were told that their children were going to a “specialist clinic” to receive treatment to improve their condition—where they would die of “natural causes,” as their parents were informed, as they received random ashes from the crematoria identified as the remains of their child.

The ideological justification for this was, as I noted above, part and parcel of the Nazi program of “improving the race”—both in general, and to aid in fighting the war. But ideology was only part of the T4 program. Personal enrichment also entered into the picture. Doctors and midwives were paid for reporting children to be killed. They “sent lists of the infants in question to a postal box number in Berlin,” where bureaucrats arranged for the “nearest public health office [to] order the child’s admission to a pediatric clinic.” True, the payments per head were a mere two Reichsmarks, a far cry from the luxurious enrichment of those who participate in America’s abortion industry. As we learned in the summer of 2015 (not that it was much of a secret before), most of America’s abortion industry participates for personal gain, while mouthing, like the Nazis, propagandistic language of “women’s health” and “choice,” and arguing that their actions improve the lives of the nation as a whole. Evil individuals running Planned Parenthood, such as Deborah Nucatola, hope to earn enough money by selling the body parts of dead babies to buy a Lamborghini. So, as often happens, ideology shades into corruption, reinforcing the evil that men do.

Evans notes that within the medical community, the T4 program was no secret—the medical establishment was largely or wholly perverted, just as much of our medical establishment is perverted today with respect to abortion. It is true that most American doctors refuse to perform abortions, but the medical establishment that controls medical schools enforces a radical pro-abortion line, and doctors are increasingly threatened with loss of licenses for opposition to abortion, or for refusal to arrange for someone else to do the killing if they will not. “A large number of health officials and doctors were involved in the [T4] scheme, whose nature and purpose thus became widely known in the medical profession. Few of them objected. . . . Virtually the entire medical profession had been actively involved in the sterilization program, and from here it was but a short step in the minds of many to involuntary euthanasia. . . . Many of those doctors involved spoke with pride of their work even after the war, maintaining that they had been contributing to human progress.” We can only wonder whether the same will be true in a future post-abortion world.

The T4 program was quickly expanded to older children, adolescents, and adults. Given the large numbers projected to be killed, starvation and other slow methods were not adequate, so the doctors in charge, such as Victor Brack and Werner Heyde, developed methods of gassing groups of people, later used on an even greater scale in the Holocaust, and then ways of burning the corpses en masse. These methods were used to empty the mental asylums and other institutions, where there were no parents or guardians nearby to object to what was obviously happening (most parents objected to the T4 killings when they suspected their real nature, although some were happy to participate in “improving the race” and “making sure every child was wanted”). Those who implemented the T4 program also showed the same ghoulish enjoyment of their killings as the Planned Parenthood employees we saw on video in the summer of 2015. “At Hartheim [one of the asylums with crematoria newly built in] the staff held a party to celebrate their ten-thousandth cremation, assembling in a crematorium around the naked body of a recently gassed victim, which was laid out on a stretcher and covered with flowers. One staff member dressed as a clergyman and performed a short ceremony, then beer was distributed to all present.”

The program was kept quiet by the Nazis, outside the medical profession—as with today’s abortionists, the program was kept hidden from the public by the use of pseudonyms, innocuous titles and nondescript buildings, and sloganeering in response to inquiries. The press cooperated, of course. Public objections were rare. When one local judge, Lothar Kreyssig (a Confessing Church member) voiced his suspicions to the Justice Minister (here, of Brandenburg), the Justice Minister’s response “was to try once more to draft a law giving effective immunity to the murderers, only to have it vetoed by Hitler on the grounds that the publicity would give dangerous ammunition to Allied propaganda.” Instead, as before, the program was run extra-legally by decree out of Hitler’s Chancellery. Kreyssig continued to complain, including to State Secretary Roland Freisler (later the infamous chief judge of the “People’s Court”), and was forcibly retired and silenced as a result, while the Justice Ministry assured judges and prosecutors that Hitler was well aware and approved of the murder program, even though it was technically illegal, as well as extra-legal. (Kreyssig’s silencing is directly analogous to the machinery of the American state currently being used against those who have exposed the true nature of America’s abortion regime, such as the heroic David Daleiden, who faces trumped-up criminal charges—more personal punishment than Kreyssig faced.) The whole legal structure of involuntary euthanasia, therefore, was very like the program of unrestricted abortion we have in America, the most extreme in the Western world, which was similarly imposed illegally and extra-legally. In our case it was not the party in power, but the unelected Supreme Court, which imposed abortion, through its creating out of whole cloth a phantom right to kill babies and reading it into the Constitution. The only difference is that our equivalents to Roland Freisler, such as Harry Blackmun and William Brennan, took their actions publicly and to open accolades. And unlike Freisler, they died in their beds, though presumably to go to the same reward as Freisler.

