A Concise History of the Third Reich

This well-illustrated, highly accessible book at last gives general readers and students a compact, yet comprehensive and authoritative history of the twelve years of the Third Reich--from political takeover of January 30, 1933 to the German capitulation of May 1945. Originally published to rave reviews in Germany, A Concise History of the Third Reich describes the establishment of the totalitarian dictatorship, the domestic and foreign politics of the regime, everyday life and terror in National Socialist Germany, the events leading to World War II and the war itself, various forms of resistance against Hitler, and the Holocaust. The book's extensive illustrations are thoroughly treated as documents that illuminate the visual power of Nazi ideology.





Pub. Date: December 2007
Author : Wolfgang Benz
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN-13: 9780520253834
ISBN: 0520253833

Editorial Reviews - A Concise History of the Third Reich - Publishers Weekly

Does anyone really need yet another book on Nazi Germany? After the masterworks of Richard Evans's multivolume history and Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography of Hitler, a certain ennui sets in. Benz is a leading German historian, the director of Berlin's Center for Research on Antisemitism. In this book, he sets out to accomplish what he did previously in The Holocaust: provide a concise, authoritative account, this time for the entire history of the Third Reich. At this he succeeds. Everything is here: the rise of the Nazi movement, the establishment of the dictatorship, culture, war, Holocaust and, finally, the collapse. Yet the treatment is flat, almost textbooklike.

So many of the major interpretive issues that have engaged historians worldwide and the broader public in Germany are absent. For instance, Benz writes of the Hitler youth organization, but overlooks the question of how to incorporate into our interpretation of the Third Reich the experience of girls in the organization who often felt a sense of emancipation from the strictures of home and church. What were the connections between other forms of persecution and the Holocaust? How modern was the Third Reich? A concise interpretive work would have made for a much more satisfying book.

Meet the author

Wolfgang Benz is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität Berlin. Among his previous books is The Holocaust (1997).