“The Third Reich at War”, by Richard J. Evans

944 pages, Penguin, ISBN-13: 978-1594202063

The Third Reich at War is the third book in “The Third Reich Trilogy”, a series of narrative history books by the British historian Richard J. Evans that covers the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process. Evans casts a wide view at many aspects of German life during the war years, ranging from the careers of musicians to everyday soldiers. Central, though, to the whole thing is the inter-relationship of Nazi crimes against humanity and how anti-Semitism, especially, touched every aspect of German society. Evans demonstrates solidly how preparation for war was a driving force in German economic measures immediately before the war. The Nazis were aiming to create a racial utopia and exacted this in a number of murderous policies. Evans tries to be even-handed to all victims (including the disabled, the Gypsies, homosexuals and others); that said, it becomes clear, from beginning to end, how motivated the Nazis were by anti-Semitism. In this sense, the Holocaust is part of the wider war, a war against the Jewish world-enemy. Among his many statements, Hitler’s last political manifesto makes this unequivocally clear; it was his parting message to the world, and perhaps best sums up his meaning and legacy.

It is clear that no one opposed the brutal destruction of Poland in 1939, though this is hardly to Germany’s credit and does indicate the extent to which German’s viewed expansion in middle Europe as their birthright – an authoritarian and imperial consensus that Hitler used to gain support for his regime and to give it legitimacy. Evans argues that at some level of generality all Germans were aware of the crimes of the regime; clearly people were being enslaved and stories about the imprisoning of Jews and other civilians on the Eastern Front were making the rounds. At best, Germans could claim deniability as they arguably did not know about the worst crimes. But the slave labor and disappearances of the Jews and the racism of the regime were there for all to see. The enthusiastic support of such radical policies by a fanatical base minority and the acquiescence of the majority made the whole nation complicit. Evans argues that by the time the Russians were at the gates in 1945 and Goebbels argued for a last-ditch stand the Germans were resigned to their fate. Ordinary Germans had a guilt complex by then: they knew this was payback for what the fanatics had done on the Eastern Front. This guilt, and the ability of the Germans to succeed economically in the 1950s under a democracy (in contrast to the Weimar experience), finally solved the German Problem that plagued the 20^th Century and allowed Germany to become a “normal”, peace-loving nation.

Through it all, I found Evans to be appropriately dispassionate as he related the grim details; added to this is the human touch as he weaves in diaries from representative, everyday people throughout this work. Beyond these, he relies a lot on a close reading of the German security reports from the time that used interviews and overheard conversations to give the higher-ups a picture of what Germans were really thinking; it is through these that Evans manages to inject some humor into this narrative as the security officers were careful to record anti-regime jokes, which to someone reading this book provide a bit of much-needed levity. These jokes, diaries, and other accounts show that not all Germans were marching along with the Nazis, especially as the war went on. The Germans, according to Evans, did learn about the mass killings of Jews and others, and they felt guilty about what was being done in their name. As a result, the Allied bombing seemed to some to be a just retribution. In any event, these were two key developments that caused many Germans to look at the regime skeptically: the Nazis were murdering innocent people, and the Nazis couldn’t defend their own people in a war they started. Resistance movements were small and weren’t very effective, by and large, as the Gestapo managed to strangle most of them in the crib. Even the military bomb plotters didn’t achieve much in the end. Violence was at the core of the Third Reich, Evans argues, and while the majority of Germans refused to see this they were still complicit with the regime and were responsible for the consequences.

It is foolish to talk about whether or not Hitler could have won the war by invading Britain or by invading the Middle East instead of invading Russia; the latter course would have resolved the resource problem, but it was never really an option. The Nazis took their primitive ideology quite seriously, and so there just had to be a death struggle with the Russians so that the most superior race (the Aryans) would emerge supreme (to the surprise of the majority of Germans, the Nazis were always quite serious about this ideology). Despite the Nazi’s brutal tactics in suppressing subject peoples, and despite wide scale collaboration, effective resistance did emerge. This was particularly the case in the East where it became very clear to the subject peoples that they had nothing to lose. This resistance encourages one to think that even had Hitler won militarily, the regime was inherently unstable and, in the long run, would have been doomed by a deadly and committed insurgency.

By the end of the war, the Germans themselves are completely subjugated. They survived on starvation rations, both sexes worked long hours, and the young and old alike were drafted into the army. Clearly, Hitler’s regime was able to mobilize complete support and sacrifice despite the reservations of a majority of Germans. The lesson I take from all this is that there is nothing particularly unique about the Germans when it comes to being complicit in the worst evil. The story of the Third Reich is the story of human nature, and it’s not a pretty one.