We should not ignore the personal responsibility of many parents in both abortion and the T4 program, even if we recognize and acknowledge the possible emotional burden an unwanted or handicapped child places on a parent. The initial steps in actually implementing the T4 program were internally justified by a 1939 letter from a father, Richard Kretschmar, to Hitler, wanting his infant son (“lacking a leg and suffering from convulsions”) killed, but his doctor refused, afraid not of the act, but of a possible prosecution for murder. Similarly, while traditionally and rationally parents have been regarded as less morally culpable for abortion than the person who performs the murder for money, this distinction should not hold in all cases. Sometimes, as was Richard Kretschmar, a parent who kills his baby is just as morally culpable as the abortionist, especially in this day of ultrasounds, where a heartbeat is clearly seen at less than five weeks after conception.

On the rare occasions that abortion proponents are actually willing to debate the substance of abortion, rather than chanting inane and meaningless slogans to drown out rational thought, you sometimes hear that one cannot compare abortion to the killing of someone able to appreciate what is happening to him, mentally deficient or not. This, of course, ignores partial birth abortions, as well as tends to rely on politicized science about at what point an unborn child can feel pain. But such arguments revolving around consciousness are, on a deeper level, profoundly stupid. They suggest that there was nothing wrong when Jewish children were removed from Auschwitz, “between the ages of five and twelve,” and “taken on 20 April 1945 to a sub-camp at Bullenhuser Damm.” There they “were injected with morphine, after which an SS man accompanying them hanged the sleeping children from a hook one by one, pulling on their bodies to make sure they would die.” The reality is that the only difference between an abortionist today and that SS man is that the SS man knew for certain his victims couldn’t feel their own deaths. The moral quantity is the same.

The Nazis, as is well known and Evans discusses at length, were violently opposed to Christianity, and had by 1939 long been actively persecuting both the small number of Protestants uncooperative with the Nazi program (mainly embodied in the Confessing Church) and the much larger number of uncooperative Catholics. The Pope had repeatedly and formally censured the Nazis, in this area specifically with regard to the sterilization program. Nonetheless, most priests and bishops were afraid, for good reason, both of their personal safety and of further suppression of the Church, since many priests were already in Dachau. And quite a few bishops supported other goals of the Third Reich. But it only took a few months, until mid-1940, for the Catholic hierarchy to get wind of the murders being conducted under the T4 program, in part through the voiced concerns of parents and also through the Caritas Association, which ran asylums.

Bishop Clemens August von Galen led the Catholic response, initially through official channels, but he was stonewalled by the Ministry of the Interior and received limited support from other bishops, some of whom were afraid of further persecution of priests, especially those already imprisoned in concentration camps. Nonetheless, in August 1941, he explicitly identified and publicly reviled the T4 program from the pulpit, and demanded that Catholics censure and avoid those involved in it. Galen printed his sermons and distributed them widely. “The sensation created by the sermons . . . was enormous.” The Gestapo arrested the priests in charge of printing, as well as others who spoke out in response. But other bishops took up the cry from the pulpit. “This was the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any Nazi policy since the beginning of the Third Reich.” And, notably, it took place at the height of the war and Nazi success in it, which was not the time most people were speaking out on topics the Nazis didn’t like. Galen himself expected he would certainly be killed, or, more precisely, martyred.

