The Third Reich : A New History

It took me a while to get through this 965-page book, but it was worth it. This book is a very detailed history of the Nazi Regime, starting with Hitler's violent path to becoming Germany's dictator and continuing through the transformation of a country struggling to recover from The Great War to the dehumanized killing machine it became. It gives a thoroughly horrifying account of the atrocities of the war itself. Also, it provides theories and political analysis of the personal and international agendas that propelled the world into this epic shit storm. It's incomprehensible to imagine one man's hate-filled vision could persuade an entire country to exterminate another race, but it is even more sickening that it happened. Hitler and show more the Nazis were evil and caused millions and millions of innocents to die. They will be a stain on our history forever, one, I hope, is never repeated. show less

A comprehensively informative and disturbing telling of the gradual collapse of all moral & ethical values in 1920s-30s-40s Germany: an incredibly depressing view of one of the great civilizations of Europe failing in every aspect of its social, spiritual, economic, philosophical, political life to defend the immensely impressive cultural inheritance from previous generations that until 1918 was the story of the Rise of the German state.
Not all Germans were Nazis and not all Germans were evil, however, my goodness this book does not spare the inter-war years German population from a magnifying glass exposure of just how they collectively came to allow an extraordinarily extremist, near death-cult regime to settle and assert itself in show more and over them: Hitler's Nazism not only took over their lives, but had them actively participate in spectacularly huge numbers from the lowest level of street society through to the families of ancient nobility & landowning & industrial conglomerates all the way to those intimately linked with the great panoply of affairs of State.
The author has written an enlightening version of the tragedy of Germany between the World Wars that compares favourably with any other Historian's tome detailing one of the darkest most depraved periods in humankind's alleged civilized existence. show less

Burleigh writes an epic, sweeping history of the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Second World War, and its immediate aftermath. Though there are many books about Hitler and the War, Burleigh manages to write a new book covering Nazism as political religion and Nazi totalitarianism including eugenics, mass murder etc. He offers a chillingly comprehensive account of the programme of mass sterilisation against Gypsies, Jews, and the mentally ill. Burleigh is very good at describing this progressively deteriorating position of the "undesirables" and it makes for uncomfortable reading. Though the author's underlying premise means he must often make comparisons to Stalinist Russia, these are few and brief. Nevertheless, the chapters on the show more pieces that together made up the jigsaw of the Holocaust are valuable and haunting. Overall, the book is indeed emotionally draining as the reader is forced to confront time and again "man's inhumanity to man" but nevertheless, the reader should persevere for it is a rewarding historical study. show less

This was a well-written book about a terrible story. Burleigh does a good job in presenting a balanced appraisal of the Third Reich in the context of its times, and does not spare either the Western Allies or the USSR when he finds examples of their hypocrisy or shared culpability in what happened in the nightmarish 1940s. The book was a tough read at times, since the author has a predilection for long sentences, and now and then he seemed to wander from the subject at hand. Well worth a read, for those who still think that Hitler's Germany was a state like any other -- it most certainly was not.

NO OF PAGES: 965 SUB CAT I: Holocaust SUB CAT II: SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: Humans have a fascination with evil. We long to identify it, quantify it, and understand it. To this end, newspapers frequently splash photographs of murderers with the caption "The face of evil." Heading most lists of the 20th century's most evil people would be Adolf Hitler, but, as Michael Burleigh's tour de force makes clear, evil is not always as cut-and-dried as we would like. The Nazis could not have come to power and committed Germany to a policy of war and genocide without the tacit consent of the German people. This makes Germany as a whole responsible for the crimes committed in its name, but it is clearly wrong to label every German as evil. Through show more his painstaking research and direct prose, Burleigh slowly builds up a picture of a people desperate for identity and economic prosperity, who, bit by bit, closed off their conscience as the price of their dreams. There was no one cathartic moment when Germany, under the Third Reich, lapsed from goodness into badness; rather, there was an incremental realignment of a collective morality. Burleigh's explanation of this phenomenon is so simple, yet so obviously right, that you can only wonder that it didn't become the generally accepted currency years ago.
Instead of viewing Nazi Germany in purely social, political, and economic terms--though he doesn't ignore these spheres--Burleigh wraps them all into a picture of a country gripped in a religious, messianic fervor, and that which had previously felt inexplicable suddenly seems clear. If you want the nitty-gritty details of the Second World War and the genocide, they are here, retold as well as, if not better than, many of the other histories of this period. But it's Burleigh's take on the people of Germany that makes this book so special. Above all, with similar genocidal wars currently being fought in Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq, it makes you think, "Would I be able to resist becoming complicit in such regimes?" This is a must for every 20th-century historian.NOTES: Donated by Patricia Irwin. SUBTITLE: A New History show less

Na alles wat er over Duitsland gedurende de periode van ná de Eerste Wereldoorlog en 1945 is geschreven, levert dit boek een totaaloverzicht van deze periode waarbij alle facetten aan de orde komen.
Ruwweg vanaf 1914 gaat de politieke onvrede kiemen om uiteindelijk met de verkiezing van Hitler tot bondskanselier in 1933, uit te groeien tot een alles vernietigend bewind. In tegenstelling tot wat velen als de opmaat van alle ellende zien, waren niet de vredesvoorwaarden van Versailles oorzaak van onvrede. Fijntjes merkt de schrijver in dit verband op dat de voorwaarden die Duitsland bij het Verdrag van Brest-Litovsk in 1918 aan Rusland oplegde veel strenger en ingrijpender waren. (50 % van de industriële productie en 90 % van hun show more kolencapaciteit)
Neen, het probleem was de Weimar-republiek zelf: hyperinflatie, ongekend hoge werkloosheid en een erg diffuus systeem van besluitvorming.
In het boek wordt deze periode goed beschreven en biedt daarmee de lezer een goede uitgangspositie om de volgende hoofdstukken te lezen.

Details van de wijze van optreden van het schurkenbewind zijn inmiddels genoegzaam bekend; daaraan voegt dit boek nauwelijks iets toe. Wél schenkt de schrijver uitgebreid aandacht aan het interne verzet dat uiteindelijk slechts toegespitst kan worden op individuen en eigenlijk nauwelijks op bewegingen of fracties. Weliswaar werd in de wat betere kringen met enig dédain over “die proleten” gesproken doch daar bleef het dan ook vaak bij. De z.g. “Bekennende Kirche” is hierop op een uitzondering, doch zij was te klein om duurzame kracht te ontwikkelen.

De vraag hoe het allemaal heeft kunnen gebeuren wordt in het werk wel aan de orde gesteld doch een bevredigend antwoordt wordt naar mijn mening niet gegeven. Te stellen dat angst de alles beïnvloedende factor is geweest, is –denk ik- te gemakkelijk. Er moet ook iets zijn als een psychisch fenomeen zoals dat b.v. wordt beschreven in de studie van het echtpaar Mitscherlich waarin duidelijk wordt dat “heersen en beheerst worden” een letterlijk en figuurlijk dodelijke mix vormen.

Enfin, deze publicatie mag naar mijn mening gezien worden als een standaardwerk, geschikt als eerste en algemene kennismaking met dit deel van de geschiedenis. Is de kennis reeds aanwezig dan brengt dit boek weer enige ordening en is zeker geschikt om als naslagwerk te dienen. Het biedt daartoe een uitgebreid register en bibliografie.

Het is een hele kluif, maar het loont de moeite ! show less

ANAQUEL DEL CENTRO, GAVETA SUPERIOR.