This second book in the series goes from 1933 - when Hitler assumed power - to September 1939 at the onset of the Second World War II. The author shows how Hitler manipulated the system, seizing power in an ever widening grasp. He then began to infiltrate and subvert every aspect of German society. Propaganda stepped up. Government from local neighborhood groups to the top of the Reich heap were controlled and monitored. Hitler's feared henchmen were the Brownshirts and the SS. At first, the Brownshirts under Roehm were far more powerful and threatening than the SS. But fearing Ernest Roehm's ambitions, Hitler and Himmler waylaid him to consolidate their hold on power. Throughout this period, both groups used terror against political opponents and then the Jews. Hitler's focus was war - pure and simple - girding the Germanic nation for the future onslaught against the world. This book is a powerful and meticulous history of this horrible period and well worth the investment in time and money for those interested in this history.

Evans' project - to write a comprehensive history of the Nazi Germany state from its beginnings to its bitter end - probably is one of the best known in this field of history in recent years. And it seems that he has succeeded, providing two both historically valuable and rather easy to read books, and I hope that the upcoming third book will follow the trail.

This second book in the series goes from 1933 - when Hitler assumed power - to September 1939 at the onset of the Second World War II. The author shows how Hitler manipulated the system, seizing power in an ever widening grasp. He then began to infiltrate and subvert every aspect of German society. Propaganda stepped up. Government from local neighborhood groups to the top of the Reich heap were controlled and monitored. Hitler's feared henchmen were the Brownshirts and the SS. At first, the Brownshirts under Roehm were far more powerful and threatening than the SS. But fearing Ernest Roehm's ambitions, Hitler and Himmler waylaid him to consolidate their hold on power. Throughout this period, both groups used terror against political opponents and then the Jews. Hitler's focus was war - pure and simple - girding the Germanic nation for the future onslaught against the world. This book is a powerful and meticulous history of this horrible period and well worth the investment in time and money for those interested in this history.

In the second part of the said three volume history of the Third Reich, Mr. Richard Evans enters the territory of William L. Shirer. He joins a rather august group of chronicilers of the subject of the Third Reich in the English language.
I'll make this review short and sweet. Mr. Evans explains the complete mindset of Adolph Hitler.
1. The progressive Jewish genocide pogroms.
2. The complete change of Art culture according to the tastes of Adolph Hitler.
3. The complete ruin of intellectual activities in all German pedagogical institutions.
In short a Germany as seen through the eyes of a Madman. In this study we also see Adolph Hitler's seduction of the Prussian military elite. The bully conquering of the Sudentenland, Czecho-Slovakia and Austria. As Winston Churchill noted this was "The Gathering Storm".
I highly recommend this book as a popular historical masterpiece. Read it and learn! I'm looking forward to Mr. Evans take of the Second World War in Europe.

I came to this a few weeks after reading William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." When complete, Evans's three-volume history will be much longer, and it will benefit from an additional four decades of historical research that wasn't available to Shirer. Already it is being hailed as "the definitive English-language account." But there are losses as well, and they aren't petty. For example, Evans gives a clearer picture of what the average German thought and did in the 1930s, even though Shirer was actually there and Evans wasn't. Evans also has more to say on the "coordination" (i.e., Nazification) of everyday life. But for foreign policy -- Hitler's plans for war, his conversations with his generals, his negotiations with Mussolini and his son-in-law, the diplomacy leading up to Austria and Czechoslavakia's annexation, the pact with Russia, and the invasion of Poland -- Shirer is much more informative, despite being 40 years out of date.

