The Third Reich at War

Starred review from January 5, 2009
Describing the Third Reich from the height of its power to its collapse, Evans concludes the masterful trilogy that began with The Coming of the Third Reich
and The Third Reich in Power
. As in those works, Evans demonstrates a fluent style and a sweeping grasp of the Third Reich’s history and of the enormous historical literature. The account is peppered with insightful anecdotes drawn from diaries, letters and speeches. What comes across most clearly is the supreme arrogance of the Nazis and the utterly rapacious character of their rule. Evans gives the Holocaust the centrality it deserves, while also depicting effectively the suffering of Poles and many others under Nazi domination. Evans offers a nuanced picture of the lives of Germans, but ultimately, he suggests, the Nazis’ racial ideology thoroughly corrupted German society. Evans narrates the Reich’s end in gripping fashion as the Allies closed in on Germany. Evans’s fellow historians as well as a broader public will read this work, not quite with pleasure, for there is little joy in this story, but with admiration for the author’s narrative powers. Illus., maps.

January 15, 2009
In this final volume in a history of Nazi Germany, Evans (modern history, Cambridge Univ.; "The Third Reich in Power") focuses on the war years and skillfully moves from analyzing grand strategy to the war's local impact. Interestingly, even during the war Hitler maintained his propensity for having subordinates fight one another for supremacy rather than developing an efficient governmental system. By 1942 Hitler, confident in his military genius and disgusted with his generals, appointed himself commander in chief of the Wehrmacht, necessitating an entirely new management style for a man whose prewar administrative skills were at best lackadaisical. Hitler's micro-management of military affairs, down to the tactical level, contributed to later military disasters. Evans, however, does not accept the postwar myth that Germany's war effort was better organized by its generals. Some of the most compelling sections detail how the Nazi conquest derailed the moral compass of so many Europeans. Local populationsin Croatia, for exampleenthusiastically adopted Nazi methods of ethnic cleansing to create racial utopias, demonstrating that you cannot separate the war from Nazi racial ideology. Perhaps the best of an impressive series, this book is recommended for all libraries.Frederic Krome, University of Cincinnati Clermont Coll.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2009
Evans is a professor of modern history at Cambridge University. This is the final volume in his trilogy that traces the history of the Third Reich. Like the earlier volumes, this is a massive, comprehensive, yet easily readable and engrossing chronicle. It is also a chilling and often downright sickening account of savagery on a gigantic scale. This is more than a military history, although Evans does an excellent job of explaining the strategies, tactics, and movement of huge armies and naval forces. What makes this account extraordinary are the descriptions of the effects of this war on the lives of ordinary people, both German and non-German. Of course, the efforts to exterminate European Jews are emphasized, and Evans illustrates not merely the horrors of the death camps but the cold, heartless brutality of the special SS units as they hunted down and slaughtered Jews, Poles, Russians, and anyone perceived as threats as the Wehrmachtmoved east. As Hitler repeatedly proclaimed, this was a merciless war, and Evans has brilliantly recounted how it was waged.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)