The Coming of the Third Reich or Long Road Home

The Coming of the Third Reich

Author: Richard J Evans

There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand than Hitler's rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world's most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans's history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as it shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian's art and the book by which all others on the subject will be judged.

The Washington Post - Omer Bartov

Evans has accomplished his goal of writing a readable account of the origins of the Third Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the establishment of the Nazi regime in 1933. He provides many insights into the political culture of imperial and Weimar Germany, the mentality of the Nazi storm troopers and the impacts of the inflation of the early 1920s and the depression and unemployment of the early 1930s.

The New York Times

Richard J. Evans's Coming of the Third Reich is an enormous work of synthesis -- knowledgeable and reliable, and playing to the author's strengths as it highlights the interconnections between politics and society. Evans, the author of several books about Nazi Germany, reminds us at the outset that we should not read too much into the activities of nasty but small anti-Semitic and nationalist extremist groups before World War I. Instead he underscores the importance of the postwar crisis, a Germany left bitterly divided between Social Democrats and Communists, an economy ravaged by unemployment and a country led astray by a political and industrial elite with no real commitment to democracy. This is a vivid although familiar account of why the Weimar Republic collapsed. Evans shows how the ingredients for Nazi triumph were assembled and what was needed to make them jell: add war and depression, cook in a turbulent political atmosphere for several years and serve hot. — Mark Mazower

New York Newsday

Evans asks, in different ways, whether the movement's rise to power was as irresistible as the Nazis tried to make it seem.

Publishers Weekly

On March 30, 1933, two months after Hitler achieved power, Paul Nikolaus, a Berlin cabaret comedian, wrote disconsolately, "For once, no joke. I am taking my own life.... [U]nfortunately I have fallen in love with my Fatherland. I cannot live in these times." How Germans could remain in love with their fatherland under Nazism and even contribute willingly to its horrific extremism is the subject of Cambridge historian Evans's gripping if overwhelmingly detailed study, the first of three projected volumes. Readers watch a great and historic culture grow grotesquely warped from within, until, in 1933, a dictatorial state was imposed upon the ruins of the Weimar republic. A host of shrill demagogues had, in the preceding decades, become missionaries to an uneasy coalition of the discontented, eager to subvert Germany's democratic institutions. This account contrasts with oversimplified diagnoses of how Nazism succeeded in taking possession of the German psyche. Evans asserts that Hitler's manipulative charisma required massive dissatisfaction and resentment available to be exploited. Nazism found convenient scapegoats in historic anti-Semitism, the shame of an imposed peace after WWI and the weakness of an unstable government alien to the disciplined German past. Although there have been significant recent studies of Hitler and his regime, like Ian Kershaw's brilliant two volumes, Evans (In Hitler's Shadow, etc.) broadens the historic perspective to demythologize how morbidly fertile the years before WWI were as an incubator for Hitler. 31 illus., 18 maps. (Feb. 9) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

This first part of what will be Evans' three-volume history of Hitler's regime is the most comprehensive and convincing work so far on the fall of Weimar and Hitler's rise to power. Unlike past accounts suggesting that things could have turned out differently had some of the key players been less foolish, Evans builds, stone by stone, a monument to prove that Hitler's ascent was the only possible outcome even though the Nazi Party never captured an absolute majority of votes. He begins with the legacy of the past: how "mainstream parties" adopted anti-Semitic ideas; how pseudoscientific notions of racial hygiene developed starting before 1914; how Germany's defeat in World War I allowed Nazism to emerge as a serious political force by causing Germans to seek "an authoritarian alternative to the civilian politics that seemed so signally to have failed Germany in its hour of need." He finds the Weimar Constitution no worse than many others, but "the fatal lack of legitimacy from which the Republic suffered magnified the constitution's faults many times over." With that lack of legitimacy compounded by hyperinflation, depression, and cultural clashes, the Nazis managed to prevail through a deadly combination of violence and propaganda, both unprecedented in their intensity.

The last part of the book is a detailed, depressing account of Hitler's transformation of Germany in a few months in 1933, including the "cultural revolution" in which both Martin Heidegger and storm troopers played key roles. The Nazi "revolution," Evans concludes, was meant to be "the world-historical negation of its French predecessor," offering "a synthesis of the revolutionary and the restorative." Unconcerned with overthrowing the social system, Nazism focused on "race, culture and ideology"-and on creating "a dictatorship the like of which had never yet been seen."

