Publisher's Weekly Review
On March 30, 1933, two months after Hitler achieved power, Paul Nikolaus, a Berlin cabaret comedian, wrote disconsolately, "For once, no joke. I am taking my own life.... [U]nfortunately I have fallen in love with my Fatherland. I cannot live in these times." How Germans could remain in love with their fatherland under Nazism and even contribute willingly to its horrific extremism is the subject of Cambridge historian Evans's gripping if overwhelmingly detailed study, the first of three projected volumes. Readers watch a great and historic culture grow grotesquely warped from within, until, in 1933, a dictatorial state was imposed upon the ruins of the Weimar republic. A host of shrill demagogues had, in the preceding decades, become missionaries to an uneasy coalition of the discontented, eager to subvert Germany's democratic institutions. This account contrasts with oversimplified diagnoses of how Nazism succeeded in taking possession of the German psyche. Evans asserts that Hitler's manipulative charisma required massive dissatisfaction and resentment available to be exploited. Nazism found convenient scapegoats in historic anti-Semitism, the shame of an imposed peace after WWI and the weakness of an unstable government alien to the disciplined German past. Although there have been significant recent studies of Hitler and his regime, like Ian Kershaw's brilliant two volumes, Evans (In Hitler's Shadow, etc.) broadens the historic perspective to demythologize how morbidly fertile the years before WWI were as an incubator for Hitler. 31 illus., 18 maps. (Feb. 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A brilliant synthesis of German history, enumerating and elucidating the social, political, and cultural trends that made the rise of Nazism possible. But by no means inevitable, writes Evans (History/Cambridge Univ.; In Defense of History, 1999, etc.); indeed, many of the material and cultural conditions for the rise of a regime that "would make a systematic attempt to kill all the Jews of Europe and kill nearly six million in the process" were more pronounced in France and Russia than in Germany. Yet, he notes, "Nazism, while far from being the unavoidable outcome of the course of German history, certainly did draw for it success on political and ideological traditions and developments that were specifically German in their nature." Some of those traditions arose during the reign of Otto von Bismarck, who, in unifying Germany, universalized military service and "saw to it that the army was virtually a state within a state," answerable to a strong leader alone. Others welled up from Social Darwinist thinkers who believed that the fittest should survive and the weakest be eliminated, thus improving racial stocks and building supermen. The early Nazis found comfort in the example of Weimar leader Paul von Hindenburg, who "had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from their enemies"; they found more comfort in the brutal example of the Russian Revolution and the Leninist state, which threatened to spill over into Germany and drove many a middle-class man and woman far to the right. All these strains came together such that there was "substantial overlap between the Nazis' ideology and that of the conservatives [and] even, to a considerable extent, that of German liberals"--opening the door to the Nazi ascendancy while offering hope to many Germans of the time that their country's future would be one "in which class antagonisms and party-political squabbles would be overcome" and prosperity and national pride restored. A peerless work, the first of a projected three volumes. Of immense importance to general readers--and even some specialists--seeking to understand the origins of the Nazi regime. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This is the first volume in a projected three-volume history of Nazi Germany. Cambridge history professor Evans states clearly that this is a work aimed at general readers who hope to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of the course and causes of the Nazi rise to power. Although he breaks no new ground, Evans has written a highly readable and comprehensive account. Thankfully, he does not fall into the trap of looking for proto-Nazis as far back as Luther; however, Evans credibly asserts that the roots of National Socialism can be uncovered in the Germany of Bismarck, which had all of the stresses and tensions of a rapidly modernizing society. While acknowledging that strains of virulent nationalism and anti-Semitism were prevalent in other European nations, Evans shows that these tendencies combined with other vulnerabilities in Germany in an especially volatile mix. This is a first-rate narrative history that informs and educates and may inspire readers to delve even deeper into the subject. --Jay Freeman Copyright 2004 Booklist
Choice Review
As his eight monographs, four edited volumes, and five articles in this book's bibliography demonstrate, Evans (Cambridge) is a prolific author. But this is only a partial list of his works on the broad subject of 19th- and early 20th-century Germany, although it does display the diversity of his subjects, which range from feminism to cholera to deviants and outcasts to historiography. Thus, Evans brings a wide background to this work, the first volume of a planned trilogy that begins with Germany's unification and continues to the summer of 1933, when the Nazis established a one-party dictatorship. The second and third volumes will cover the years 1933-1939 and 1939-1945, respectively. For a topic rent with varied and strongly held scholarly positions, Evans manages to present the alternatives and his own conclusions with remarkable charity and clarity, and, in the process, shows that he has a thorough knowledge of the secondary literature that forms the basis for his interpretation. His emphasis on violence as the method and process by which the Nazis gained power is perhaps his unique contribution to the ongoing discussion of how it happened. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. H. D. Andrews emeritus, Towson University
Library Journal Review
Do we really need another history of the Third Reich? Evans (history, Cambridge Univ.; Lying About Hitler) answers that while studies of Nazism have proliferated, what is lacking is a narrative and analytical history directed at the general reader. His projected trilogy aims to provide just that. This impressive first volume covers the period from the founding of modern Germany (1871) through Hitler's coming to power (1933). Evans argues that to regard Hitler's rise as the logical by-product of a fundamental flaw in the German character often requires bending evidence for this thesis from disparate events and themes throughout German history. Although Evans does not regard Nazism as inevitable, he does not lose sight of the myriad anti-Semitic movements that populated the German landscape, along with the various forces-militarism, socialism, capitalism-vying for influence in German society. Germany was an industrial giant by 1914, yet paradoxically its economic success concealed the fact that it had not yet completed the process of nation building. Evans argues that during the crisis of 1933, the leaders of the Weimar republic assumed that the Nazis had at least "a minimal willingness to abide by the rules of democratic politics." Hitler, however, was adept at using democratic institutions, while planning their destruction. Recommended for all libraries.-Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
