The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster by Richard J. Evans (2009-09-03) Paperback – 3 Sept. 2009

The Third Reich at war is the third and final installment in a trilogy of books by Richard Evans on the Third Reich, the other two being  The Coming of the Third Reich  and  The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939 . Although there have been many thousands of books and articles about the Third Reich in the second world war, this is the first book that I have read with this specific focus and so I am not in a position to say whether it adds anything 'new'.However, coming to the subject as a relative novice, I can say that I found the book well written, informative, well paced and therefore very accessible for a layperson with a serious interest in popular history.Firstly, the The Third Reich at War is not primarily about the German people, or Germany, in the Second World War; it is about the Nazi regime. In other words the focus is very much on the actions of state and party rather than the experiences of ordinary Germans, who feature only really in their relationship to that regime, whether as its victims (with the main emphasis on the mentally disabled and Jews) or as its passive or active supporters.As Evans himself acknowledges, despite the best efforts of the Nazis, the German people and the Nazi regime where never one and the same entity. This was true even at the height of the regime's popularity, after the defeat of France and the reclamation of German speaking territories to the East and West in 1940-41.This focus on the regime rather than the people results in a detailed study of the actions and machinations of various senior Nazis in the party, state and military in relation to the progress of the war at home and abroad at the expense of the experiences of ordinary Germans; the diaries and letters of the latter are drawn upon but usually in relation to a particular statement or action by the regime.This regime centric approach isn't a criticism of the book in itself, but it is a caveat for those who are looking for a bottom-up peoples history from the perspective of ordinary Germans.Perhaps as a consequence of this focus on the Third Reich as a regime rather than on the experiences German people caught up in the war, I found Evans treatment of the suffering of ordinary Germans to be a little cursory. While Evans doesn't shy away from citing the numbers involved, the horrific breadth and depth of the slaughter of civilians in what even Winston Churchill called 'the terror bombing' of German cities feels rushed (see  Dresden: Tuesday, 13 February, 1945 ), as is the systematic rape of women and girls by the Red Army (see  Berlin: The Downfall 1945  or  Joy Division [DVD] [2006 ]).The bombing by the US and British is present, as is the Red Army's unchecked programme of rape and murder, but both are light-touch compared to Evans' examination of the 'T-4' euthanasia programme, where disabled Germans were systematically murdered by Nazi doctors in the early stages of the war, before the advent of the extermination camps in Eastern Europe.This focus on the direct victims of the regime, rather than on the experience of the German people as a whole, is disappointing in a book that promises to explore 'how the Nazis led Germany from conquest to disaster', since that disaster is not expanded upon in the depth I would have expected of a book that is nudging 800 pages plus notes and bibliography. Even if we were to accept that victims of Nazism deserve greater pity than those who Daniel Goldhagen controversially labelled 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' , was not a 14 year old raped by the Soviets in 1945 as worthy of sympathy as any other victim of the second world war?As a final criticism of an otherwise excellent book, Evans does not say very much about the expulsion from Eastern and Central Europe of ethnic Germans at the end of the war, communities who had lived on that land in some cases for hundreds of years. This was an act of ethnic cleansing comparable in its brutality with the ethnic cleansing of the recent Yugoslav wars and, like those wars, cannot be justified on the basis that paramilitaries from those communities had committed criminal acts earlier in the war.Moving on, while of course I knew about the holocaust and the antisemitism of Nazi Germany, Evans book really brought home to me how insanely antisemitic the Third Reich was. I say insanely because Hitler and is accomplices seemed to genuinely believe that all Jewish people, whether Hollywood directors, Wallstreet Bankers or peasant farmers in rural Poland where somehow connected in a global conspiracy to destroy Germany. Hitler seemed to really believe that Jews had started the second world war!To use an unpopular minority as a scape goat in order to unify the mainstream population, and then to allow or direct extremists to eradicate that minority, is criminal in its Machiavellian indifference to human rights and justice, but to genuinely believe in the righteousness of a global race war against that minority is criminally insane.In terms of layout and execution, the quality of Evan's well paced writing in complimented by a robust chapter and section system that keeps the narrative tight and coherent despite the large size of the book; each chapter is clearly summarised and the argument never really loses its sense of direction.The concluding passage, which concludes both this book and its two companion volumes, is worth quoting here:'History does not repeat itself: there will be no Fourth Reich [... But the] legacy of the Third Reich is much wider. It extends beyond Germany and Europe. The Third Reich 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, in all of us. It demonstrates with terrible clarity the ultimate potential consequences of racism, militarism and authoritarianism.'Cynical efforts by British Prime Ministers and American Presidents, along with the reactionary media of both countries, to justify foreign wars of aggression by trying to squeeze foreign regimes into the ill-fitting garb of the Third Reich is absurd and utterly misses the point; the danger of a resurgence of the evil of Nazism does not lie primarily in 'appeasement' abroad but in acquiescence to racism, militarism and authoritarianism at home. Put in this light, we should be at least as worried about the endless growth of the criminal law, extension of police powers and the rise of surveillance in the UK as we are concerned about engaging in wars against various regimes in the Middle East and Asia.