Library Journal

Do we really need another history of the Third Reich? Evans (history, Cambridge Univ.; Lying About Hitler) answers that while studies of Nazism have proliferated, what is lacking is a narrative and analytical history directed at the general reader. His projected trilogy aims to provide just that. This impressive first volume covers the period from the founding of modern Germany (1871) through Hitler's coming to power (1933). Evans argues that to regard Hitler's rise as the logical by-product of a fundamental flaw in the German character often requires bending evidence for this thesis from disparate events and themes throughout German history. Although Evans does not regard Nazism as inevitable, he does not lose sight of the myriad anti-Semitic movements that populated the German landscape, along with the various forces-militarism, socialism, capitalism-vying for influence in German society. Germany was an industrial giant by 1914, yet paradoxically its economic success concealed the fact that it had not yet completed the process of nation building. Evans argues that during the crisis of 1933, the leaders of the Weimar republic assumed that the Nazis had at least "a minimal willingness to abide by the rules of democratic politics." Hitler, however, was adept at using democratic institutions, while planning their destruction. Recommended for all libraries.-Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A brilliant synthesis of German history, enumerating and elucidating the social, political, and cultural trends that made the rise of Nazism possible. But by no means inevitable, writes Evans (History/Cambridge Univ.; In Defense of History, 1999, etc.); indeed, many of the material and cultural conditions for the rise of a regime that "would make a systematic attempt to kill all the Jews of Europe and kill nearly six million in the process" were more pronounced in France and Russia than in Germany. Yet, he notes, "Nazism, while far from being the unavoidable outcome of the course of German history, certainly did draw for it success on political and ideological traditions and developments that were specifically German in their nature." Some of those traditions arose during the reign of Otto von Bismarck, who, in unifying Germany, universalized military service and "saw to it that the army was virtually a state within a state," answerable to a strong leader alone. Others welled up from Social Darwinist thinkers who believed that the fittest should survive and the weakest be eliminated, thus improving racial stocks and building supermen. The early Nazis found comfort in the example of Weimar leader Paul von Hindenburg, who "had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from their enemies"; they found more comfort in the brutal example of the Russian Revolution and the Leninist state, which threatened to spill over into Germany and drove many a middle-class man and woman far to the right. All these strains came together such that there was "substantial overlap between the Nazis' ideology and that of the conservatives [and] even, to a considerable extent, that ofGerman liberals"-opening the door to the Nazi ascendancy while offering hope to many Germans of the time that their country's future would be one "in which class antagonisms and party-political squabbles would be overcome" and prosperity and national pride restored. A peerless work, the first of a projected three volumes. Of immense importance to general readers-and even some specialists-seeking to understand the origins of the Nazi regime.

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations
	List of Maps and Diagrams
	Preface
1	The Legacy of the Past	1
	German Peculiarities	2
	Gospels of Hate	22
	The Spirit of 1914	42
	Descent Into Chaos	60
2	The Failure of Democracy	77
	The Weaknesses of Weimar	78
	The Great Inflation	103
	Culture Wars	118
	The Fit and the Unfit	139
3	The Rise of Nazism	155
	Bohemian Revolutionaries	156
	The Beer-Hall Purtsch	176
	Rebuilding the Movement	195
	The Roots of Commitment	217
4	Towards the Seizure of Power	231
	The Great Depression	232
	The Crisis of Democracy	247
	The Victory of Violence	266
	Fateful Decisions	289
5	Creating the Third Reich	309
	The Terror Begins	310
	Fire in the Reichstag	328
	Democracy Destroyed	350
	Bringing Germany Into Line	375
6	Hitler's Cultural Revolution	391
	Discordant Notes	392
	The Purge of the Arts	405
	'Against the Un-German Spirit'	419
	A 'Revolution of Destruction'?	441
	Notes	462
	Bibliography	535
	Index	585

Look this: Successful Administration of Senior Housing or Africas Choices

Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family

Author: Martha Raddatz

The First Cavalry Division came under surprise attack in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, now known as "Black Sunday." On the homefront, over 7,000 miles away, their families awaited the news for forty-eight hellish hours- expecting the worst. ABC News' chief correspondent Martha Raddatz shares remarkable tales of heroism, hope, and heartbreak.

The Washington Post - Andrew Carroll

… Martha Raddatz's The Long Road Home is a masterpiece of literary nonfiction that rivals any war-related classic that has preceded it … this is a book that will last, and it will do so for the same reason that any great work endures -- because, through the strength and grace of its prose, it pulls us into a world that is simultaneously foreign and familiar and makes us care about the individuals who inhabit this place long after we have closed the covers. And because, one by one, we will pass the book along to others with the only words of praise that really matter: "Here, you've got to read this."

