Joshie's Reviews > The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany

"The death of democracy in Germany was part of a much broader European pattern in the interwar years; but it also had very specific roots in German history and drew on ideas that were part of a very specific German tradition."

In this sweeping and arching chronicle of history, Richard J. Evans examines every nook and cranny of German society and culture from the looming spectre of the Bismarckian era to the fall of the Weimar Republic in delineating the causes of the rise of The Third Reich. Indeed, it also takes into account the turmoil, the overall attitude prevalent across the European continent when providing complicated answers to the perhaps most boggling and important questions of the 20th century: why did no one stop the Nazi Regime? Why did the German population engage in such silent acquiescence?

With a myriad of cultural anxieties, from the threat of Communism to the perceived collapse of the traditional family due to the First Wave Feminist movement to the perceived unfairness of the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles to modernism gaining traction across art, literature, and cinema to the 1929 hyperinflation to the Great Depression era, and most of all the 'stabbed-in-the-back' myth after Germany's defeat in the First World War, and conspiracy theories of Jewish domination, Evans never leaves a stone unturned with his lucid narrative-style, where every section is gripping. No reason can be attributed as the single cause of Nazi Germany's seizure of power. Rather, several historical incidents, a tensed political ambience, etc., etc., each of them helped form its inception and strengthen its hold on the already-feeble Weimar Republic. History, unsurprisingly, is also full of complications and contradictions. And interspersed here and there are excerpts from diaries of German citizens, which share a glimpse of both the panic and fanaticism circulating across the masses. The steadily worsening state of every area of German society, with the brandishing of racial hierarchy and distorted Social Darwinism, in the last chapters was a terrifying read. Absolutely accessible for people who has little to limited knowledge on one of the darkest periods in history, The Coming of the Third Reich is an undeniably definitive work.

Since this is only the first volume, I anticipate the next two with eagerness.

(4 ½ out of 5)