But that didn’t happen, because “so huge was the publicity he had generated that the Nazi leaders, enraged though they were, feared to take any action against him.” Despite pressure to hang him from Martin Bormann and others, Hitler and Goebbels simply didn’t dare to (although they had explicit plans to do so immediately after the war). Given backbone and courage by Galen, Catholics across the spectrum moved to obstruct the T4 program, in ways overt and covert. Anti-Nazi sentiment began to rise, and muttering directed at Hitler (who many believed did not know about the program, but they were beginning to change their minds) increased. Thus, by August 24, the T4 program was shut down (although sub rosa killings on a smaller scale of “life unworthy of life” continued until the end of the war). The lesson learned by the Nazis, though, wasn’t not to kill people—it was “just in case a future action of this kind against another minority ran into similar trouble, it was inadvisable to put such an order down in writing.” The machinery of extermination, including the means to kill and dispose of large numbers of people, had been developed, and soon enough, the Nazis had a new use for it.

[Review continues as first comment.]

[Gabriel Gomide · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esse foi o último livro da trilogia. Mesmo tendo uma introdução enorme para me adiantar para o que iria ser narrado durante os anos da guerra não estava preparado para a brutalidade da história da invasão dos países da Europa oriental. Durante alguns trechos tive que parar pelo enjoo físico que eu sentia.

Agora, colocando as minhas sensibilidades específicas de lado, o livro foi tudo que eu esperava. Excepcionalmente explicativo, claro e profundo. Com diversos excertos de diários de agentes que sofreram a repressão do regime na pele. Um perfeito capitulo conclusivo para a trilogia de Richard Evans.

Como nota importante, gostaria de ressaltar que o livro é sobre o Reich na guerra, ou seja, não se aprofunda tanto assim nos quesitos da guerra. Por mais que algumas descrições de batalhas no fronte oriental tenham sido bastante elucidativas, mesmo no primeiro capitulo o autor já indica que para uma exposição digna dos acontecimentos da guerra um livro inteiramente sobre isso seria necessário. O foco aqui, como nos outros livros é na Alemanha nazista.

[Edmond Dantes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terzo e finale caputolo della storia intrecciata di Nazismo e Germania dal periodo Bismarckinano al 1945 (e oltre...)
Poco o punto storia di guerra e battaglie, e solo, per mostrare il riflesso sulla società tedesca e sul "morale" interno.
Il vero secondo fronte per tutta la guerra fu per Hitler quello interno; ossessionato dal crollo del 1918 volle evitare il più possibile (ai soli tedeschi ariani) le durezze e le privazioni della guerra , con il risultato che il poco (oltre co sconclusionato) piano di produzione bellica aveva già fatto perdere la guerra a fine 1942...
Dettagli della distruzione dell'Europa da parte dei nuovi barbari che, comunqwue, contarano , salve poche eccezioni, sul silenzio complice di tante "autiortià costituite" tedesche, chiese (Cattolica e Protestante) in Primis....

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Those giving this work four or five stars can only have done so in order to have congratulated themselves on having had the persistence to slog their way through this tedious long work which is totally inept from beginning to end. The Third Reich during WWII is a very crowded field and every other work that I have read on the topic is dramatically better. William L. Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" has best focus and narrative force. Volume II of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hiltler "Nemesis" provides a much better portrait of the inner workings of the Nazi party. However, Evan's is revealed at its weakest when compared to Mark Mazower's "'Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe" which does a far better job at explaining how the Nazi's ruled the various territories that they conquered.
Evan's very best work is "Death in Hamburg" which won the 1989 Wolfson demonstrated his extraordinary talent for conducting primary research and using secondary materials to support his investigations in the archives. For the "Third Reich at War" which is purely a work of synthesis history there was no structured primary research project while his choice of secondary sources was capricious at best. Using is deep understanding of Germany, he writes with sensitivity and insight on the "White Rose" resistance movement which was nonetheless a very marginal phenomenon. Evans, however, has virtually nothing to say to about the very large and active partisan groups in Poland, Yugoslavia and Russia. He very rightfully draws attention to the extraordinary insights into occupied France that can be obtained in Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Francaise" but otherwise ignores the abundant material from the French literary community on occupied France.
In my opinion, Evans is at his very worst in his treatment of Poland and the former Yugoslavia. Because Evans very reasonably feels that the Endlosung (a.k.a. Shoah a.k.a. Holocaust) was one of the dominating aspects of the Third Reich. Thus he spends a great deal of time on the events in Poland where the extermination camps were created. He gives a solid if not brilliant history of the camps but everything else about Poland is garbled. He makes no mention of the "Zegota" and other groups that operated in Poland for the purpose of hiding and rescuing Jews. His version of the Warsaw uprising is garbled at best . Evans is even worse in Yugoslavia where he discusses only Ante Pavelic's Ustase movement and government in Croatia giving no space to either Tito or the Royalists.
Go ahead and read this book if you have already bought it. It still contains numerous pages where Evans drawing on his great knowledge of Germany to provide insight about the country during WWII. Evan's greatest sin is not arriving at the wrong conclusions, it is rather his erratic way in what he chooses to cover. If you have not already spent your money, there many better books available about the Third Reich that you could buy.

[Daniel Zadravec · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard J Evans three part series on the Third Reich is a brilliant synthesis on German history, and he takes the reader from the earliest days of the Third Reich to its very end, and beyond. Looking at how the Nazis slowly gained influence and controlled aspects of all daily German lives, Evans shows how the Nazis changed and adapted their message in the turbulent nineteen twenties, until they connected with enough Germans to come to power. From there, he shows how the Nazis insidiously infiltrated German lives, until there was only the regime and the Leader, and Hitler's mad dreams of German conquest could be realized.
Evans portrays the maniacal dictator at the heart of Nazi Germany in full display, first exposing the charisma and oratory skill that allowed Hitler to climb to the head of the Nazi Party. From there, he shows the, political maneuvering, machinations, and good fortune, and above all, incessant violence and hatred inflicted upon his enemies that allowed Hitler to climb to to head of the German government and country, readying the country for war.


In this book, Evans pens the story of the Third Reich at war, from the triumphal beginning of rapid victories in Poland and France, and the long awaited invasion of Eastern Europe and Russia, where the Nazis genocidal madness and horror would be unleashed in full force, leading to some of the most morally repugnant actions in history. After this victorious beginning, Evans shows the barbarity of the Nazis and Germans in their conquered territory, especially in Eastern Europe, and the slow turning of the tide during their fateful push deeper into Russian territory, at the failing to capture Moscow, and the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad, all which served to pause the German advance across Eastern Europe and allow the full industrial might of the US and the Soviets to come to bare.

He then explores the military defeat of the German army abroad, and the societal defeat of the Nazi Party in Germany. As Allied bombs fell over their heads, Germans slowly lost faith as their Leader increasingly disappeared from public life after devastating German losses, while privately Hitler raged at the supposed incompetence and treacherous nature of his generals, all the while drawing up plans to push back the invading Allied armies encircling Germany, all to fail in the end. In the end, the great Leader of the German Reich shot himself, leaving subordinates to surrender Germany to the Allies.

Most masterfully, and importantly of all, Evans shows why the tale of the Third Reich endures, of how a people can embrace, or at least fearfully accept a fanatical regime appealing to the worst parts of humanity. Of how hatred and barbarity and vileness can come to rule a society, and how these impulses of hatred and death upon Germany's enemies can be fanned and flamed, until the fires of war rage across the world, burning a madman upon the pyre of the World.

[David McGrogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each of the three volumes of this trilogy is excellent, but this is probably the best, if only for the sheer feat that it represents - condensing so much historical incident into an (admittedly long) 760 pages. What is perhaps most notable is its insistence on the centrality of the Holocaust to WWII. Quite rightly, Evans eschews much in the way of military history; the war was lost as soon as the Nazis invaded Russia simply by dint of lack of resources. The real story is the way in which an entire society was transformed from the centre of European civilisation to a nihilistic, moral void in the space of less than a decade. Evans recognises this, and brings the sheer enormity of it home in a very calm and understated way.

