Customer Reviews

Inside Hitler's Germany: Life Under the Third Reich (Photographic Histories)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are interested in "social history" or what life was like living in Nazi Germany, than this book is a good jumping off point. The book is very well written, covers an array of differing topics, and is extremely well illustrated with numerous photographs, many of which I'd never seen before.

The content of the book itself is very good. I am a slow reader, but found myself reading a chapter a day. It features chapters on the war, economics, genocide, how the Nazis were formed and came to power, resistance movements, youth organizations, women in the Reich, and a brief bio of Hitler. The book does a good job of giving a general history of the war itself, but never straying too far from the point of the book--describing life in Nazi Germany. The book even features a two page glossary at the end with some definitions of terms. Overall, it is a wonderful read and is an excellent introdcution to life in Germany.

However, it does not get 5 stars for two reasons. First, as mentioned by a previous reviewer, I found the last chapter somewhat curious as the authors spent several pages quoting German soldiers who were captured by the Russians, but were treated well, which was not the norm. Then, they spent just a couple paragraphs describing the more common experience of being sent to gulags and not returning to Germany for several years, if at all. Second, although the authors obviously did a thorough amount of research, there are no footnotes, no endnotes, no bibliography page. As someone who received a B.A. in history, I was always taught to cite everything and the authors do not do this, which is frustrating because it does not allow the reader to verify their facts or to read further based upon their research.

Books about the rise and fall of the Third Reich usually suffer from two shortcomings. They tend to be extremely long and exquisitely detailed, which makes them hard to fit into a busy schedule. And they sometimes emphasize high level German politics and World War II without explaining what is was like for an ordinary person to live through the twelve brutal years of the "Thousand Year Reich."

"Insider Hitler's Germany", on the other hand, is a very approachable book that chronciles life in Germany after the Great War and during the Third Reich. The authors write in a clear and informative style, letting the facts speak for themselves.

Most of us assume that totalitarian Germany must have been a nightmare for the German citizens who lived through it. It certainly was for Germans who were Jewish or Communist or otherwise gave the slightest hint of being out of step with the Nazi Party. But many Germans experienced the 1930s as a golden age of low unemployment, vacations for the average worker, and resurgent national pride. For them, it was only the catastrophe of World War II that exposed the true horrors of Nazism.

The most striking feature of this book is the photography that it reproduces. All of the photos are in black and white, but many are amazingly crisp and filled with a chilling immediacy. One that really caught my attention was a photo of the Hauptstrasse in Heidelberg, which is now a pedestrian mall filled with the usual shops (including, of course, a McDonald's). I have walked down that street many times. The photo shows a procession of scholars from the university, but all of the buildings along the street are festooned with flags displaying the swastika of the Nazi party. The stunning contrast between then and now is sobering, and this photo (like the book as a whole) is a useful reminder that the abyss is often just a very short step away.

This is a surprisingly informative book that covers each aspect of German life in the beginning of the 20th Century. It is not the most comprehensive book on the subject, but it gives the reader a good deal of information to go on for further research.

Starting with a chapter on Adolf Hitler, the book describes economics issues, Hitler Youth, the women of the Reich, genocide of Jews and others deemed racially inferior to the Nazis, and other topics of home front Germany.

It is chock full of photos, and the text is quite interesting. I knocked the book down one star because it's not a comprehensive read. It's really a well-written picture book with the kind of text normally found in school books.

In fact, to give people a better sense of how an average German lived, this is a great place to start.

