Product Description

Michael Burleigh sets Nazi Germany in a European context, showing how the Third Reich's abandonment of liberal democracy, decency and tolerance was widespread in the Europe of the period. He seeks to show how a radical, pseudo-religious movement led by an oddity with dazzling demagogic talents, seemed to offer salvation to a Germany exhausted by war, depression and galloping inflation. It was the politics of faith and Burleigh shows the consequences of the demise of the rule of law in favour of state authorized terror and brutality. The underlying premise of the book is that there are good and bad individuals, not good and bad nations. It recreates the complexities of life under a totalitarian dictatorship, which for four years ruled most of Europe, and rejects the notion that the Germans were either uniquely evil or uniquely uncivilized.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45534 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 965 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Humans have a fascination with evil. We long to identify it, quantify it and understand it. To this end, newspapers frequently splash photographs of murderers with the caption, "The face of evil." Heading most lists of the 20th-century's most evil people would be Adolf Hitler but, as Michael Burleigh's tour de force makes clear, evil is not always as cut and dried as we would like. The Nazis could not have come to power and committed Germany to a policy of war and genocide without the tacit consent of the German people. This makes Germany as a whole responsible for the crimes committed in its name, but it is clearly wrong to label each and every German as evil. Through his painstaking research and direct prose, Burleigh slowly builds up a picture of a people desperate for identity and economic prosperity who, bit by bit, closed off their conscience as the price of their dreams. There was no one cathartic moment when Germany, under the Third Reich, lapsed from goodness into badness; rather there was an incremental realignment of a collective morality. Burleigh's explanation of this phenomenon is so simple and yet so obviously right, that you can only wonder that it hadn't become the generally accepted currency years back. Instead of viewing Nazi Germany in purely social, political and economic terms--though he doesn't ignore these spheres --Burleigh wraps them all into a picture of a country gripped in a religious, messianic fervour and that which had previously felt inexplicable suddenly seems crystal clear. If you want the nitty-gritty details of the Second World War and the genocide, then they are here, as well, if not better, retold than many of the other histories of this period. But it's Burleigh's take on the ordinary people of Germany that makes this book so special. Above all, with similar genocidal wars currently being fought in Kosovo, Rwanda and Iraq, it makes you think, "Would I be able to resist becoming complicit in such regimes?" This is a must for every 20th-century historian.--John Crace

Review
Michael Burleigh's study of the Nazi phenomenon was the most important book I have read this year. It made me change my mind, which is no mean feat. Or at least it helped me change a frame of mind that tended to a lazy stereotyping on the topic of the Third Reich. In one volume no heftier than it has to be, the author has finally brought unity to a period previously fragmented by professional historians of the 20th century beyond any laypersons overview. In measured language, Burleigh begins with he roots of Nazism in national humiliation and defeat; he takes us through the years of Germany's undeniable vigour, and to its end and post-45 rehabilitation. By showing the movement as a messianic political cause, a storm-trooping parody of the Wagnerian romance, Burleigh helped me understand for the first time how the runt, Adolf Hitler, was able to put himself in place as the hero of his nation. To be non-judgmental about the events of that period requires restraint and intellectual probity. Except for a faint subliminal revulsion that I sensed occasionally, particularly when Himmler was in evidence, Burleigh keeps his cool. He distinguished the Holocaust from subsequent examples of the monstrosity we now call 'ethnic cleansing' not only for its precise engineering and organisation, but also because it was undertaken as a comprehensive and existential battle against Jews everywhere. The Third Reich is gripping and comprehensive. At last, the seminal book for those of us who never want to see another film or read another word about World War II and the Nazis. (Kirkus UK)

From the Publisher
'This is a monumental book’ - Richard Overy, Sunday Telegraph

'If I had to recommend one book on the Third Reich, this would be it’ - Daniel Johnson, Daily Telegraph

'It is a breathtaking achievement, at once broader and deeper than any other single volume ever published on the subject. Indeed I would go further: it is the product of authentic historical genius’ - Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times

'Happily, Michael Burleigh now fills that bibliographical gap, with a readable and highly knowledgeable account of that ghastly period. You will never be bored by this extraordinary book’ - Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday