Too often, as Burleigh rightly complains, academic authors paint a somewhat bloodless, almost abstract picture of the Nazis, as if the theories and debates about them were more important than the people themselves. His book dramatically redresses the balance. Burleigh’s major purpose was to deliver a moral history of the Third Reich. The Third Reich: A New History concentrates mainly on mass murder, resistance and collaboration, political violence and coercion, crimes and atrocities.