The Oxford illustrated history of the Third Reich

The Oxford illustrated history of the Third Reich

Book - 2018

At age thirty in 1919, Adolf Hitler had no accomplishments. He was a rootless loner, a corporal in a shattered army, without money or prospects. A little more than twenty years later, in autumn 1941, he directed his dynamic forces against the Soviet Union, and in December, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. At that moment, Hitler appeared - however briefly - to be the most powerful ruler on the planet. Given this dramatic turn of events, it is little wonder that since 1945 generations of historians keep trying to explain how it all happened. This richly illustrated history provides a readable and fresh approach to the complex history of the Third Reich, from the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 to the final collapse ...in 1945. Using photographs, paintings, propaganda images, and a host of other such materials from a wide range of sources, including official documents, cinema, and the photography of contemporary amateurs, foreigners, and the Allied armies, it distills our ideas about the period and provides a balanced and accessible account of the whole era.

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Subjects
Hitler, Adolf, > 1889-1945.
National socialism.
World War, 1939-1945.
Germany > History > 1933-1945.
Published
Oxford : Oxford University Press 2018.
Language
English
Other Authors
Matthew Stibbe (contributor), Hermann Beck, 1955-, Hedwig Richter, Ralph Jessen, Jonathan Petropoulos, David F. Crew, 1946-, Peter Hayes, 1946 September 7-, Omer Bartov, Dieter Pohl, Julia S. (Julia Suzanne) Torrie, 1973-
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
383 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 26 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-361) and index.
ISBN
9780198728283
  • List of Maps
  • Introduction: The Third Reich
  • 1. The Weimar Republic and the Rise of National Socialism
  • 2. The Nazi 'Seizure of Power'
  • 3. Elections, Plebiscites, and Festivals
  • 4. Architecture and the Arts
  • 5. Photography and Cinema
  • 6. The Economy
  • 7. The Holocaust
  • 8. War and Empire
  • 9. The Home Front
  • 10. Decline and Collapse
  • Appendix: Daily inmate numbers in the SS concentration camps, 1934-45
  • Further Reading
  • Picture Acknowledgements
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A richly illustrated and textually dense assessment of the Hitler regime.The Nazi movement did not arise in a vacuum. As historian Matthew Stibbe notes in this collection edited by Gellately (History/Florida State Univ.; Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe, 2007, etc.), the Hitler movement was bolstered by a sharp rightward turn of the leading conservative party in Weimar Germany, led by a media mogul who, like the Nazis, opposed the liberal government and decried the putative "political disorder, sexual chaos, and economic turmoil" that marked the Depression era. One little-known plank of the Nazi platform was a program of "plebiscitary dictatorship," buttressed by referendums that gave the illusion of democracy even when there was only one choice on the ballot. There was even a vote for the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria: "Party members used cars to ferry the old and the frail to the polling stations," as German historians Hedwig Richter and Ralph Jessen note, while "special polling stations were set up in hospitals." These elections were useful, Gellately argues, because they enabled the regime to proclaim to the world that the entire nation was with it, thereby allowing it to advance a social agenda that, infamously, demanded that Jews and foreigners be eliminated so that the German "community of the people" would prevailand, of course, build a nation and even an empire. There are small surprises scattered throughout the text: for instance, the note that the Nazi regime spent record sums on the arts, while, even though it was classified as a "degenerate" form of culture, jazz played on German radios until the end of 1943, "with the implementation of the stricter total war measures." Indeed, we have so much documentation of the regime's terror because the Nazis were proud of it, even in that time of collapse.Essential for students of modern history, marked by fresh scholarship and little-seen photographs. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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