This is the second of three volumes of what is shaping up to be the definitive history of the Third Reich. In the first volume, "The Coming of the Third Reich," (also reviewed on Amazon) the author, a distinguished Cambridge University historian, artfully explained how the Nazis rose from a humble position (to say the least) to grab control of Germany. This volume focuses upon the period between the acquisition of power and the launching of the Second World War, which is the subject of the concluding volume yet to come. The central theme of this volume is how the Nazis consolidated their power and exerted control throughout Germany from roughly 1933 until 1939 and the invasion of Poland. Topics include the creation of the "police state"; exerting domination over public discussion and publications, including the press; and the struggle with the Catholic church and exercising control over religious institutions. A most interesting chapter deals with "prosperity and plunder," which reflects some recent research arguing that the financial dimensions of Nazism (including confiscation of Jewish property) effectively induced mass support by providing financial goodies to the population. Whether the Nazis delivered on their promises to the middle and lower classes is the topic of another section of the book. The goal of attaining a "racial utopia" by means of sterilization, driving Jewish people out of the country, and the early beginnings of concentration camps is also discussed. The final section deals with the movement toward war, including recovery of the Sudetenland, the murder of Czechslovakia, and the development of German military power despite the ineffectual limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.



As usual, the author is extremely thorough in his research and narrative. I know some critics believe he goes into too much depth, but one is free to skim the sections that do not interest the reader. At 800 pages, including extensive notes, this is a big book--but indeed so is the topic. One feature that appears in this volume is that Evans focuses upon some individuals in his narrative and shows the impact of Nazi power upon them and their reactions. These include one of the most important sources for understanding this period from the perspective of a single oppressed individual, the diaries of Victor Klemperer (also reviewed on Amazon). It is simply engrossing to see how the Nazis managed to exert control over virtually every institution and group in Germany through quite masterful manipulation. Simply the superior available source on this topic.

A great continuation from Evans' earlier book, "The Coming of the Third Reich", and a much longer one. Evans' focus here, as in the previous book, is primarily on the social atmosphere within Germany. You won't find detailed studies of Nazi personalities, or intricate chronologies of events leading up to the war. Instead, the book offers a bounty of anecdotes and statistics on many aspects of life inside Germany from 1933 to 1939, focusing on how the Nazis tried to rebuild the human soul and mind through propaganda, music, architecture, art, education, and increasingly as the years went by, overt violence.



It's hard for me as a layman to give a book like this a rating. Is the book accurate in its portrayal of Nazi society? You'd need an awful lot of knowledge to answer that question, knowledge that I, as relatively widely-read on the subject as I am, don't have. But the book certainly is engaging and fascinating, and the author knows how to relate anecdotes in a memorable way. Considering its length, I retained a lot of detail when I was finished, instead of remembering mostly a large blur as I do with so many very-long tomes.



I'm really looking forward to the third volume, and I can only hope that Evans will then decide to write about the postwar Germanies.

Evans does another masterful job in presenting the history of the Third Reich. This books tracks the ways in which the Nazi's shored up their power domestically and the mobilization towards war. The end of the book does cover some of the foreign policy considerations but as always it is the domestic scene where the research really shines. From looking at the anti-Semitism to the centralization of police there is a voluminous amount of information here. The book is very well written and if there is any fault it is that you get almost too bogged down in the information. If you are just starting to look at the Nazi regime a classical book such as William Shrier's might serve you better but for those who really want to understand how the Nazi's transformed Germany this cannot be beat.

It would be difficult to add anything new to the many excellent reviews of "The Third Reich in Power" that are already posted here. But I must briefly echo the praises for this monumental work. It should be required reading for all conscientious citizens, and especially for all politicians, as a cautionary tale of how governments that operate without "checks and balances" can destroy the very societies that put them in power.

The detailed story of how the Nazi leaders of the Third Reich transformed Germany between their assumption of power in 1933 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939 is compelling reading of the highest standard. During that period, the Nazis by decree imposed their political, economic and racial agendas on virtually every aspect of German society--literature, art, music, education, broadcasting, retail sales, land ownership, architecture, banking, recreation, law enforcement, etc. The Nazi's programs affected the everyday lives of EVERY German citizen to a greater or lesser degree.

Mr. Evans' readable, matter-of-fact style, and his reliance on supporting data and statistics from the historical record, make "The Third Reich in Power" perhaps the most valuable work yet written on the subject. While its 700+ pages may at first seem daunting, it is well worth the effort to read. You will definitely come away from the experience with a better understanding of how prejudice, inflexibility, demagoguery and unrestrained nationalism inexorably led to World War II, and of the threat that such attitudes continue to pose to the world today. I give it the highest possible recommendation.