[Donato Colangelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a magnificent conclusion to the Third Reich Trilogy. Many of the events here told can be found in other books on the same topic, of course. And yet the book has its own identity, its own testimonies, its own stories. Klemperer’s story, which started in the first book, is here brought to the end. Through all the three books, contributions from his diaries make the narrative a vivid, terrifying experience. The same applies to the entries of the other historical actors which are called by Evans to testify.
Overall, a great opera, fully integrated with an extended list of references and enriched by many maps.
It deserves a place on the library of those interested jn understanding the Third Reich, why it sprang from German society, how it gained momentum, how it changed the course of history, how it failed.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars. While there are certainly aspects of Evans's book that remove it from the typical broad appraisal of the Nazi period, there are points where he relies upon old saws, as well as some peculiar opinions, somewhat understandably but still distracting. On the whole, however, it's a very capable work and worth reading for a general understanding of the regime and the peoples who lived through it.

[Russ Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book with only a vague sense of whether I would read books 1 or 2 in this series. Reading the last book first was not a problem if the reader has a general sense of the history. However, I am now reading the others and they do build in a well structured flow.

Structured flow, well constructed, and organized are in deed words that describe this book. It is one of the best histories I have read on the topic. Mr. Evans explains the underlying motivations, the nuances and of course the details of the Third Reich’s actions from 1939 to 1945. In depth analysis of the racial policy, armaments industry, politics, warfare etc. are all covered in interesting detail. This goes a long way in making facts into a compelling storyline. I’m not saying it’s exciting like a novel but for the history enthusiast, I would strongly recommend. As mentioned, I am reading books 1and 2!

[Edward Champion · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best (and most brutal) volume of Richard Evans's largely impressive Third Reich Trilogy, covering 1939 to 1945. It's odd to me that Evans has dogged on William Shirer, even though he leans heavily into Shirer's diary (along with that of Victor Klemperer, as he has in the first two books). But no matter. Evans's great skills as a historian serve him well in showing how systemic cruelty developed in the Nazi regime's final days. He traces the use of mechanized genocide from the equally evil Aktion T-4 program. And his narrative strategy in sticking with the German perspective reveals the horrors perpetrated and suffered by the German people. One of the great thorny moral issues in studying World War II -- and this has been argued by historians since the last several decades -- is whether the revenge that the Red Army took against the Germans after the war with their rampant rape and murder was justified. Evans reminds us just how much Russia suffered during Operation Barbarossa. It is believed that three million Red Army soldiers perished because of the cold and slave labor. Evil perpetuated evil. And certainly the evil of the camps, which wiped out so much of the Jewish people, was unambiguous. Much of the material here is truly horrifying and it was impossible to read this volume without taking breaks -- even though Evans has written a tremendously gripping volume. I was greatly impressed with just how much Evans was able to pack in -- although I think he could have added more material about the game-changing battle of Stalingrad. Above all, Evans' final volume in the trilogy reminds us of how swiftly the baleful impetus of genocidal and totalitarian evil can perpetuate itself upon a continent. It also documents how little Hitler was prepared for Russian resilience, as well as the influx of ordnance and aircraft from the Americans. The bombing of Hamburg likewise did a great deal to destroy German morale, creating an epidemic of homelessness and death which the Nazis were unable to remedy, causing widespread discontent towards Hitler that was not allowed to bubble up until the war was become more of a decisive victory.

[Dave Dentel · Rating 5 out of 5]

History’s most notorious criminals compel a certain fascination, though we are well-advised not to become too enthralled.

St. Paul encouraged us to dwell on the true, just and lovely, a discipline no doubt meant to keep us from being enticed by the trappings of evil, the power it sometimes imbues (however briefly), or from forgetting that except for divine grace tyrants like Adolf Hitler might exist as the rule rather than the exception.

Then again, speaking the truth is always a defense against malevolence. And few have unveiled the utter depravity of Hitler’s regime in as meticulous detail as historian Richard J. Evans.

Getting at those details, however, requires some effort given the scope and style of Evans’ work.

Rich in Detail

The author breaks down his examination of the Third Reich into three books.

