The Third Reich in Power

Evans deftly distills decades of research from English and German sources, mainly secondary but some primary too, in this masterful account of the years 1933-1939 in Germany. As a lifelong WWII buff, I learned a lot from this book.In the preceding volume, "The Coming of the Third Reich," Evans describes the conditions that led to the rise of Nazism up to 1933. This book picks up where the preceding one ends. In some ways, both books (which I've read) can be read separately. If you've forgotten some of the finer points of the first volume, Evans provides a helpful summary of it in this volume, as well as footnote references to that work, if you're inclined to flip back and forth.Describing how the Nazis implemented their policies in this period, and how the German public reacted to it, is a massive subject, and in many ways summarizing this work does a disservice to it. Instead, it's perhaps better to focus on the themes that emerge.First, Evans shows that various policies were willingly embraced by the German public in many ways, but only up to a point. This is clear on certain things like policing and justice, schools, and industry. Cops stood by while SA men beat up Jews, teachers taught anti-Semitic works to their students, and workers and business owners all benefited from Nazi arms production. However, Evans also carefully distinguishes between these public manifestations of support and some unintended consequences; namely the individual's retreat into a focus on job security, enjoying vacations thanks to Strength Through Joy, and sharing their reservations and doubts in private with loved ones at home. Germans did support the regime, but only so far. So, despite what you might think from years of watching enthusiastic, Sieg-Heiling Germans in documentaries (and there were those, no doubt), Evans shows that the Nazis failed to get complete, whole-hearted support from everyone. The Third Reich aimed to be a totalitarian society, but didn't quite achieve that. There's a timeless lesson here about the human desire for total control and how humans frustrate that goal.Second, it becomes clear that the Third Reich was focused on war. And not just a European war, or just a war for lebensraum in the east. These were first steps toward what Hitler really wanted: Germany's global domination. I think it's helpful to understand Hitler's desire for autarchy (economic independence), as it informed much of his foreign policy thinking and even some of his wartime decisions later. The Third Reich's leaders were motivated, and constantly hamstrung, by a lack of workers and raw materials as they prepared for war. Their solution: take these resources by force, as loot. (Among other things, the corruption and looting that went on, from the top down, as an adjunct of Nazi policy is a sub-theme). We start to see this in Austria and Czechoslovakia, and it's easy to make the connection to later developments like slave labor and oil-seeking enterprises like Case Blue. From all this arises one of the essential contradictions of German war planning (such as it was): wanting autarchy, and using war to get it, but never having enough material resources to fight this ever-expanding war successfully. The German war effort was flawed by this fundamental problem as soon as it began, and we see the origins of it here.Third, while the Germans cheered Hitler's early foreign policy successes (the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia), this was partly from a sense of relief that war had been avoided. While the Nazis sought war (Hitler very clearly so by mid-1939), the German people deeply wanted to avoid it. This perhaps reveals the biggest gap between the Nazis and their own people. Again, Evans shows us that Nazi power had its limits; not everyone was a convert eagerly goose-stepping his or her way over the cliff.Fourth, Evans argues quite convincingly that the Nazi state was a modern one, not a traditional conservative one, or even a reactionary one. This difference is clear when comparing the Nazi regime to other European dictatorships of the time. Nazi modernity manifested in a number of ways (it's easy to point to synthetic fuel, ballistic missiles, and jet aircraft here), but perhaps the clearest and most central to the Nazi political state is the party's desire for a racial utopia. Evans carefully shows how the Jews were excluded from German society, step by step, and also picks apart the fundamental contradictions of Nazi policy, as shown most clearly in the Nuremburg Laws. Ultimately, the Nazi definition of Jewishness was in the eye of the beholder, and in the end this was defined as much by religious practice as it was by race. The German pursuit of a perfect society built on a new man and woman was flawed from the beginning.Evans is a clear writer, and he ably pulls together narrative, analysis, and quotes to keep this history informative, lively, and ever human. Typical sources include reports from Social Democratic spies, who sent their observations back to the politicians in exile. Ironically, perhaps, Gestapo reports on the public mood, and the work to be done in molding public opinion further, provide abundant source material for the historian.Evans is even witty at times, which helps break the tension. He also has a patient manner in describing these things; sort of like that ideal teacher you wish you always had. At the same time, the book tends to be thematic and not a straightforward chronology, so this may pose a challenge to some readers, as it was to me at times. Accordingly, some familiarity with events in the 1930s will be helpful before diving into this account, which focuses on events in Germany. The maps looked informative, and they were helpful at points, but they were often too small to see on a Kindle White.

