From Publishers Weekly
On March 30, 1933, two months after Hitler achieved power, Paul Nikolaus, a Berlin cabaret comedian, wrote disconsolately, "For once, no joke. I am taking my own life.... [U]nfortunately I have fallen in love with my Fatherland. I cannot live in these times." How Germans could remain in love with their fatherland under Nazism and even contribute willingly to its horrific extremism is the subject of Cambridge historian Evans's gripping if overwhelmingly detailed study, the first of three projected volumes. Readers watch a great and historic culture grow grotesquely warped from within, until, in 1933, a dictatorial state was imposed upon the ruins of the Weimar republic. A host of shrill demagogues had, in the preceding decades, become missionaries to an uneasy coalition of the discontented, eager to subvert Germany's democratic institutions. This account contrasts with oversimplified diagnoses of how Nazism succeeded in taking possession of the German psyche. Evans asserts that Hitler's manipulative charisma required massive dissatisfaction and resentment available to be exploited. Nazism found convenient scapegoats in historic anti-Semitism, the shame of an imposed peace after WWI and the weakness of an unstable government alien to the disciplined German past. Although there have been significant recent studies of Hitler and his regime, like Ian Kershaw's brilliant two volumes, Evans (In Hitler's Shadow, etc.) broadens the historic perspective to demythologize how morbidly fertile the years before WWI were as an incubator for Hitler. 31 illus., 18 maps. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
There is a certain way of writing about German history, and especially about Nazism, that is characteristically British. Soon after the demise of Adolf Hitler's "one-thousand-year Reich," such historians as A.J.P. Taylor, John Wheeler-Bennett, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Alan Bullock wrote influential accounts of the course of German history, the nemesis of Prussian militarism and the nature of Nazi tyranny. Aimed at scholars and the general public, these often elegantly written books avoided excessive footnotes, synthesized and generalized complex events and eschewed both high-flown rhetoric and convoluted interpretations.By perceiving the Third Reich through their own rationalist and empiricist prism, though, British historians gave short shrift to the ideological fanaticism that was an inherent part of Nazism. It was impossible for them to believe that any more than a handful of extremists would have either taken Hitler's rhetoric seriously or willingly perpetrated the crimes he ordered. For some, not even Hitler himself could have meant what he preached. Rather, he was depicted as an especially ruthless but otherwise quite "normal" dictator whose main goal was to seize and hold on to power.In the intervening decades, numerous studies have added greatly to our understanding of support and opposition to Nazism, the destruction of the Weimar Republic, the function of Hitler as leader of party and state and the role of ideological conviction and indoctrination. Indeed, so much detailed scholarship has been produced that it seemed appropriate to write an updated synthesis that would provide an overview of a regime for which the public's fascination has hardly diminished. Richard Evans, a prolific British social historian of Germany, has applied his considerable energies to this task. The Coming of the Third Reich is the first of a projected three-volume study intended to provide the definitive general history of Nazi Germany for the next generation.Curiously, the British historian Michael Burleigh did just that four years ago. But his massive study, The Third Reich: A New History, presented Nazism as a political religion that took hold of the German population and manifested itself as a cult of violence and destruction. In contrast, Evans depicts the rise to power of a manipulative, power-greedy and violent political party that exploited the dire circumstances of the time to establish a dictatorship over a nation that never fully embraced Nazi rule and ideology.The Coming of the Third Reich thus returns to older interpretations of the origins of Hitler's rise. For Evans, Hitler "seems to have regarded the conquest of power as the essence of the Nazi Revolution." While he concedes that "the Nazis not only seized political power, they also seized ideological and cultural power" and notes that their "ideas appealed directly to . . . the German educated elite," Evans has little to say about the Nazis' ideas beyond stating that "what mattered to them above all was race, culture, and ideology." Though well-written and accessible, the narrative has some notable shortcomings. For example, Evans argues that while the rise of Nazism was not predetermined, its origins can be traced to Bismarck's imperial Germany. But even as he vividly describes the emergence of radical anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, he neglects to analyze the political structure of the empire, whose deficiencies contributed greatly to the failure of democracy in the Weimar Republic.Similarly, while he rightly stresses the centrality of World War I to the rise of Nazism, Evans devotes very little space to the war itself. Nor does the German revolution of 1918 feature prominently, although it was the specific origin of political extremism in that country and imbued the German bourgeoisie with intense fear of social upheaval, both of which contributed to the Nazis' subsequent success. Finally, Evans has remarkably little to say on the expansion of anti-Semitism in the 1920s and tends to relegate the Nazi Party's rabid anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence to a secondary role.Most troublesome is the contradiction between the author's central contention that the rise of Nazism was not inevitable and his simultaneous assertion that the republic was doomed from the start. "In writing this book I have tried to remind the reader repeatedly that things could easily have turned out very differently," Evans writes in the introduction -- only to later ask, in analyzing the fall of the Weimar Republic, "Where the law and its administrators were against it, what chance did it have?" He might have avoided this by focusing on the intrigues by the presidential "camarilla," the army, big business and the conservative elites, which eventually led to Hitler's appointment as chancellor. But here, too, the narrative flows too quickly, with the result of making the outcome appear all but unavoidable.Evans has accomplished his goal of writing a readable account of the origins of the Third Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the establishment of the Nazi regime in 1933. He provides many insights into the political culture of imperial and Weimar Germany, the mentality of the Nazi storm troopers and the impacts of the inflation of the early 1920s and the depression and unemployment of the early 1930s. But the book often skimps precisely on the themes it recognizes as crucial and weaves a plot that contradicts its central thesis. Most important, perhaps, it fails to explain the sense of rapture that seized the rapidly growing numbers of Germans associated with the "movement." Combining worship of the Führer, the nation and the Aryan race with extreme violence, racism and anti-Semitism, the "spirit" that imbued Hitler's followers penetrated far and wide into German society. By 1933 an evil but potent wind was blowing in Germany; within a few years it would wreak destruction throughout Europe. Reviewed by Omer Bartov Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
This is the first volume in a projected three-volume history of Nazi Germany. Cambridge history professor Evans states clearly that this is a work aimed at general readers who hope to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of the course and causes of the Nazi rise to power. Although he breaks no new ground, Evans has written a highly readable and comprehensive account. Thankfully, he does not fall into the trap of looking for proto-Nazis as far back as Luther; however, Evans credibly asserts that the roots of National Socialism can be uncovered in the Germany of Bismarck, which had all of the stresses and tensions of a rapidly modernizing society. While acknowledging that strains of virulent nationalism and anti-Semitism were prevalent in other European nations, Evans shows that these tendencies combined with other vulnerabilities in Germany in an especially volatile mix. This is a first-rate narrative history that informs and educates and may inspire readers to delve even deeper into the subject. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand than Hitler's rise topower and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world's most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans's history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as it shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian's art and the book by which all others on the subject will be judged.