The first deals with how the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s; the second explores how Hitler consolidated his hold on Germany and began to implement his policies. The final book examines the Third Reich from its invasion of Poland in 1939 to its crushing defeat in 1945.

Evans’ histories are only loosely narrative. They offer slight treatment of the vast conflict the German war machine provoked from the Arctic Circle to the Horn of Africa.

The books are instead primarily topical, focusing on the politics, policies and attitudes expressed by Germans of all ranks during the rise, rule and fall of Hitler’s oppressive regime.

To achieve this, Evans cites journals, letters, and reports—including those compiled by reporters tasked with observing Nazi society. These ranged from journalists such as William Shirer, to members of the SS, and even clandestine operatives from the deposed Social Democratic political party.

Groundwork for Lawlessness

Again, much of what Evans unveils is simply a more elaborate recounting of how Hitler’s personal hatred and violence was institutionalized into murder and destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Still, there is much for even the most well-read World War II aficionado to learn. Here are just a few things in Evans’ books I found novel and interesting.

During his ascent toward becoming dictator, much of what Hitler said and did was not without precedent.

His antisemitism reflected racist ideas held by many in Germany at the time.

After his failed coup in 1923 (during a period of widespread political violence), Hitler turned more or less to legitimate politics.

He built a large political organization and campaigned vigorously. And though it’s true his National Socialists augmented their canvassing for votes with street brawling and thuggery, they were by no means outliers in the use of these tactics.

All the major political organizations in Weimar Germany apparently fielded paramilitary groups. This included the Communist Party, the Social Democrats, and even a veterans association known as the Steel Helmets.

Seeking Cover

Nor did Hitler commit an aberration by circumventing parliament and invoking emergency powers after being named chancellor. The precedent had already been established by several of his predecessors.

Early on Hitler also took care to obtain legal cover for his atrocities. After his purge of Nazi stormtroopers in 1934, for example, he persuaded his cabinet to draft a statute retroactively justifying these political murders.

One especially perplexing fact is, once the Nazis gained power, the extent to which they labored to put their stamp on German society as a whole. Evans points out how in order to continue functioning, even village sports leagues and choral societies were forced to become nazified—by excluding so-called undesirables and instituting a pledge to the Fuhrer, for example.

Not until the war commenced, of course, were the Nazis able to realize their full plans for genocide and colonization. Ironically, the brutality and cynicism with which they implemented their policies eventually undermined their primary means for achieving conquest—terror and superior war-making.

Twisted Priorities

Germany lacked the manpower to match the Allies in the production of weapons and supplies, for example. So the Third Reich relied heavily on prisoners of war and conscripted foreigners. But these workers were not simply mistreated—quite often they labored under conditions designed to kill them.

Granting for a moment that mass murder ranked fairly high on the Nazis’ list of priorities, one still has to ask how they failed to see that massacring their workforce threatened to undercut even loftier goals—like winning the war.

One way Evans illustrates this dark irony is through his discussion of the V-2 rocket. He points out that the advanced weapon killed about 5,000 enemy combatants and civilians, while 20,000 workers involved in its production died from disease, starvation and other causes.

Evans also notes that the Nazis were so single-minded about killing Jews that they spent increasingly scarce resources toward this aim even late into the war. Not satisfied with butchering most of the Jews on the European continent, Hitler’s minions went so far as to pressure communities on remote Mediterranean islands to hunt down and hand over these supposed arch-enemies of the German people.

This effort continued even while Nazi leadership could offer no effective means for protecting their cities from American and British bombers or halting the advance of marauding Soviets.

Believing Their Own Lies

Equally dumbfounding is how Nazi leadership sought to rationalize their crimes by vilifying Jews through nonsensical propaganda.

On one hand, the party line went, Jews deserved their fate because they were a filthy sub-human rabble incapable of contributing to society.

On the other hand, Hitler also accused Jews of being wealthy, influential conspirators who were manipulating the world’s most powerful nations into warring against Germany.

Whether or not the self-proclaimed leader of the so-called master race actually believed his own grotesque falsehoods is probably unanswerable. That he dared to excuse his brutality with such banality simply proves that the first victim evil targets is always the truth.

