- Hardcover: 960 pages
- Publisher: Allen Lane; first Edition edition (2 Oct 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0713997427
- ISBN-13: 978-0713997422
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.4 x 6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 183,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'With this third volume, Richard Evans has accomplished a masterpiece of historical scholarship ... [he] has produced the best and most up-to-date synthesis of the huge work carried out on the subject over the past decades.' --Anthony Beevor, Times
Review
'The narrative is written with the same masterly historical flair and eye for telling detail that marked the first two volumes. This will surely be the standard history for many years to come.'
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding History From An Outstanding Historian,
By
This review is from: The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Paperback)
Richard J Evans has written a magnificent book. The structure, narrative and sources are of the highest quality and the notes make this volume a veritable encyclopedia of life in war time Germany. In particular, the way in which Evans weaves in the leadership's strategy with the experience of ordinary people is outstanding. Although on occasion his interpretation is open to dispute and the coverage is brief, possibly because of the amount of knowledge available elsewhere, it should be remembered that the war lasted almost six years and to re-tell it in less than 800 pages is an achievement in itself. The bibliography is extensive and includes many works in German. What is clear from the outset is that the Nazis were motivated by an anti-human racism in which they identified themselves as the master race with the absolute right of determining the individual and collective fates of those they considered inferior. This expression of social darwinism facilitated acts of extreme cruelty which were considered normal behaviour, especially amongst those soldiers who were inculcated into the army under the Nazi regime. Old soldiers had more qualms about shooting women and children. What is also clear is that the policy of murdering all and sundry was carried out with a ruthlessness that makes one wonder just how firm the concept of civilisation is in reality. SS Task Units were "Beasts in Human Form" and it was rare (though not impossible) to find anyone prepared to deny the Nazis' philosophy of treating other races as subhuman. In so doing they managed to draw on the racial hatred against the Jews present in conquered countries, whether such hatred was based on the Jews' success in business, clannishness or desire to retain their separatist traditions. The Nazis created the ideology but other non-German groups quickly bought into it. Of course, history proved the Nazis and their ideology to be a chimera. Not only did Hitler's belief in the superiority of his military strategy contribute to the weakening of the German attack on the Soviet Union - by dividing the focus of the attack - but when the crunch came he, Himmler, Goebbels and, in time, Goering, all took the coward's way out. Hitler blamed everyone but himself for the failure of his regime. Evans puts the blame back firmly where it belongs on the Nazi leader and his cohorts. They created a dream for many Germans then fled the scene when it turned into a nightmare. Other reviewers have stated they have been waiting for this volume having read Evans's earlier books on the Nazis. My situation is the reverse. I haven't seen Evans's other volumes but having read this brilliant work I'm putting my order for the two earlier volumes immediately. I'm sure all three will serve as fundamental texts for future study of the Third Reich.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The culmination of Barbarity,
By F. Julius (Manchester , England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Paperback)
The Third Reich at War is the final volume of Professor Evan's magisterial account of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. This volume, which can be appreciated on its own,deals with the period from the outbreak of WWII in September 1939 up to the collapse of Germany in the Summer of 1945.It is not a chronological account of the war but rather a thematic description of the events of that period as they impacted on those within the Third Reich, Germans and non-Germans, leaders and ordinary people, victims and purpatrators.
Whilst avoiding the pitfalls of excessive repetition and detail, this book offers a comprehensive and very thorough description of the totality of the impact of Hitler's War. Specifically, it avoids several common errors such as the tendency to assume that the war was won by the Western Allies rather than lost by Hitler's attack on Russia or indeed the common tendency of British military historians to treat the Nazis' war on the Jews and other "subhumans" as entirely separate from their great military campaigns. This book constantly recognises the comprehensiveness of the Nazis' wish to entirely destroy their perceived enemies including their blood-thirstiness to their own people . In creating a total picture the author has nonetheless retained great humanity and sensitivity to the individual human stories that contribute to the whole picture by referring often to diaries and other personal testimony. He also offers several insights that are genuinely new and thought-provoking such as his assessment of Speer and his contribution to the German war effort.Particularly interesting are Professor Evans' analysis of the passivity of the organised Christian Churches as well as his thorough and well nuanced description of the 20th of July 1944 plot against Hitler. This book, in spite of its heavy subject, is written in a style both appropriate to the content and easy to read. I recommend it highly.
29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant combination of detail and abstraction,
By
This review is from: The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Allen Lane History) (Hardcover)
With this third volume, Professor Evans brings his rightfully acclaimed "History of the Third Reich" to a very fruitful end indeed. All the major developments from 1939 till 1945 are at least touched upon in a very insightful and balanced manner, blending social history, the biographies of well-known heavyweights of the Nazi regime such as Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler or Speer and the lesser known experiences of ordinary Germans into one complex but highly readable narrative, exposing a good deal of the inner workings of Hitler's dictatorship rather than taking an overly abstract bird's eye view on this disastrous epoch.
Abstaining from any form of moralising, which is unnecessary anyway in the face of the well-known enormity of the crimes committed, there is, of course, a heavy emphasis on the horrifying genocidal activities of the Nazis and the political arena, yet economic, cultural and military events are also accounted for in a convincing way. Most of the major controversies concerning the historiography of Nazi Germany like Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" are mentioned, although Evans does not always take up a clear position and understandably refrains from making any new untested hypotheses, for which a book of this scope cannot be intended anyway. For students of modern history the book offers a remarkably well-crafted starting-point to develop their own research interests, providing also a detailed bibliography of the major works on the Nazi era. The only real downside perhaps, along with a certain tendency towards oversimplifying complex military events, is an apparent lack of explicit theoretical reflection on his own position within the field of historical research on the part of Evans, like his rejection of the Great man theory of history, which is responsible for his concentration on social history. As a consequence, lay readers not familiar with the major currents in historical research may not be able to fully comprehend and appreciate Evans' findings. Reading the preface to the first volume, in which Evans explains his methodology in greater detail, is therefore strongly recommended.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