Insightful, well documented, and very powerful! This book is a wonderful primer on the type of society the Nazis created, the lengths that they went to control their people, and the measures used to create the 3rd Reich.

"The Third Reich in Power" is the second part of Richard J. Evans's projected trilogy on the Nazi Dictatorship. The first book, "The Coming of the Third Reich", narrated German history since Bismarck, explaining how the various elements of what we know as Nazism grew during the 19th century, intensified as a result of Germany's defeat during the Great War, and then rose to power following the Great Depression and the inept political leadership of both the traditional right and left.

"The Third Reich in Power" picks up where the previous volume has left. Hitler's regime is now in power, but it is not in control. Even at their prime, the Nazis never won a majority of the popular vote. Most Germans had at best a partial allegiance of the regime, undermined (at least in Nazi eyes) by their association with the Churches or the trade unions. Although competing political parties where quickly outlawed, the former Social Democrats and Communists were no fans of the regime, and the Conservative circle around President Hindenburg had allowed Hitler to assume the chancellery of Germany, but had expected full well to remain in control. Pockets of -potential- resistance existed in the Universities and the armed forces, and even inside the Nazi Sturmabteilung (better known as the SA). And of course, there were the Jews, the mythical, eternal enemies.

Most of the volume details how the Nazi state dealt with the challenges of winning over the German population. The means included propaganda, control of the media, Arts and Press, Nazified education system, popular programs of Social redistribution such as Strength Through Joy, a program offering subsidized cultural and social events for the people, an economic recovery and the prestige won through the regime's foreign policies triumphs. But they also included darker means - concentration camps and secret police, military purges, racial laws and even Pogroms.

Evans divides his book to theme based chapters, one for the Arts and the Press, one for Religion and Education, and one each exploring the Police State, the Economy, the Racial Laws, and Foreign Policy. As in his previous volumes, Evans manages to 'hit' all the best known items in the Third Reich. So we encounter Leni Riefenstahl directing "The Triumph of the Will", Eichmann directing the Aryanization of Jews, The Catholic Anti-Nazi encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, and Martin Neimuller's poem "First they came..."

Evan's narrative is best when he manages to demonstrate the effects the Nazi regime had over the lives of simple people. The travails of best selling author Rudolf Ditzen, for example, are page turning, and demonstrate the difficulty of living under Germany's dictatorship even if one was neither a political opponent nor a handicapped nor a Jew (pp. 149-152).

As in the previous volume, Evans's thoroughness as a researcher is sometimes at odds with his Powers as story teller, and we are sometimes subjected to fatiguing details of disciplines in Nazi Prisons or Bureaucratic infighting. Furthermore, some of the best parts are narratives from fairly well known German diarists, such as Jewish Literature Professor Victor Klemperer and League of German Girls activist Melita Maschmann.

Unfortunately, in my view, Evans mostly spares the reader the details of scholarship controversy. Only the footnotes contain hints of controversy regarding Nazi influence in Universities, the Fuhrer's involvement in the regime, and the Nazi's status as "Hitler's Willing Executioners". The most interesting question of the Nazi economic recovery, whether or not the Nazis pursued a progressive Keynesian recovery program, is hinted to but not developed enough.

The major insight I gained from "The Third Reich in Power" was the centrality of Hitler's projected eventual European War on the Third Reich. Everything in Nazi Germany was subordinate to the needs of Rearmament, and Hitler risked endangering the economic recovery and the quest for Autarky, and even the pace of the Anti-Jewish persecution, in order to achieve readiness.

And the War Came... the culmination of the Nazi Project, the fight for Lebensraum and eventual world domination, occurred when Britain had finally abandoned its policy of Appeasement and declared War on Germany, following Hitler's invasion of Poland. Although the German people were far from enthusiastic about the War, they had followed their leader, and they had now answered to his call. Everything the Nazi Regime had worked for was set to come during the War: the Solution of the Nation's perceived need for Space and Resources, the regaining of the lost position of Germany as the World Leader, and the solution, as last final, the Jewish Problem. But Evans's account stops now, and we must patiently wait for his last volume, "The Third Reich at War"