The whole of modern German history has been a nostalgic and mad attempt at regaining the old glories of the Holy Roman Reich which was also called the 'Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation'. This was soon ended by the Napoleonic Wars that threw Germany into confusion and made it a faction of warring states. Advocacy of a German nation began to become an important political force in response to the invasion of German territories by France under Napoleon. And the more distant Germany grew from that state, the more they remembered the First Reich as the ideal state when Germany was superior and dreamed of returning to these glory days. What made this turnaround possible was the fact that parliamentary government no longer functioned in Germany. The country was run by Presidential decree, exercised through an appointed Chancellor. Hindenburg, in his 80s and after 7 years as President, was tired and declining. He never considered democratic alternatives. There was no effective leadership from the more moderate parties. I read a lot about Germany and WWII, so I was really looking forward to this book! I also wrote my undergrad thesis on this time period, so I am very interested in the subject. But this book just fell flat for me.

The Coming of the Third Reich - Richard J. Evans - Google Books The Coming of the Third Reich - Richard J. Evans - Google Books

Sir Richard J Evans writes in his opening paragraph that this book is not aimed at the expert seeking groundbreaking theory into the rise of the Third Reich. What he says is it is a book which focuses on the Nazis as a whole as they gain power in the Weimar Republic. He states he hopes that the newcomer will gain their understanding and the learned scholar will hopefully gain snippets of new information. I place myself in between both, although a student of history my degree did not focus on 1920-30s Germany. I can say that this is a good book, not mind blowing or revolutionary, but solid. As the Nazi party grew, Hitler fueled by his hatred for the government and inspired by Mussolini, organized a coup or a "Putsch" to seize power and was completely thwarted and thrown into jail. This convinced him and the party that they have to keep up appearances of legality and come to power through the democratic system itself. A brilliant synthesis of German history, enumerating and elucidating the social, political, and cultural trends that made the rise of Nazism possible. The clearest and most gripping account I've read of German life before and during the rise of the Nazis." —A. S Byatt, Times Literary Supplement Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich is an enormous work of synthesis—knowledgable and reliable.”— Mark Mazower, New York Times Book ReviewNarrative history fell out of fashion for many years in the 1970s and 1980s, as historians everywhere focused on analytical approaches derived mainly from the social sciences. But a variety of recent, large-scale narrative histories have shown that it can be done without sacrificing analytical rigour or explanatory power.” For example, Evans totally buys the story that a Dutch Communist named Lubbe was the sole perpetrator of the Reichstag fire ... Evans: Lubbe confessed to starting the fire ... it was confirmed by subsequent investigation that he had worked alone ... and does not mention a contemporaneous memorandum by Ernst Oberfohren (published a few days before he committed suicide or was murdered) that Joseph Goebbels thought up the idea of burning down the Reichstag and that Hermann Goering supervised the actual burning. Nothing in this book is new, as the author, Richard Evans, freely admits. This is a “broad, general, large-scale history of Nazi Germany.” It is a chronological history, not a cultural examination, much less a view of Germany through the lens of the forgotten common man or some such unoriginal and unhelpful frame. Those looking for a revisionist take on this period of history should go elsewhere. In this book, the same bad people do the same bad things that anyone who has read about this period already knows about. The emphasis, perhaps, is more on violence than on political maneuverings, but that’s hardly revisionist. Hitler was finally sworn in as Reich chancellor and that was kind of the beginning of the end. He used the emergency powers of the republic to effectively seize control of the government and begin a form of martial law. With his paramilitary groups, the brown shirts, SS, storm troopers all were well organized and ready to seize the day. All it took was the Reichstag Fire, which the author agrees was a lone-wolf communist terrorist who started it. The Reichstag Fire decree gave Hitler the excuse he needed to expunge the political landscape of all his political enemies. And the enemies were many: marxist, communists, Catholics, intellectuals, musicians, artists, homosexuals, transexuals, pacifists, scientists and the Jews. The Dachau camp was started early on as a place to banish Nazi political enemies. Somewhere by 1933, Germany became a true one party state. It happened legally and with the consent of a large part of the population, probably around 35%. Social democrats and communists were arrested, tortured and murdered. The Nazi paramilitary had free reign to wreak terror and violence literally everywhere and they did so with impunity. The judiciary became highly Nazi sympathetic. Under the guise of fighting “cultural bolshevism”, book burnings became routine and eventually the burning of bodies became mundane.

