The Third Reich in Power, 1933 - 1939

How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation

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Summary

The second book in his acclaimed trilogy on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich in Power: How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation explores how Hitler turned Germany from a vibrant democracy into a one-party state.

Before Hitler seized power in 1933, Germany had been famous for its sophistication and complexity. So how was it possible for a group of ideological obsessives to re-mould it into a one-party state directed at war and race hate? How did the Nazis win over the hearts and minds of Germany's citizens, twist science, religion and culture, and transform the country's politics to achieve total dominance so quickly?

From the Nuremberg Laws to the Olympic Games, Kristallnacht to the Hitler Youth, this gripping account shows how a whole population became enmeshed in a dictatorship that was consumed by hatred and driven by war.

'Impressive ... perceptive ... humane'
  Ian Kershaw

'Excellent ... powerful ... it makes an indelible impression'
  Robert Service, Sunday Times

'Likely to be the standard work for some years to come'
  Spectator Books of the Year

'A rich and detailed description of just what the Third Reich did in every compartment of the state and every corner of society ... Evans's magisterial study should be on our shelves for a long time to come'
  Economist

'Written with great style and human sympathy'
  Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

'Evans brilliantly conveys how the Fuhrer reignited Germans' pride as he led them to catastrophe'
  Neal Ascherson, Observer

Sir Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. His previous books include In Defence of History, Telling Lies about Hitler and the companions to this title, The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich at War.

About the author

Richard J. Evans

Richard J. Evans is one of the world's leading historians of modern Germany. He was born in London in 1947. From 2008 to 2014 he was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, and from 2010 to 2017 President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He served as Provost of Gresham College in the City of London from 2014 to 2020. In 1994 he was awarded the Hamburg Medal for Art and Science for cultural services to the city, and in 2015 received the British Academy Leverhulme Medal, awarded every three years for a significant contribution to the Humanities or Social Sciences. In 2000 he was the principal expert witness in the David Irving Holocaust Denial libel trial at the High Court in London, subsequently the subject of the film Denial. His books include Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson History Prize), In Defence of History, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War. His book The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, volume 7 of the Penguin History of Europe, was published in 2016. His most recent books are Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History (2019) and The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination (2020). In 2012 he was knighted for services to scholarship.

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