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The Third Reich
- A History of Nazi Germany
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
In The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Thomas Childers shows how the young Hitler became passionately political and anti-Semitic as he lived on the margins of society. Fueled by outrage at the punitive terms imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, he found his voice and drew a loyal following.
As his views developed, Hitler attracted like-minded colleagues who formed the nucleus of the nascent Nazi party. Between 1924 and 1929, Hitler and his party languished in obscurity on the radical fringes of German politics, but the onset of the Great Depression gave them the opportunity to move into the mainstream. Hitler blamed Germany's misery on the victorious allies, the Marxists, the Jews, and big business - and the political parties that represented them. By 1932 the Nazis had become the largest political party in Germany, and within six months they transformed a dysfunctional democracy into a totalitarian state and began the inexorable march to World War II and the Holocaust.
It is these fraught times that Childers brings to life: the Nazis' unlikely rise and how they consolidated their power once they achieved it. This is the most comprehensive one-volume history of Nazi Germany since the classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
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- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Alan Robertson
- Length: 46 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaw's Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subject's immense darkness. From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in the 20th century.
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An Excellent Read
- By Rodney on 09-19-13
By: Ian Kershaw
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A History of the Twentieth Century
- By: Martin Gilbert
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 29 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin Gilbert, author of the multivolume biography of Winston Churchill and other brilliant works of history, chronicles world events year by year, from the dawn of aviation to the flourishing technology age, taking us through World War I to the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt as president of the United States and Hider as chancellor of Germany.
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Entertaining. Worth reading.
- By Douglas on 08-20-16
By: Martin Gilbert
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1941: The Year Germany Lost the War
- By: Andrew Nagorski
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling historian Andrew Nagorski takes a fresh look at the decisive year 1941, when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.
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Interesting but problematic
- By Thor Olson on 06-14-19
By: Andrew Nagorski
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Hitler's Empire
- How the Nazis Ruled Europe
- By: Mark Mazower
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 27 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research, Hitler's Empire sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion - and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain.
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Page Turning Scholarship
- By philip on 06-08-19
By: Mark Mazower
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When France Fell
- The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance
- By: Michael S. Neiberg
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American response - a policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain.
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Proceeds from a faulty premise
- By Buretto on 12-11-21
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Appeasement
- Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War
- By: Tim Bouverie
- Narrated by: John Sessions
- Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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On a wet afternoon in September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off an airplane and announced that his visit to Hitler had averted the greatest crisis in recent memory. It was, he later assured the crowd in Downing Street, "peace for our time." Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Appeasement is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy, and parliamentary infighting that enabled Hitler's domination of Europe.
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I cannot tolerate the narrator
- By DrBCFR on 06-05-19
By: Tim Bouverie
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Russia in Flames
- War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 - 1921
- By: Laura Engelstein
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 31 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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October 1917, heralded as the culmination of the Russian Revolution, remains a defining moment in world history. Even a hundred years after the events that led to the emergence of the world's first self-proclaimed socialist state, debate continues over whether, as historian E. H. Carr put it decades ago, these earth-shaking days were a "landmark in the emancipation of mankind from past oppression" or "a crime and a disaster."
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Solid overview of events
- By Anonymous User on 06-27-19
By: Laura Engelstein
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America and Iran
- A History, 1720 to the Present
- By: John Ghazvinian
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 27 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In this rich, fascinating history, John Ghazvinian traces the complex story of the relations between these two nations back to the Persian Empire of the 18th century - the subject of great admiration by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams - and an America seen by Iranians as an ideal to emulate for their own government.
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Distortions Galore
- By Chuck S. on 03-15-21
By: John Ghazvinian
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The Unfathomable Ascent
- How Hitler Came to Power
- By: Peter Ross Range
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an improbable political journey that came close to faltering on many occasions, his march to power had finally succeeded. While the path of Hitler's rise has been told in books covering larger portions of his life, no previous work has focused solely on his eight-year climb to rule: 1925-1933.
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The best account of Hitler’s rise to power.
- By Deal W. Hudson on 08-26-20
By: Peter Ross Range
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In the 70 years since the demise of the Third Reich, there has been a significant transformation in the ways in which the modern world understands Nazism. In this brilliant and eye-opening collection, Richard J. Evans offers a critical commentary on that transformation, exploring how major changes in perspective have informed research and writing on the Third Reich in recent years. Drawing on his most notable writings, Evans reveals the shifting perspectives on Nazism's rise to political power, its economic intricacies, and its subterranean extension into postwar Germany.