Dark Lesson

Yet ultimately, Evans sees in the history of the Nazis a warning to us all.

“The Third Reich,” he writes, “raises in the most acute form the possibilities and consequences of the human hatred and destructiveness that exist, even if only in a small way, within all of us.”

And giving into this hatred simply lays the foundation for self-destruction, as the Germans discovered to their own despair.

As Evans notes: “The violence at the core of Nazism had in the end been turned back on Germany itself.”

[Urey Patrick]

This the last volume in Evans monumental history of the Third Reich. It is a breathtakingly comprehensive, perceptive immersion in the society, government, economy, culture, everyday life, military and political figures, policies and programs of Nazi Germany during the war years. It is spellbinding - informative - hard to put down. Evans dispels myths and conventional wisdom about Hitler's Germany, the relentless racial impetus underlying the ideology, the ruthless nature of the regime. He provides data, comparisons, personal recollections, illustrative personal stories and vignettes. This is not a military history - although its narrative is juxtaposed against the critical military events and the polices and personalities involved. In the same way, it is not a political history - or a biography - yet it blends all those factors and more. The reader experiences Germany from 1939-1945. Evans has created an exhaustively comprehensive yet engaging and compelling history - I could not put it down. If you read only one volume of his trilogy - make it this one!!!

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, it took me roughly eight years to finish Evan's opus. His first two books (Coming of the Third Reich & Third Reich in Power) are perhaps the two best books I've read on World War 2, so I was looking forward to this last one. It didn't disappoint.

I almost want to go back and read the first one again--since towards the end of the war, he comments how support for Nazism had substantially dried up throughout Germany--but I vaguely remember political charts in the first one showing how enthusiastically the people backed it. Perhaps I'm remembering wrong or it was only certain districts that tipped overwhelmingly to evil, but to me it seemed more like losing began to put a bad taste in people's mouths and not anti-Hitler convictions.

I liked how this book, while it could have been several times longer, covered parts often times left out--Serbia and the Balkans in particular.

[Mark Singer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the years I have read many books on the Second World War, but Evans's trilogy on the Third Reich is up there as essential for anyone who wants to understand the conflict. This last volume in the series covers from the beginning of the European phase of the Second World War in September 1939 up until the Third Reichs crushing defeat in May 1945. Evans approaches historical events from multiple viewpoints, not just the usual top-down of leaders in most other histories. He uses journal entries from participants and victims, as well as secret SS reports on the morale of the German populace. Evans also does not hold back from describing the brutality that Nazi Germany infilcted on both its own inhabitants and those of the conquered countries.

[WaldenOgre · Rating 4 out of 5]

总的来讲，不如前两部那么锐利透彻、惊心动魄，更多地是在全景式地描绘第三帝国在战场态势、种族灭绝、战时经济以及社会文化等等各个方面的详情。

然而，在所有内容里面，最令我感兴趣的，依然还是个人的道德选择之可能性这个主题。其中，有这么两个例子我觉得是最有代表性的：

在东线专门担负屠杀任务的德军别动队里，“在所有……情况下，拒绝参加谋杀行动的少数人被允许外出休息，而且不用承担违反纪律的后果……然而，大部分军官和士兵……并没有表示任何异议。”

迟至1942年，一名未被驱逐的犹太裔德国人在被命令清扫街头积雪时，他那友善、礼貌的德国监工还不忘劝告他：“你不必太卖力，政府并未这样要求。”

在不同的体制下，个人的道德选择空间有极大的差别，这显然是毋庸置疑的常识。但这两个例子也清楚地证明了，无论在多么糟糕的环境中，无论受到怎样的外部限制，个人选择依然是存在的。无论有怎样充分的理由，某种最低限度的道德责任始终是无法推卸的。

所以，作者才会在全书末尾意味深长地提到，虽然第三帝国的实体早已湮灭在历史中，但它不会彻底消失。因为它“用最极端的形式抛出了我们每个人在生命的某一刻会面临的道德困境——在我们被迫陷入的特定情境中，我们是选择屈服还是抵抗，选择作为还是不作为。”