[.ca] Third Reich In Power (ISBN 0143037900)

Essential:
This is the second volume of a 3 volume history of the Third Reich. As with the first volume, this is a substantial work of synthesis of the enormous literature about the Third Reich. Evans has aimed at producing a work that can be read usefully by scholars and by the general reading public. Evans has largely succeeded by producing a massively documented and very well written book. Evans has also made the book more accessible by avoiding a strictly chronological approach. He covers a series of topics related to the social and economic history of the Reich and concludes with foreign policy and the outbreak of war. Reflecting his prior research interests, the sections on the social history and structure of the Third Reich are excellent. The final section, covering foreign policy and diplomacy, is less thorough, though this is a twice told tale. Several unifying features emerge. One is the Nazi intent to reshape German, indeed European, society along the lines envisioned by their peculiar Social Darwinist ideals. The second is the success of the Nazi state in 'coordinating' almost all the institutions of German life with their ideology. A third is the primacy of Hitler's decisions. A final is the obsessive goal of an aggressive war to conquer Eastern Europe, which often distorted other Nazi social and economic policies. On completion, this trilogy will be a standard reference work for this period. (...)