Over the course of the book, Evans shows how everything Hitler did in this period was designed to prepare the nation for a war--"a life and death struggle"--whose aim was less geographical conquest than racial purity. Hitler''s main objective was "to remould the minds, spirits and bodies of the German people to make them capable and worthy of the role of the new master-race that awaited them." Though Hitler did not work alone, Evans makes it clear that he was the overwhelming driving force behind it all, including policies regarding education, eugenics, and foreign affairs. Well written and logically organized, The Third Reich in Power is an impressive work of meticulous, readable history. --Shawn Carkonen--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review.The second volume of Cambridge historian Evans''s trilogy on the Third Reich (after The Coming of the Third Reich) is a major achievement. No other recent synthetic history has quite the range and narrative power of Evans''s work. There are no surprises here. Instead, the reader will find careful, detailed analyses of all the major issues relating to the Third Reich between Hitler''s assumption of power on January 31, 1933, and the startof WWII on September 1, 1939: the construction of the dictatorship, the propaganda, the economy, the racial policy and the planning for war. Evans shows just how difficult it was for Hitler to secure his power in Germany (it required unabashed terror to defeat the Nazis'' many opponents), but also how successful was the establishment of the Volksgemeinschaft, the racial community. Once Hitler had successfully consolidated his power, every other aspect of Nazi policy, from education to the economy, became subordinated to the preparation for war. The war, Evans emphasizes, was never simply an effort to redraw the map of Europe. The vast, overarching aim of establishing a racial utopia, a newly modern, German-dominated Europe cleansed of Jews and other undesirables, could only be accomplished through war. When complete, Evans''s trilogy will take its place alongside Ian Kershaw''s monumental two-volume biography of Hitler as the standard works in English. Illus. and maps not seen by PW.(On sale Oct. 24) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From The New Yorker In the second part of a three-volume history of the Third Reich, Evans examines Hitler''s regime in the six years running up to the Second World War, exploring everything from art to the economy and shifting diplomatic alliances. He offers exhaustive statistical analysis coupled with the compelling personal narratives of dignitaries, dissidents, and such ordinary Germans as a Hamburg schoolteacher. A portrait emerges of a state that penetrated and transformed every aspect of life, and yet remained incoherent and often inept. Evans shows that Nazism was all the more effective for its irrationality and arbitrariness: there was no logic in which to take refuge. Language was perverted ("brutal" and "ruthless" were terms of praise), laws were enacted to sanction mayhem retroactively, and faith in science yielded pseudo-archaic notions of "blood and soil." Copyright 2006 The New Yorker--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From The Washington Post''s Book World/washingtonpost.com Looking at the enormous--and incessant--tide of books and articles written about Hitler and the Third Reich, we may note an interesting discrepancy. The majority of non-German historians and authors have devoted and are still devoting their main interests to Hitler''s war and crimes, to the second six years of the Reich, 1939-45. The majority of German historians and authors have devoted their main interests to topics and themes about the first six years, 1933-39. This is understandable. In 1939 Hitler chose war, with the results of total defeat for Germany and Germans. But what led up to that? What happened to the German people before that fatal turning point?
The Third Reich in Power is Richard J. Evans''s attempt to answer many of those questions through historical synthesis. The second part of this British historian''s planned three-volume history of Nazi Germany, it is crammed with information (data, statistics, official and private records and reminiscences), sustained by the author''s knowledge of German and his acquaintance with all kinds of German sources, many of them relatively recent ones. This heavy volume amounts to something like a massive handbook of a very big subject. It consists of seven large parts, made up of four chapters each, moving from the history of the Nazi police state to that of propaganda, religion, artistic and intellectual life, economy and finance, class structure, Jews and finally "The Road to War"--that is, Hitler''s foreign policy.
Yet there are things wrong with both the content and the writing of this massive book. Its long chapters about economics, finance and nationalization of German industry, detailing their difficulties, miss the essence of Hitler''s thinking. "Why should I nationalize the industry?" he once said. "I shall nationalize the people"--which is what he did (alas, quite successfully). Compared to that, Evans''s citing of the occasional private grumblings of industrialists such as Gustav Krupp are largely devoid of meaning.
His judgments are sometimes contradictory. On page 370, he writes that "the economy was clearly in no shape to sustain a prolonged conflict in 1938-1939." ("Clearly"? And did Hitler plan for "a prolonged conflict"?) But on page 409, he states that "the economy had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germany''s foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period. . . . Inflation and unemployment had been conquered." Another contradiction: "Everything that happened in the Third Reich took place in this pervasive atmosphere of fear and terror, which never slackened and indeed became far more intense towards the end." Yet on many other pages, Evans mentions umpteen examples of the regime relenting its pressures for tactical purposes (for example, before and during the 1936 Berlin Olympics).
This heavy book is chock-full with statistics. Yet there is no mention of such very telling numbers as the increase in German marriages from about 511,000 in 1932 to 611,000 in 1936; the jump from 921,000 births in 1932 to 1,280,000 in 1936, meaning that for every two children born in Germany in 1932, three were born just four years later; the fact that in 1938 and 1939, most marriages in all of Europe were registered in Germany, exceeding the numbers among even the prolific people of Eastern Europe; or the statistic that suicides committed by young people under 20 dropped by 80 percent (!) during the first six years of the Hitler regime--all symptoms of a great and ominous rise of German national confidence.
Moreover, Evans does not write well. Consider this example of his style: "A conceptualization of Nazism as a political religion, finally, is not only purely descriptive but also too sweeping to be of much help; it tells us very little about how Nazism worked, or what the nature of its appeal was to different groups in German society." This is a very valuable insight, but what does "purely descriptive" mean? Two of the parts of this book bear the titles "The Mobilization of the Spirit" and "Converting the Soul"; but are spirit and soul separate and distinguishable essences?
Another oddity of this book is Evans''s rendering of German titles and names into English, an unnecessary and inaccurate practice; for example, the Nazis'' daily newspaper, the infamous Völkischer Beobachter, appears here as the Racial Observer. But völkisch means the people''s or popular, not racial. There are also some errors. He writes that in March 1936, the French were "potentially able to enforce Germany''s obligation [under the Versailles treaty] by marching across the Rhine and occupying the country''s biggest industrial region, the Ruhr." No; they were neither "potentially" nor actually able to do so.
But all in all, this book is a definite contribution to the history of National Socialist Germany, with a mass of useful (and some new) materials. Definite, not definitive--because history, unlike law, is an unending process: A "definitive" history does not and cannot exist.
Reviewed by John Lukacs Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Bookmarks Magazine Fans of William Shirer''s classic Rise and Fall of the Third Reich might be disappointed by Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans''s ongoing history of Nazi power. This second volume is not a gripping yarn of Hitler''s cult of personality but an evenhanded, intensively researched, synthesized history. That said, it''s no stuffy academic tome; the New York Times Book Review dubs Evans an "Heir to a British tradition of dons who write engagingly for a broad public." A few reviewers take aesthetic umbrage at the author''s use of English words for well-known German terms like Führer and Mein Kampf, and the Washington Post picks at perceived inconsistencies in Evans''s story. Otherwise, reviewers place Evans''s work atop the ever-expanding heap of World War II histories.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips Nelson Media, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist This second of Evans'' three-volume history of the Nazis examines the consolidation of the regime and the active support or passive acquiescence it received in pursuing its aims up to its invasion of Poland. The figure of Hitler intrudes according to his interventions in one sphere or another, for Evans organizes the material topically, by way of estimating how in thrall Germany was to the Nazi utopia of compulsory racial engineering. Its prerequisite was soc-iety-wide terror, on which played the regime''s propaganda. This twin assault on society, Evans emphasizes, must be kept in mind when considering any aspect of the Nazi nightmare, particularly the perplexity common to general readers and historians about why Germans went along with the Nazis. Obviously there was much allegiance, particularly among youth, but there was also a marked lack of enthusiasm among workers, conservatives, the religious, and the army. But, as Evans frequently observes, whatever opposition stirred in these circles was both tardy and immobilized by Hitler''s lawless ruthlessness. Examining the populace more than the dictator, Evans expertly surveys Nazidom''s precepts and criminality. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Kirkus Reviews, starred review, August 1, 2005 A superb account of the growth and day-to-day functioning of the Nazi state.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. The Economist, October 29-November 4, 2005 Mr. Evans''s magisterial study should be on our shelves for a long time to come.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
| 出版社 | Penguin |
|---|---|
| 作者 | Richard J. Evans |