If I could give this book 4.5 stars, I would. The reason for me not giving this wonderful piece of History 5 stars is because I am a huge fan of linear history and not thematic history. To me, thematic history seems like everything is all over the place and important information might be glossed over in one section, but then explained in greater detail in another. While that is fine for some, I tend to look up information as I read along, and then want to find out more of what the author has to say in the book about the subject, which can then take time away from enjoying the book in its entirety. Also, this book doesn't capture the horror that is the Third Reich like it did in the other book. The hair is raised a bit in the last two chapters, but otherwise, it fails to give that shock factor The Coming of the Third Reich did. Despite all of my criticisms, this is a well detailed book that again, gets to dive deeper into the regime than the standard World War II history book. Mr. Evans does his homework well and gives the facts and figures a personal touch, which makes history seem less like an academic exercise and more of a story. Read this, the book doesn't jump around as badly as Fredrick Brown's history of the French Third Republic, but it is still annoying to me.

In the twentieth century an appalling number of people, untold millions, were killed by governments around the world—and in several unfortunate countries the state went stark-raving mad. That was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. During the period from 1933 to 1939, after the Nazis consolidated power, a total dictatorship was established under Adolf Hitler, and the country rearmed at a furious pace to prepare for his planned war of conquest. "The Third Reich in Power" by Richard Evans examines how such a sick regime could have arisen and cemented its hold in one of the world's most sophisticated countries and portrays the cultural climate in Germany in the years before World War II.Above all else, Hitler and the Nazis sought to crush individual thought and feeling and mold Germans into a single, obedient, coordinated mass. Germans were ordered to sacrifice and martyr themselves for the sake of the race, and individual lives were weighed as meaningless in comparison. To this end, many of the familiar staples of dictatorships everywhere took hold in the Reich—the crushing of civil society; the absence of freedom of speech; control of the media, including the fairly new medium of radio; emigration on the part of those with the foresight and will to get out; surveillance; hostility to and a war on religion; the rule of law replaced with the will of the ruler; a police state; coercion and an end-justifies-the-means ethos; people being forced to confess to false crimes; political prisoners; and, of course, unremitting, poisonous propaganda.It was not long, Evans relates, before a "pervasive atmosphere of fear and terror" developed, complete with denunciations, another familiar condition in dictatorships. There were varied reasons why ordinary people supported the regime, and the author describes some of the rationalizations of the evils of the dictatorship that some Germans resorted to.There was massive state intervention in the economy in Nazi Germany, and Evans looks at the efforts to stimulate the economy in the areas of public works, trade, agriculture, regulation, and nationalization of industry. The arts and the educational system, especially the universities, were deeply corrupted with heavy indoctrination and supervision of the young, to the toxic extent that childless couples were quietly congratulated. It was a measure of just how suffocatingly oppressive the Reich was that the Nazis even attempted to organize and control the leisure time of the people and inject ideological content into it.Evans examines life for different groups and classes in the Reich—urban and rural, blue- and white-collar, and professionals. It goes without saying that anti-Semitism became more and more noxious as the years passed, and the author describes the horrific Night of Broken Glass, the establishment of the first concentration camps, and the brave emigration of Jews who were fortunate enough to flee Germany in the years immediately before World War II.Hitler began to take over foreign territory before actually starting World War II, and the conquests of the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia are recalled. Germans knew the war was coming, but there was no enthusiasm for the conflict in the country, and conscription became necessary—the author closes by describing the invasion of Poland and the arrival of humanity's deadliest conflict.Life was of course terrible for those deemed not part of the master race in Nazi Germany, but it was a hundred country miles from being a day at the beach for ordinary Germans deemed part of it as well. Eric Hoffer rightly described the Third Reich in his classic "The True Believer" as the return of the Middle Ages; the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Constitution put the individual at the center, subject to his own will and conscience, but Nazi Germany regressed to the principle of the group above all and submission of the individual to the will of the mob (viz., the will of the mob leaders), resulting in a bleak existence to be endured instead of a life to be lived."The Third Reich in Power" is both a thorough catalog of one of the darkest places humanity has traveled to and a reminder for future generations never to go to such a place again.

