The Oxford Illustrated History Of The Third Reich

A thought-provoking assessment and documentation of one of the most terrible periods in history - the rise and fall of the Nazi Party.

World War Two was the most devastating conflict in recorded human history. It was both global in extent and total in character. It has understandably left a long and dark shadow across the decades. Yet it is three generations since hostilities formally ended in 1945 and the conflict is now a lived memory for only a few. And this growing distance in time has allowed historians to think differently about how to describe it, how to explain its course, and what subjects to focus on when considering the wartime experience. For instance, as World War Two recedes ever further into the past, even a question as apparently basic as when it began and ended becomes less certain. Was it 1939, when the war in Europe began? Or the summer of 1941, with the beginning of Hitler's war against the Soviet Union? Or did it become truly global only when the Japanese brought the USA into the war at the end of 1941? And what of the long conflict in East Asia, beginning with the Japanese aggression in China in the early 1930s and only ending with the triumph of the Chinese Communists in 1949? In The Oxford Illustrated History of World War Two a team of leading historians re-assesses the conflict for a new generation, exploring the course of the war not just in terms of the Allied response but also from the viewpoint of the Axis aggressor states. Under Richard Overy's expert editorial guidance, the contributions take us from the genesis of war, through the action in the major theatres of conflict by land, sea, and air, to assessments of fighting power and military and technical innovation, the economics of total war, the culture and propaganda of war, and the experience of war (and genocide) for both combatants and civilians, concluding with an account of the transition from World War to Cold War in the late 1940s. Together, they provide a stimulating and thought-provoking new interpretation of one of the most terrible and fascinating episodes in world history.

At age thirty in 1919, Adolf Hitler had no accomplishments. He was a rootless loner, a corporal in a shattered army, without money or prospects. A little more than twenty years later, in autumn 1941, he directed his dynamic forces against the Soviet Union, and in December, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. At that moment, Hitler appeared — however briefly — to be the most powerful ruler on the planet. Given this dramatic turn of events, it is little wonder that since 1945 generations of historians keep trying to explain how it all happened. This richly illustrated history provides a readable and fresh approach to the complex history of the Third Reich, from the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 to the final collapse in 1945. Using photographs, paintings, propaganda images, and a host of other such materials from a wide range of sources, including official documents, cinema, and the photography of contemporary amateurs, foreigners, and the Allied armies, it distils our ideas about the period and provides a balanced and accessible account of the whole era.

A compact history of the Third Reich, from the Nazis' rise to power in 1930s Germany, through the invasion and occupation of Europe, to the final fall of Berlin to the Soviet Red Army in April 1945.

For twelve years, Hitler's secret state police--the Geheime Staats Polizei, better known as the Gestapo--spread a reign of fear and terror over Europe. Spoken of in whispers, a law unto themselves, the Gestapo was the power behind the power. Torture, betrayal, execution, utter ruthlessness, were the stepping stones by which the Gestapo under Göring, Himmler, and Heydrich climbed to the top of the Nazi bureaucratic pile. As Nazi power spread, so did the evil reputation of the Gestapo, spying into every compartment of the individual's life, backed by concentration camps and the state-sanctioned right to extract confessions under torture. As the war ended, the Gestapo tried to eradicate all trace of its crimes. In this, it failed. It left photographs; it left witnesses; it left records. From these it is possible for us to be eyewitnesses to the Gestapo in its grisly heyday.--From publisher description.