The authors present a composite of Germany from Hitler's rise to power to 1945 which is rich in pictures, historical facts, and authentic comments from those who were there and experienced the positives and prolific negatives of national socialism under Adolf Hitler. The pictures are in black and white and number well over two hundred. The chronology of the chapters presented are appropriate from Hitler's rise to the position of Chancellor to denouncing jewish citizenship, to countries conquered and lost, and to the horrors of genocide and beyond. Some interesting facts which are in this book but not in other like publications is the fact that Hitler was initially offered the position of vice-chancellor by President Hindenburg, but declined. Also some of the youth resistance groups were discussed in this book such as the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Youth. It is well known that youth are resilient in crisis and interesting that even under the most infamous dictator in the world, that characteristic did not waiver. While these anti-Nazi youth only comprised a subset of youth in Germany they were successful at voicing their views and forgetting the brutal environment in which they lived by retreating to the country when an opportunity presented itself. The fate of the Scholl siblings, which were part of the resistant White Rose group of the University of Munich, was also described. The doctrine of German womens' role in society is also discussed. While their primary function was to bore children [for the war efforts] and were looked upon as inferiors in society, this role drastically changed when factory workers were in need. Womens liberation was not an option and any incling of nonconformancy would destined for the concentration camps. This book is an easy read, enjoyable, and insightful from the numerous German's who were interviewed. Life after Hitler became Chancellor was better than what they had. They were working, eating, taking Holidays abroad and felt secure. Oppressive new laws that were passed were tolerable for the most part as if you were not jewish you could continue to live and prosper, so they thought. Hitler's proxy was incrementalization. Concentrations camps were built to quickly handle any uprisings. Jews were deprived of civil liberties, then segregated, then sent to camps, then executed. Gradual steps were taken so that there would be no turning back, no repetition of 1918, for the German people would never surrender, they were programmed as the most powerful nation on earth. For 1918 and 1945 were different, in the former Germany still had a government, in the latter neither the jews nor the communists could be blamed for raising the white flag.

This is a very well-written book that is easy to follow and understand. Each chapter contains several nuggets or tidbits of interesting facts or statistics about the Nazi regime. Each chapter is also pretty much self-contained and can be read independently to learn about that particular topic. The breadth of the book is also a little more wide ranging than the title suggests: The chapters in the book include matters ocurring both before the establishment of the Third Reich (e.g., chapters on Hitler and life in Germany in the 1920s) and after the defeat of Nazi Germany (e.g., information on the struggles of the suffering of German civilians after the war), as well as a variety of topics on life during the Third Reich (e.g., the treatment of women, youth organizations, and resistance to the regime).

The photos are numerous and very well selected. For example, included are several rarely seen photos of major figures in the Third Reich (Hitler, Himmler, and Goering) at different stages of their lives.

What prevents a stellar rating, however, is that the book at times contains misinformation and even disinformation, including the text used for the captions of several of the photos.

One example is the book states that Hitler's party had enough seats in the Reichstag to make him Chancellor, which is true enough, but the context leads the reader to believe that Hitler's party had won both a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the seats in the Reichstag, neither of which is true.

Another example is the book states that upon capture German soldiers were just as likely to be treated well as mistreated by the Allies, which is generally true, then goes on for several pages recounting 6-7 stories by German soldiers who were treated well but only a single account where the Allies mistreated German prisoners of war, leaving the false impression that 9 times out of 10 German prisoners were treated with compassion by the Allies. (To its credit the book goes on to describe the inhumane conditions in the prisoner of war camps.)

By and large the book is an excellent and fairly balanced overview of the Third Reich, from the factors that led to its creation to the conditions in Germany after its downfall, and is far superior to a similar book I read some time ago (now out of print). Although several irksome misstatements in this book preclude a true 5-star rating, it is still recommended as a very fine general introduction to life in Germany before, during, and after the Third Reich.

In our current day of Activist Judges brazzenly legislating their own political agendas from the bench against the will of the people and corrupt politicians telling us they are only obeying orders allowing them to get away with it despite their rulings having No consititutional basis Can we really judge the German people giving up the corrupt Weimar Republic for Hitler's regime? Can we really blame them?

In this highly insightful book the reader really gets to look at what dayly life for average Germans was during the days of Hitler's dictatorship. Unless you were of Jewish ancestry or devout or left of centery or part of some group on the nazi hit list and unwilling to compromise your morals to the new regime, dayly life for the average German portrayed here was really not that bad as compared to what life was like for the average serf of the Soviet state.

The chapters are well illustrated by pictures and provide an infomative peak for what every aspect of dayly life was like for the average German of this period.

However, for me, like Spock says in Star Trek, Understanding does not mean approval.