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each book is better than the first. your writing is genius
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Hitler's True Believers
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Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
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Fascinating listen
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The Hitler Years: Triumph, 1933-1939
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In this first volume of a new chronicle, Frank McDonough charts the rise and fall of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand, ending on Germany's comprehensive military defeat of Poland in 1939.
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Exceptionally informative and detailed telling of Hitler’s rise in 1933-1939
- By M. Price on 06-22-24
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The "Hitler Myth"
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Few, if any, 20th-century political leaders have enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler did in the decade or so following his rise to power in 1933. The personality of Hitler himself, however, can scarcely explain this immense popularity or his political effectiveness in the 1930s and '40s. His hold over the German people lay rather in the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him. Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Kershaw's study charts the creation, growth, and decline of the Hitler myth.
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Not a study of Hitler Charismatic Authority
- By Raminak on 03-05-23
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Hitler's Empire
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Page Turning Scholarship
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Excellent Series
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each book is better than the first. your writing is genius
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-24
By: Richard J. Evans
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Fascinating listen
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Exceptionally informative and detailed telling of Hitler’s rise in 1933-1939
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Not a study of Hitler Charismatic Authority
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Hitler's Empire
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Page Turning Scholarship
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KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
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In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system.
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Narrator warning!
- By S R L COTTERILL on 04-24-15
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The Third Reich in Power
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The definitive account of Germany's malign transformation under Hitler's total rule and the implacable march to war. This magnificent second volume of Richard J. Evans's three-volume history of Nazi Germany was hailed by Benjamin Schwartz of The Atlantic Monthly as "the definitive English-language account... gripping and precise." It chronicles the incredible story of Germany's radical reshaping under Nazi rule.
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Great book, annoying narrator
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Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler
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In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature.
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Incredible research as important now as then
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November 1918
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The German Revolution of November 1918 is nowadays largely forgotten outside Germany. It is generally regarded as a failure even by those who have heard of it, a missed opportunity that paved the way for the rise of the Nazis and the catastrophe to come. Robert Gerwarth argues here that to view the German Revolution in this way is a serious misjudgment. Not only did it bring down the authoritarian monarchy of the Hohenzollern, it also brought into being the first ever German democracy in an amazingly bloodless way.
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Fresh Historical Perspective
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The Third Reich at War
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Evans interweaves a broad narrative of the war’s progress with viscerally affecting personal testimony from a wide range of people - from generals to front-line soldiers, from Hitler Youth activists to middle-class housewives. The Third Reich at War lays bare the dynamics of a nation more deeply immersed in war than any society before or since. Fresh insights into the conflict’s great events are here, from the invasion of Poland to the Battle of Stalingrad to Hitler’s suicide in the bunker.
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Masterful
- By Karen on 09-03-10
By: Richard J. Evans
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Goering
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In Goering, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel use firsthand testimonies and a variety of historical documents to tell the story of a monster lurking in Hitler's shadows. After rising through the ranks of the German army, Hermann Goering became Hitler's right hand man and was hand-picked to head the Luftwaffe, one of history's most feared fighting forces. As he rose in power, though, Goering became disillusioned and was eventually shunned from Hitler's inner circle.
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From Fighter Pilot Ace to Cartoon Villain
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Hitler’s Charisma
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Fueled by hate, incapable of forming normal human relationships, unwilling to listen to dissenting voices, Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, and yet he commanded enormous support and was able to exert a powerful influence over those who encountered him. How did Hitler become such an attractive figure to millions of people? That is the question at the core of Hitler's Charisma. Acclaimed historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees examines the nature of Hitler's appeal and reveals the role his supposed "charisma" played in his success.
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Fantastic
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Travelers in the Third Reich
- The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945
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Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating firsthand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler - one so palpable that the listener will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere.
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Why must I write a review to have my rating count?
- By Saint Exupery on 03-04-23
By: Julia Boyd
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Hitler
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- By: Volker Ullrich
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- Length: 34 hrs and 46 mins
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For all the literature about Adolf Hitler, there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler's childhood, to his failures as a young man in Vienna, to his experiences during the First World War, to his rise as a far-right party leader.
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Worthwhile if you haven't read a Hitler biography
- By Joshua on 11-03-16
By: Volker Ullrich
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Hitler
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- By: Volker Ullrich, Jefferson Chase - translator
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- Unabridged
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From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 comes a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself. Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler's character and personality, vividly portraying the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures.
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Had to return because of narration
- By Thomas C on 03-26-21
By: Volker Ullrich, and others
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The End
- The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945
- By: Ian Kershaw
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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- Unabridged
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From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II. Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did.
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Engrossing yet horrifying
- By Liz on 10-14-11
By: Ian Kershaw
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The Coming of the Third Reich
- By: Richard J. Evans
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 21 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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There is no story in 20th-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time.