I am on holiday in Poland and Germany. I downloaded the third volume after reading the previous two.I have not finished this book but at the moment it is making very grim reading. I have the sense that the author is going into terrible detail of the crimes of the Nazis to explain the terrible punishment that occurs at the end.In Berlin I visited the National History Museum, (Deutsches Historisches Museum);http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Historisches_MuseumThe museum is located in the Zeughaus (armoury) on the avenue Unter den Linden. The museum was originally conceived as a celebration of Prussian military success.I visited the special exhibition on the First World War. What has struck me from my travels is how representative Hitler was of German thought in that period. That there was nothing that Hitler did or said that was particularly original.The German treatment of people on the Eastern Front in the Second World War was similar to their treatment in the First World War.It is easy for me to make a blanket statement. What Richard J Evans does, is follow such statements with facts to back them up.Some of the one and two star reviews appear to have been made by Nazi sympathisers who question Richard J Evans grip on the subject matter. I have read widely on this subject and I have found nothing that Richard J Evans says that conflict with other accounts that I have read. On the other hand, Richard J Evans presents additional information, perspective and facts.I can see how this was a war between societies. Productive capacity and actual output was more important, than individual acts of cowardice or heroism.Why this history is important, and why I have rated it five stars, is because it was also a war between ideologies, of propaganda, and the interpretation of events.Well researched!KINDLE FORMATThis is the fourth book I have read in the Kindle format. In this format, there is a tendency to read books from beginning to end.When I bought the paperback,  The Third Reich in Power, 1933 - 1939: How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation  I read the final chapters - first, and then read the read the other chapters in a different order, eventually reading the whole book.With a paperback: I started reading about the bits that interested me most, and that I knew something about. Because I found them readable and interesting, I went on to read the entire book. I find it difficult to get a similar overview with the Kindle edition.With this book I have got rather bogged down. Even when I have got to bits of history that I have found interesting,  The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris , I found that I was so over whelmed by what I had just read that I was no longer interested. I stopped taking it in.It was not that it was inaccurate or conflicted with what I had previously read. It was simply that I was no longer interested. Somewhere along the line, I had lost the plot.I am going to have another go. I am looking forward to the bombing of Germany.Criticism of Kindle:Normally I enjoy looking at maps. However in the Kindle edition the maps are practically useless when I use my desktop computer. With my laptop I can turn the laptop to one side to look at a map. But then they are very small. I would like to click on a map and for it to open as a proper web page. I would also like to cut and paste from a Kindle book.The importance of history:I came across some gross distortions of history on the following web site. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find the best examples for my review.therebel.org/en/opinion/therebel.org/en/opinion/hans-krampe/689038-an-expelled-german-family-visits-the-occupied-german-province-of-pomerania"After this trip, I began to research what happened with our people in the North-Eastern part of Germany during the Red Army invasion.... OMG! It made me sick!!! And now I understand why all of the people that belonged to my father's generation, as well as the older ones, have always avoided talking about the war. The atrocities that the Red Army and the Bolsheviks committed against our people and our land is so far beyond horrors that anyone of us could hardly imagine."A guest submission by Pablo von Köeller, whose German family still resides in exile today in South America.