The Third Reich Trilogy - Wikipedia

This pedestrian work is by far the weakest volume in Richard Evan's otherwise excellent trilogy on the Reich. I am giving it a two star rating because Evans in his Preface has the gall to assure the reader that it is superior to William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Evans writes: "Shirer's book was universally panned by historians. ... Shirer's book cannot really deliver a history of Nazi Germany that meets the demands of the early twenty-first -century reader." This is hubris indeed on the part of Evans whose book in fact makes no contribution to our understanding of the horrific Third Reich.But I think that the eternal puzzles posed by any essentially metaphysical or moral question always seem to present “answers” that are so enigmatic, contradictory, and frightening that one is frequently left with a feeling of deep dissatisfaction, fear, and confusion. That, unfortunately, is my problem here. However - and it is a huge however - I am finding too many examples where statements are made by Evans without any footnotes, and also omissions of "inconvenient evidence" which contradicts his conclusions.

THE COMING OF THE THIRD REICH | Kirkus Reviews THE COMING OF THE THIRD REICH | Kirkus Reviews

My reading experience might have been salvaged by particularly graceful writing. The best I can say on that topic is that this was easier to read than Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich: A New History. Okay, that’s not entirely justified. I should say that Evans is a mostly-unobtrusive writer. This is the kind of book that could’ve been written by anyone. Well, almost. I was annoyed with Evans’ tic of interjecting clauses into every other sentence. After his 1,000th use of “indeed” to break up a sentence, I started to wonder if he had some kind of bet going with his publisher. Enter the rise of Hitler who came to prominence not because he was an eloquent speaker, he was a masterful propagandist. The Nazi party was still on the fringe but started to consolidate into an ethos that consisted of anti-establishment, anti-republic, anti-democratic, anti-semetic, anti-marxists, and anti-communist. They were the party of protest. They were also a contortionist party, crafting rhetoric to meet and galvanize its audience. It ultimately was a party that stood for very little principle other than achieving power. They were a party of deep nihilism. They even borrowed socialist rhetoric and at one point called themselves nationalist socialists. And in a way they were a brand of socialism although a highly ethnically pure and ultra-nationalist version of socialism that was very different from Marxism and communism then and now. I, for one, have many times puzzled over the moral and philosophical quandaries presented by the existence and early “success” of the Nazis in 20th century Germany. The Germans that produced Brecht and Kant, Goethe and Hesse, Beethoven and Bach also produced and developed Hitler and the Nazis and Buchenwald and Auschwitz. I’d hoped that a well-written and well-documented history, such as this book, would help me to better understand questions that are, after all, more metaphysical, ontological, and moral--than historical.the arrogant assumptions by the military and some industrialists that Hitler could be used but also controlled ... Schleicher: if Hitler establishes a dictatorship in Germany, the army will be the dictatorship within the dictatorship ... Papen: within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he'll squeak The inability to form a majority government lead to Hindenburg inviting Hitler to be the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The party still had no political majority and Hitler was intended to be only a rubber stamp. But then came the famous Reichstag Fire Decree, which was the response to the parliament being set on fire by an alleged communist party member. this gave Hitler an excuse to allege a Communist Plot against Germany and suspend basic rights and undertake a violent suppression of the Communist party, which was a much bigger party than the nazis in terms of parliamentary representatives. He then called for a re-election. With the Communist Party effectively suppressed, Nazis were able to gain a majority vote but was still short of the 51% required for an absolute majority.