In the preface to the first volume of his Third Reich trilogy, Evans quotes professional historians' views that Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is, as implied by the title, "unbelievably crude". In contrast, he states here in the preface to this second volume that his treatment of the Third Reich in the years 1933-39 will be "necessarily thematic". I can't help feeling that there is a happy medium. In the first and third volumes, the themes were determined by events and so there is a narrative drive, but the eschewal of narrative in this volume makes it difficult to discern how the themes relate to each other. It is not until the last chapter, The Road to War, that narrative crudity appears, and the book is all the better for that.I was also frustrated by the lack of discursive analysis, which I assume is deliberate, with Evans preferring to let events speak for themselves. For instance, he states that Nazism was not a religion, and quotes a speech to this effect made by Hitler in order, says Evans, to distance himself from the woolly-minded mysticism espoused by the likes of Himmler. But merely quoting Hitler doesn't close the argument. Why did Hitler feel it necessary to make the point? Was he placating the churches? Does the fact that Hitler said it make it true? I would have liked to have heard Evans's no doubt trenchant views on this and other matters.It is probably unfair to criticise Evans for not writing the book he could have written had he wanted to, and so anyone reading this review may if they wish mentally add a fifth star. There can be no argument with the consensus that is a magisterial account. In his brilliant "In Defence of History" Evans writes that no sane person is capable of reading most history books through from beginning to end. He could write this secure in the knowledge that his own books are evidence that he is one of the few historians who can be eminently readable without being "crude".

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is clear, it is comprehensive, and gives a very powerful look at what life was like for the ordinary citizen during the Third Reich. I can't say that I agree with everything he has to say, but he has certainly presented a rich and detailed history.He relies heavily on the observations of a Social Democratic source which has its obvious limitations and is particularly problematic in his section on education. But for the most part he has wide and varied sources and gives an all around picture of both the good and the bad.He warns the reader that it is very hard for free and democratic minds to comprehend what it must have been like to live in a threatening totalitarian regime, but I think the author has to be aware that it is also difficult for Western minds, developed with ethos of individuality, self-expression, and democracy, to understand the mentality of a nation where democracy and individual expression were not the highest virtues. I think for a vast majority of Germans, the lack of freedoms and the intimidation of the Nazi regime were at most annoying, but were more likely accepted as a necessary measure to bring order and stability back to the nation. And they may have agreed with it to some extent. In later chapters Evans agrees that despite the negative aspects to many of the Nazi's policies, the benefits seemed to outweigh the disadvantages.Most Germans were quite happy and look back fondly at the 1930s.But what Evans shows best, and what most authors on Nazi Germany choose to ignore, is that at the heart of the Nazi's policies was the goal of ridding Germany, and eventually Europe, of its Jews. It was tied up and was a central component in creating a strong racial state and preparing the nation for war.For anyone who wants to have a thorough understanding of how the Nazis could win over a whole nation, than this book is a definite must. It is even better than the first volume in the series. I wasn't going to, but now after reading this, I absolutely must read the last volume.

An extremely insightful investigation into the political development of the Third Reich. The only drawback for the non academic historian, is the scattering of extremely unfamiliar words. So keep a dictionary to hand for those sesquipedalian terms. ( overly complex).

The book is tremendous history - first class. I would recommend it fully. The particular copy I received had its back cover folded in half and the whole item looked like it had been rough-handled.

Splendid