Das Dritte Reich

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERA History Today Best Book of the Year 2025<BR><BR>'Elegantly written and powerfully argued ... it ranks among the best works on this terrible period' Sunday Times<BR><BR>A biographical study of Hitler's inner circle offers a new way to understand the horrors of the Nazi regime<BR><BR>Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us.<BR><BR>Evans offers rounded, fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, enforcers of Hitler's orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich, propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl, low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways.<BR><BR>Hitler's People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared.

'Brilliant, a 5 out of 5 masterpiece' Evening Standard<BR><BR>The renowned historian of the Third Reich takes on the conspiracy theories surrounding Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, in a vital history book for the 'post-truth' age<BR><BR>The idea that nothing happens by chance in history, that nothing is quite what it seems to be at first sight, that everything that occurs is the result of the secret machinations of malign groups of people manipulating everything from behind the scenes is as old as history itself. But conspiracy theories are becoming more popular and more widespread in the twenty-first century. Nowhere have they become more obvious than in revisionist accounts of the history of the Third Reich. Long-discredited conspiracy theories have taken on a new lease of life, given credence by claims of freshly discovered evidence and novel angles of investigation.<BR><BR> This book takes five widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis and subjects them to forensic scrutiny: that the Jews were conspiring to undermine civilization, as outlined in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'; that the German army was 'stabbed in the back' by socialists and Jews in 1918; that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to seize power; that Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK in 1941 was sanctioned by Hitler and conveyed peace terms suppressed by Churchill; and that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945 and fled to South America. In doing so, it teases out some surprising features these, and other conspiracy theories, have in common.<BR><BR> This is a history book, but it is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts': a book for our own troubled times.

'The most comprehensive history in any language of the disastrous epoch of the Third Reich' Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler<BR><BR>'The most gripping account I've read of German life before and during the rise of the Nazis' A.S. Byatt, Times Literary Supplement<BR><BR>The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany explores how the First World War, the Weimar Republic and the Great Depression paved the way for Nazi rule<BR><BR>They started as little more than a gang of extremists and thugs, yet in a few years the Nazis had turned Germany into a one-party state and led one of Europe's most advanced nations into moral, physical and cultural ruin and despair. <BR><BR>In this consummate and compelling history, the first book in his acclaimed trilogy on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, Richard Evans reveals how and why it happened, questions whether the rise of Hitler was inevitable and dramatically re-creates the maelstrom of disorder, economic disaster, violence and polarization that gave rise to the terror of the Third Reich.

Der Sunday-Times-Bestseller von NS-Experte Sir Richard Evans über Hitlers Helfer und Vollstrecker - von Paladinen wie Göring, Goebbels, Himmler bis zu Propagandisten wie Riefenstahl und Handlangern wie Irma Grese und Paul ZappWer waren die Nazis? Verfolgten sie kriminelle Absichten, oder waren sie 'gewöhnliche Deutsche'? Was brachte sie dazu, furchtbare Gräuel gegen wirkliche oder eingebildete Feinde zu begehen oder zu billigen? Warum waren so viele Deutsche an den Verbrechen beteiligt? Wie kam es, dass sie Hitler fast bis zum Ende folgten? Der renommierte Historiker Richard J. Evans zeichnet oft verblüffend neue Porträts der Männer und Frauen, die NS-Deutschland schufen und ihm dienten, angefangen bei Hitler über Paladine wie Göring, Goebbels und Himmler bis zu Exekutoren wie Eichmann und Heydrich, Propagandisten wie Leni Riefenstahl, Täter wie die berüchtigte KZ-Aufseherin Irma Grese und unbekannte Sympathisanten und Mitläufer, die das Regime auf vielfältige Weise unterstützten. Evans hilft die Struktur des Dritten Reiches besser zu verstehen und zeigt auf, wie weit Einzelne gehen, wenn der moralische Kompass abhandengekommen ist.

The acclaimed and comprehensive account of Germany's transformation under Hitler's total rule and the inexorable march to war, by the author of The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich at War, and Hitler's People "[A] masterpiece. Fluidly narrated, tightly organized and comprehensive." --The New York Times "A major achievement." --The Boston Globe<BR><BR>By the middle of 1933, the democracy of the Weimar Republic had been transformed into the police state of the Third Reich, mobilized around the cult of the leader, Adolf Hitler. In The Third Reich in Power, Richard J. Evans chronicles the incredible story of Germany's radical reshaping under Nazi rule. As those who were deemed unworthy to be counted among the German people were dealt with in increasingly brutal terms, Hitler's drive to prepare Germany for the war that he saw as its destiny reached its fateful hour in September 1939. This is the fullest and most authoritative account yet written of how, in six years, Germany was brought to the edge of that terrible abyss.

An absorbing, revelatory, and definitive account of one of the greatest tragedies in human history, by the author of The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and Hitler's People "This is history in the grand style, the kind of large-scale narrative that few historians dare to write these days. It is difficult to imagine how it could be improved upon, let alone surpassed." --The Washington Post "This superb book is not simply a military history; it is a comprehensive portrait of a society at war . . . A masterpiece of historical research and analysis . . . Likely to remain the best study of the Third Reich at war for many years to come." --The Christian Science Monitor Adroitly blending narrative, description, and analysis, Richard J. Evans portrays a society rushing headlong to self-destruction and taking much of Europe with it. Interweaving a broad narrative of the war's progress from a wide range of people, Evans reveals the dynamics of a society plunged into war at every level. The great battles and events of the conflict are here, but just as telling is Evans's re- creation of the daily experience of ordinary Germans in wartime. At the center of the book is the Nazi extermi­nation of the Jews. The Third Reich at War lays bare the most momentous and tragic years of the Nazi regime.