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Compelling and depressing
- By Tad Davis on 06-30-10
By: Richard J. Evans
What listeners say about The Third Reich
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tracy F.
- 07-20-24
Very well researched
Very well researched. And lots and lots of small details. Many names new to me!
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- Anonymous User
- 07-14-24
Pronunciation is good
The ability of the reader to adequately pronounce the German words is satisfying. He was very easy to listen to considering it the amazing amount of details in the book.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-22-21
Solid History
Wide-ranging survey of Nazi Germany. Well-written and performed. Spotty in the sense that some topics are barely mentioned (Eva Braun, War in the Atlantic, impact of the war on common German families and soldiers, legacy, etc), but still quite interesting and easy to follow.
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- tell stout
- 05-02-23
Very well done
Not only very well put together, however, an excellent read for a historical view into the mindset.
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- Lakhman L. Gondalia
- 05-04-24
Compelling story
I really liked it, story from start to end is described is out of this world, this is one of my top on the list that I have read or listened to books.
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- Mendy
- 02-18-21
Well read and easily understood
This was a great listen. The narrator did a great job. The Book is very informative and very easy to understand. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants an overview of WW2 history
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- JoBo
- 11-25-22
human tragedy, folly, and horror. an imperative lesson
This masterfully written and narrated history of Nazi Germany and its dire consequences upon the world should be a must read in high schools and/or colleges. Our freedoms in a democracy, like our lives, hang by fragile threads, We must know our history in order to preserve and defend our values and our way of life. Demeaning one group demeans all of us. Hate is both the enemy of the hater and hated, while love, compassion, and empathy, like a rising tide, lifts all.
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- Andy
- 07-08-23
Great Book
Thorough history of Nazi Germany with fantastic narration! A compelling listen that's hard to put down.
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- Tad Davis
- 10-18-20
Superb and important history
Thomas Childers has written extensively on Hitler and the Third Reich. Previous accounts I've read by him — like his Great Courses entry on the same subject — gave a lot of attention to the rise of Hitler’s government but little to its fall. He's taken a more comprehensive approach here, and the results are much more satisfying: this is truly a detailed, cradle-to-grave history of the Third Reich.
He takes us back into Vienna and Munich to watch Hitler’s slow transformation from a penniless street painter into a dynamic and captivating public speaker. He came into the German Workers Party (DAP) as a police spy and, sensing an opportunity, began taking over as their main attraction. His speeches were consistent in blaming Germany’s defeat in the Great War on the bankers, industrialists, and Jews who were more interested, he said, in turning a profit than in defending the Fatherland. Under his leadership, the DAP became the NSDAP — the National Socialist German Workers Party: the Nazis.
Bavaria in general and Munich in particular were hotbeds of right-wing resistance to the Weimar Republic. And that Republic had failed, miserably, partly because of the blindness and tunnel vision of the allies who had defeated Germany. One detail from Childers illustrates how badly Weimar had failed. Workers were paid three times a day. The morning’s pay was handed over to a family member waiting outside to buy lunch, because by lunchtime inflation would have rendered the morning’s pay worthless. The Great Depression in 1929 wreaked even greater havoc in the German economy and opened the way for the NSDAP, until then a tiny minority party, to begin gaining influence and winning seats in the Reichstag.
Antisemitism was the core of its message from the start. Childers confesses to some puzzlement as to when this ideology became central for Hitler: people who knew him when he was penniless in Vienna saw no signs of any particular hostility toward Jews. But certainly by the time he assumed leadership of the NSDAP, there was no question that the extermination of European Jews was part of his agenda. He started small, though, with a vow to save German owners of small shops from the “pestilence of Jewish department stores.” When the NSDAP controlled the government, he said, there would “be no place for Jews,” and International Capitalism would at last be brought to heel. This threat was fulfilled in 1935 with the passage of the Nuremberg laws and their several supplements, stripping Jews of German citizenship, forbidding intermarriage, and closing all professions to Jews. Those Jews who could afford to leave Germany left — which was at least partly the point.
Hitler won the lottery by refusing to play. Offered a place in a coalition government — a place, but not the top place — he refused. He then made his refusal to compromise a central part of his campaign for a government completely controlled by the NSDAP. By backroom intrigue, he managed to secure for himself the position of chancellor; and almost immediately the Reichstag fire precipitated a crisis that allowed him to suspend all civil liberties. The stormtroopers went wild in the streets, beating, arresting, and murdering thousands of Jews and communists. (Childers suggests the fire was most likely set by a lone arsonist, but acknowledges there is some evidence it was part of the overall Nazi conspiracy.) Consolidation followed rapidly, and soon the NSDAP was the only legal party in Germany.