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Ms. Raddatz conveys who these men were (one was Specialist Casey Sheehan, whose mother, Cindy, would later become such a visible opponent of the war) and what their hellish experience was like. Her account has grit and high drama.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A poignant piece of work that will grab and hold you....Raddatz writes for women as well as for men... lets people tell their stories in their own words, from the choked-up phrases of the wives to the F-bombs dropped so promiscuously by the soldiers. Her dialogue just smells like cordite in combat.

Seattle Times

Extraordinary...an important and profoundly moving story....Raddatz is a top-notch reporter and a masterful storyteller.

Publishers Weekly

Violent resistance in post-invasion Iraq kicked into high gear on April 4, 2004, when American troops in Sadr City faced a massive assault that claimed eight soldiers' lives and wounded more than 70 others. Raddatz, an Emmy-winning correspondent for ABC News, clearly aims to equal the storytelling in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Downin her account of the battle, and hits the mark with distinction. Extensive interviews with the commanding officers of the army's 1st Cavalry division and the soldiers pinned down in the streets provide a clear narrative of how U.S. troops, prepared for "a babysitting mission," found themselves in a bloodbath, as efforts to rescue the first soldiers fired upon met with even greater resistance from Mahdi militiamen who did not hesitate to use small children as frontline attackers. Heroic moments abound, like Casey Sheehan's volunteering to take another man's place on the rescue team, which resulted in his death. Raddatz touches upon the reaction of his mother, noted antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, but this is just one of many perspectives from families on the home front. The gripping account eschews politics and focuses squarely on the soldiers and their sacrifices. (Mar. 1)

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Don Wismer - Library Journal

Many mark April 4, 2004, as the beginning of the full-fledged Iraq insurgency. On that day, a platoon of U.S. soldiers engaged in helping the part of Baghdad called Sadr City deal with horrible sanitation problems and found themselves attacked by hundreds, if not thousands, of members of the Mahdi Militia, a creation of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The first thing the soldiers noticed was an eerie absence of people on the street. Then they began to take withering fire from rooftops, windows, and doors-seemingly from everywhere. The platoon, as it sought its way out, found that the streets were strewn with all variety of junk meant to impede their escape. The irony of the battle sank deep into the minds of the soldiers, who viewed themselves as helpers of the populace, not their enemy, and who had liberated these same Shi'ites from Saddam Hussein. As the day dragged on, the Americans were appalled when organized mobs of women and children marched down the alley from both directions, camouflaging rank upon rank of militiamen. The soldiers had no choice but to fire into the crowds. Hundreds of Iraqis died, as did eight Americans, including Casey Sheehan, whose mother, Cindy, has become one of the most prominent antiwar activists. Raddatz, a well-known journalist and an award-winning correspondent for ABC News, interweaves battle vignettes with vividly written descriptions of the people on the home front-wives, children, mothers and fathers, and fellow soldiers. The author's declarative and journalistic writing style brings a blunt, matter-of-fact passion to the descriptions of the soldiers and their families. This book is a triumph of description and horror; Raddatz studiouslyavoids any political carping, letting the events tell their own story, however one wants to interpret them. Narrator Joyce Bean is skilled and effective as well; she uses subtle changes in accent and tone to individualize the personalities as they stride across the audio landscape. Recommended for public and academic libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

The personal stories of U.S. soldiers caught in a deadly 2004 ambush in Sadr City that the author believes marked a turning point, when the war's mission shifted from peacekeeping and nation-building to battling an insurgency. ABC News Chief White House correspondent Raddatz, who has reported frequently from Iraq, displays a compassionate heart in her first book, which is also notable for its cinematic narrative structure. Chapters are short and focused. The author whisks us rapidly from Iraq to Texas to Alabama and frequently shifts her lens from the killing zone to the home front and back. Raddatz is comfortable writing about high-tech weapons and the intricacies of urban warfare. She doesn't shy away from gore, either: After a battle, soldiers clean from vehicles the remains of their comrades' brains, "soft and slippery and horrifying." She was able to coax intimate revelations from combatants, their officers, their families; she makes use of this material in italicized passages that voice the players' thoughts. Raddatz's principal interest is in the human beings caught up in the war. She tells their backstories, describes their experiences in high school, their marriages, their parents. She shows us what the wives were doing back at Fort Hood, reveals how some of them received the awful news that a husband had fallen. Her message appears to be that we are asking some sweet young people to do some awful things. Two-thirds of the way through, a surprise-the story of the death of Casey Sheehan, son of antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. A horrifying story, clearly told, though some readers may regret that the author stays so far in the background that she is nearly invisible.