Customer Reviews

The Face Of The Third Reich: Portraits Of The Nazi Leadership

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Fest provides the reader with a well-written summary of the high-ranking and crucial members of Nazi Germany. This book is a good background for the general reader on the Third Reich and is an essential first-step in any investigation into the period.

This book was poorly translated and even in the original German, Fest is a heavy writer, turgid and hardly scintillating. This compilation is laden with errors, some major, some not, but the ultimate effect compromises the integrity of this book. It's absurd, for example, to make the statement that Hermann Goering's Nuremberg defense was anything but brilliant. One can loathe what Goering stood for and decry Nazism and its atrocities, but to deny that Goering stole the show at Nuremberg is historically inaccurate.

There are many better summations of the Nazi leadership than here. This is as dry as timber and about as edifying.

This is a compendium of Nazis (`Hitler;' `Practitioners' -Göring, Goebbels, Heydrich, Himmler, Bormann, Röhm; `Functionaries' -von Papen, Rosenburg, Ribbentrop, Hess, Speer, Frank, von Shirach, General, Professor, Wife, Höß) published in 1970. It's well worth reading, but not up to the author's subsequent excellent work (`Hitler' 1973, `Speer' 2001).

Most problematic in literary terms is discontinuous menagerie of disjointed, vain, and often incompetent rivals. It's not an easy read. On reflection, that's accurately indicative of the compartmentalized ruthless jealousy under the führerprizip. Readers seeking cohesiveness between principal figures beware: there was little or none.

Taken individually, this is an interesting and enlightening analysis of villains (a dictionary of blackguards). Nothing more.

Also recommended:
GM Gilbert's `Nüremberg Diary'
JK Galbraith's `Name-Dropping'

The author, Joachim Fest (b. 1926), mentions in the Preface to his book-length biography Speer: The Final Verdict (German publication in 1999, English translation published in 2002) that Speer requested him as an advisor while working on his books Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: The Secret Diaries. Fest has also written a biography of Hitler, and Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of German Resistance. The book under review is the first by Fest I've read.

This book, The Face of the Third Reich, is a collection of character analyses of the following people: Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Borman, Ernst Röhm, Franz von Papen, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, Hans Frank, Baldur von Schirach, Rudolf Hoss, along with analyses of members of the Officer Corps, the intellectuals, and of wives and mothers. The style is clear, analytical and rational. This is not written in the style of a popularization, nor is its purpose to introduce the Nazi leadership to those unfamiliar with their history.

Two quotations summarize the author's view of the Nazi leadership.

"What is again and again manifest among the figures surrounding Hitler is an empty but dogged will to power, which is so often combined with extreme servility. ... The lack of independence and poverty of personality of so many of [Hitler's] leading supporters was a prime means of preserving an attachment to Hitler's person through all humiliations, and a general search for a father figure found its deepest satisfaction in the consciousness of Hitler's close presence. The stringency and caprice with which he treated his entourage merely confirmed and strengthened this feeling." (page 298)

"The elements of the man willing to put himself at the disposal of totalitarianism may all be traced back: his poverty of personality, his lack of background, his weak contact with others and his emotional instability, his aggressive prejudices, his subservience to his impulses, his split mind, and his deification of the leader matched by his contempt for humanity." (page 303)

What you get in this book is pretty much what the title promises you. The author (J.Fest) plunges into a psycho-social analysis of the Nazi elite and attempts (succesufully) to shed some light on the people who moved the strings of Nazism in Germany.
Admittedly, the author's heavy writting style will turn off a certain group of viewers. While his intentions on decoding the personas that played key roles of Nazism are honest and straightforward, the atmosphere of the book is rather characterised by abusing descriptions and verbal exagerations.
Short biographies and psychological profiles are on offer here: Hitler, Goering, Hoess, Himmler, Hess, Ribbentrop, to name but a few.
However, you'd be mistaken (in my view anyway) to assume that this book will help you understand what brought this fascistic movement to power. Before even deciding whether you should read this or not, start by reading "The rise and fall of the third Reich" or other books pertaining on fascism and the masses. What is absent here are the german people themselves. Fascism does not rise because of a few psychotic personalities , and, as was proven in Germany's example, it very often complicits the people themselves to grab the power mechanisms.
But, if you are interested in blitz-biographies, and short "explanations" then the "Face of the third reich" will be a good choice. Then again, when it comes to the major players of Nazism there are far better individual biographies and character accounts out there (one of them by the author himself on Hitler).

Oversimplified and relentlessly negative. Filled with sweeping negative generalizations that ignore abundant evidence of positive characteristics of the Third Reich personalities. The caricatures painted of the key figures in the Third Reich are laughably unrealistic. As a serious history reference, this is a terrible book. It is so bad that it's actually worth reading: its sheer awfulness makes it a great example of how NOT to write a serious non-fiction book.

Fascism is an often misunderstood and misused term. "The Face of the Third Reich" makes clear the nature of fascism and the kind of men who promote this type of government. Joachim Fest is clearly an expert on the subject and writes in a smooth, clear style that keeps you turning pages. By the time you are done with the book, you feel you could easily talk on the subject yourself. What better endorsement for the book than this?