Hitler’s ruthlessness came to the fore in 1934 when his old pal Ernst Röhm, leader of the Brownshirts, became a serious threat to the army. Over the course of three days, Hitler personally directed the arrest and execution of Röhm and a hundred or more other leaders of the Brownshirts as well as a select list of anti-Nazi political enemies. Some were shot on the spot; some were dragged into a nearby field and hacked to death. The Night of the Long Knives was made legal retroactively by legislative fiat. The final nail fell into place shortly afterwards when the war hero President Hindenburg died, and Hitler declared that he was taking on that office as well. He now had absolute power and a field cleared of his worst enemies.
Childers tries to convey a sense of the cultural changes that took place under the Nazis as well. Almost immediately, Jews were by law removed from public life. Universities offered little resistance as their faculties were decimated and their libraries purged of “non-Aryan” material. Many scientists, writers, and artists fled, but a surprising number remained and adapted. Nazi propaganda invaded every aspect of life. It was there in the youth groups, on the factory floor, in the arts, in the newspapers, over the airwaves. Books were burned and “degenerate” art prohibited and confiscated. The swastika was everywhere: even tubes of toothpaste bore them. The Catholic Church was officially ridiculed and (mostly unsuccessful) attempts were made to establish a German Christian Church founded firmly on a doctrine of antisemitism and racial purity.
As racial purity came to dominate policy, experiments in bringing it about by artificial means were carried out. This began with a massive program of involuntary sterilization, and universities and medical schools began running courses on eugenics. As red lines were crossed, the medical profession began cooperating in the effort to identify children with physical and mental defects, and hospitals were fitted out with various means of exterminating them. When war came, cover was provided for a massive increase in the use of death camps to remove millions of people considered undesirable, chief among them the Jews who became part of the Reich as a result of conquest.
In the last quarter of the book, Childers turns his attention to the Second World War and the Holocaust. The two were inextricably linked. Hitler’s plans from the beginning had included the conquest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, if not the world itself, and he began with a series of small challenges to see what the reaction would be. As he rebuilt the army and the Air Force, sent troops into the Rhineland, incorporated the whole of Austria into the Reich, the protests from the victors of the Great War were feeble or nonexistent. When he threatened to incorporate the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, the protests were noisier but remained impotent. And so a Hitler made bold by success invaded and conquered Poland, starting the Second World War, and was finally able to make good on his promise to open up “living space” for the German people. This of course required the wholesale relocation or extermination of millions.
His account of the war is sparing and is strictly limited to those parts that affected the Third Reich. One aspect of the war was consistent with Nazi ideology but actually began as a crime of opportunity: the industrial-scale destruction of European Jews. Childers provides a concise but powerful account of the Holocaust: how it happened, why it happened, who made it happen, and how it was carried out. Some of the images from this section of the book are searing and unforgettable. Given that this is only part of a larger narrative, there is much that is left unsaid, and Childers could provide a great service by giving us a book-length treatment of that topic. But it’s hard to think how he could have made it any more clear, in the space he had available, what the Nazis intended and how close they came to accomplishing it.
The book obviously overlaps with William Shirer’s masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The two books are not competing with each other. Shirer’s account has the immediacy of someone who was there, a reporter with a trained eye for the telling detail. Childers’ account is an historian’s narrative based on an additional 60 years of research in the archives. Don’t force yourself to make an artificial choice between them: read both books, each one as a commentary on the other. Pay particular attention to the early chapters, the ones that cover Hitler’s rise to power. The most vital lesson to take away from a study of this period is how easily a democratic republic can be subverted by someone with no respect for its norms.
I would also recommend The Nuremberg Trials by John and Ann Tusa. It’s gratifying to see how the good guys, having finally won, dissected the Nazi regime and made irrefutable proof of their crimes a permanent part of the historical record. (Yes, the trials were imperfect, and sometimes there was a colossal amount of hypocrisy involved, especially on the part of the Russian delegation, but it was better to try than not to try.)
The narrator David De Vries has a “public” reading style — in other words he sounds like he's reading the book to a live audience, and at times he tends toward the declamatory. But he can be low and quiet too, as he is when recounting the crimes of the Holocaust or the last days of Hitler in his Berlin bunker. Childers’ book ends with a passionate plea for everyone to be vigilant: if rights are lost by one group, no matter how small, he says, rights are lost by all. De Vries delivers this plea with passion and sincerity.
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- Will Georgiadis
- 11-14-20
Very good overall history
I've listened to a lot of WWII histories and histories of the Third Reich. I thought this was a great overall history, good for someone who is interested in the subject and looking for an introduction. I also thought the narration was really well done.
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