Customer Reviews

Who's Who In Nazi Germany

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

 

 

I don't know which book the previous reviewer was reading, but it wasn't this one. Professor Wistrich's book is intended as a reference work, providing brief biographies of important or significant persons in Germany under the Nazi regime. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive biography of every member of the Nazi Party, nor to be a compendium of evil-doers, and it does neither. For example, it includes listings for Bertolt Brecht (playwright and poet), Otto Dix (German-expressionist painter), Albert Einstein (Nobel Prize-winning physicist), and Kathe Kollwitz (Socialist and painter)-- none of them Nazis. The big-name Nazis are there, but so are church leaders, artists, scientists, and business people, of a variety of political and ideological orientations, some of them offering active resistance to National Socialism.
The book is a biographical dictionary, providing a ready reference and point of departure for further research by the serious student. If I have a criticism, it is in some of those selected for inclusion-- a necessarily subjective decision, as the author acknowleges.
The previous reviewer's contention that Wistrich cites four of his own works in the bibliography again left me wondering what book he had read. In my copy, the author cites a grand total of ONE of his own works. Nor is the book the protracted drumbeat about how evil the Nazis were that the previous reviewer would have us believe it is, though failure to acknowledge the fact would be a falsification of history worthy of an ideologue-- not a historian.

If you want to discover that Nazis were very, very bad people, then this book is for you!

However, if you are writing a paper or piece of historical fiction, or if you simply want to gain understanding about the political underpinnings and society of Nazi Germany, then this wouldn't be a good choice.

This book only features the well-known Nazis, and is very general in scope. You definitely won't find anything new here if you are a history buff. If you need info on a particular influential Nazi, for example Gregor Ebner or Emil Strom, look elsewhere. Only brief (page-and-a-half or so) bios with lists of evil deeds are included--nothing about organizations, timelines, or political relationships. Nothing of any substance. I was very disappointed by the lack of info in this book, and feel somewhat cheated.(It took twenty days to arrive, too.)

This book seems to have suffered from the author's passion for the subject. In the bibliography, he cites four of his own previous books, which is bad form for a scholar. I can't imagine how this book could be useful to anyone except for those who need to be reassured that the bastards are still evil after all these years. Most of this book is hot air. One star (two if you need to be reminded that Nazis are not good Volks).

This resource book is a must for anyone who reads about WWII; the Russians, the US, and especially Germany. For a begineer its a great resource book to learn exactly who you are reading about. For more formal studiers it gives in-depth discriptions that you might find interesting. This is a reference book not a fictional read. It's good to have handy. It is a big book so you will never run out of people to look up. I keep it on my shelf and use it when reading about Germany.

Wistrich's book is basically a series of very short capsule biographies on leading figures during the time of Nazi Germany's rise and fall, covering obviously political figures of the Nazi Party, but also communists, labor leaders, interwar figures, some generals, war criminals, major industrialists, some artists, and so on. It is not exhaustive - it is much too short to include a truly complete list of names or figures - or dispositive of its subjects.

The biographies include the usual dates, births, deaths, sentences, promotions, and major deeds good or evil; a typical bio would be perhaps a page long, with many shorter and several longer. In other words, it will not do to provide a full and complete picture of anyone. Readers looking for major insight will need to look elsewhere for that. Wistrich does, however, by combining so many stories in such a compact space, manage to convey a sense of interrelationship and web-like interests and this is kind of interesting.

The book is perhaps best used as a convenient way to look up a name, useful as a guide for a writer of historical fiction or a general historical article.

For anyone studying the Third Reich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany is a critical reference book to possess. Organized alphabetically, the book presents well written, concise, and objective biographies regarding a vast array of principals involved in Hitler's Germany; everyone from the well known participants such as Ernst Rohm and Walter Schellenberg to the lesser known figures such as Helene Mayer, an Olympic Gold Medalist and Lil Dagover, a German actress and purported friend of the Der Fuhrer.

Indeed, for a book of its size, just 359 pages, the number of people covered is rather extensive. At the end of the book, there is a glossary, a comparison between German and Allied military ranks, and a bibliography that is a must read in and of itself for anyone wishing to expand his or her knowledge. But it is important to keep in mind that this is a reference book. It is meant as a quick guide to supplement in-depth research, or perhaps just a good history book on the subject, such as William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. In fact, for students of the Holocaust, the book is an invaluable resource. While there are many reference books and dictionaries pertaining to World War II, this book focuses only on Nazi Germany and is one of the best reference books available on the subject.

This is a book that I thought I might get little use of. Boy was I ever wrong! This is an excellent companion piece to any book that you may be reading about Nazi's in World War II. I know a ton about the main personalities & some of the lesser known individual's as well. However if you are a student of German history of WWII & read all sorts of books covering the era, you must have this book. For example so often you read a book that is constantly naming others surrounding whoever that person may be. You may know the names, but it's nice to have a book that you can look at to refresh your memory in just a page or two. If you want this for more than a reference book then just move on. I can't express enough about how much use you will get out of this book. My only complaint is that it needs to be minorly updated as just about every single person in this book are now deceased & some facts have been updated w/newer information. Other than that this is a must for wannabe historians such as myself & others who are constantly learning about this. That's really all you need to know.