Not only does Evans use more moderate language than Shirer, he takes a longer look at the social and historical trends in play. Evans makes the following legitimate points: But there was another reason. As Evans explains in his preface, he considers many previous Third Reich histories to be contaminated by the rage or horror of their authors. This offends Evans's professional conscience: 'It seems to me inappropriate for a work of history to indulge in the luxury of moral judgment. For one thing, it is unhistorical; for another, it is arrogant and presumptuous.' The reader, in other words, is apparently in for a unique experience: a value-free history of the Nazis. That would be drab indeed.

The Coming of the Third Reich - Google Books

The creation of a free and comprehensive welfare system as the entitlement of all its citizens was one of the major achievements of the Weimar Republic, perhaps in retrospect its most important.” They could not rid themselves of their Marxist ideology without losing a large part of their electoral support in the working class; yet on the other hand a more radical policy, for example of forming a Red Army militia from workers instead of relying on the Free Corps, would surely have made their participation in bourgeois coalition governments impossible and called down upon their heads the wrath of the army.”Hitler was finally sworn in as Reich chancellor and that was kind of the beginning of the end. He used the emergency powers of the republic to effectively seize control of the government and begin a form of martial law. With his paramilitary groups, the brown shirts, SS, storm troopers all were well organized and ready to seize the day. All it took was the Reichstag Fire, which the author agrees was a lone-wolf communist terrorist who started it. The Reichstag Fire decree gave Hitler the excuse he needed to expunge the political landscape of all his political enemies. And the enemies were many: marxist, communists, Catholics, intellectuals, musicians, artists, homosexuals, transexuals, pacifists, scientists and the Jews. The Dachau camp was started early on as a place to banish Nazi political enemies. Somewhere by 1933, Germany became a true one party state. It happened legally and with the consent of a large part of the population, probably around 35%. Social democrats and communists were arrested, tortured and murdered. The Nazi paramilitary had free reign to wreak terror and violence literally everywhere and they did so with impunity. The judiciary became highly Nazi sympathetic. Under the guise of fighting “cultural bolshevism”, book burnings became routine and eventually the burning of bodies became mundane. In this story, the Nazis appear as a reluctant choice for many voters. In his telling, a non-Nazi political majority - which is still atrociously anti-Semitic and nationalist but not committed to the bodge of National Socialism - voted for them in winter 1932, and then were forced into conformity or obedience by spring 1933. urn:oclc:53186626 Republisher_date 20170522181635 Republisher_operator [email protected] Republisher_time 1138 Scandate 20170521225547 Scanner ttscribe24.hongkong.archive.org Scanningcenter hongkong Source The Nazi's political prowess should not be forgotten. The Party was able to move from fringe extremism to mainstream politics in the span of a decade, and soon was able to take control of and dismantle the Weimar democracy through the use of coalition politics, violence and public appeal. Hitler's rise to part leader is also interesting, as he moves from struggling artist to fringe extremist to mainstream politician in an equally short period. Evans also discusses the other nationalist groups, such as the Steel Helmets, a paramilitary veteran group and military wing of the Nazi's sometimes coalition partner, the Nationalist Party. Nothing in this book is new, as the author, Richard Evans, freely admits. This is a “broad, general, large-scale history of Nazi Germany.” It is a chronological history, not a cultural examination, much less a view of Germany through the lens of the forgotten common man or some such unoriginal and unhelpful frame. Those looking for a revisionist take on this period of history should go elsewhere. In this book, the same bad people do the same bad things that anyone who has read about this period already knows about. The emphasis, perhaps, is more on violence than on political maneuverings, but that’s hardly revisionist.

The Coming of the Third Reich - Richard J. Evans - Google Books The Coming of the Third Reich - Richard J. Evans - Google Books

And then the Nazi party got serious about legally taking control of the country. They continued to streamline their propaganda and their messaging and started to seize more of the voting electorate. They made enormous electoral gains in 1930, although never enjoying a majority. The party then gained even more seats and became the dominant party along with the communists, both of whom wanted to destroy the parliament. It was the normalizing of political extremism that made the republic crumble. The Nazi party became the rainbow coalition of political discontent. As the Nazis gained more momentum, they refined their messaging and soared with popularity which included their deeply anti-semetic position which had become maybe even more fortified by the early 1930s. Evans argues the collapse of Weimar was inevitable and desired by all parties, left and right. Brüning, Hindenburg and von Papen had already dug its grave and collected the nails. The only question was which form of autocratic government would follow. Of course they thought they could "save themselves from the wolf by inviting him into the sheepfold". Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich is an enormous work of synthesis—knowledgable and reliable.”— Mark Mazower, New York Times Book Review liberal democracy had been imposed on Germany by the victorious allies. None of the political parties active in Germany during the era felt any moral commitment to it. Thus in a crisis, nobody supported it. Sir Richard J Evans writes in his opening paragraph that this book is not aimed at the expert seeking groundbreaking theory into the rise of the Third Reich. What he says is it is a book which focuses on the Nazis as a whole as they gain power in the Weimar Republic. He states he hopes that the newcomer will gain their understanding and the learned scholar will hopefully gain snippets of new information. I place myself in between both, although a student of history my degree did not focus on 1920-30s Germany. I can say that this is a good book, not mind blowing or revolutionary, but solid.The Coming of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans, is a book on the origins of the Nazi Party in Germany. The book is quite innovative in that it doesn't start with Hitler or any other central party figure. Instead, Evans starts with the development of the Nazi ideology, and how it was present throughout Germany far before the Nazi's arrived in mainstream Weimar politics. Richard Evans has indeed produced a formidable work. It is well presented, well documented, and fills a seriously needed gap in modern historical writing. It is not difficult reading; and it clearly places the Nazi’s rise to power in the context of European and World Historical Events of the early twentieth century. It provides an almost step-by-step recounting of each of the events that not only made the Nazi’s rise to power possible, but almost inevitable. Many of my own questions surrounding the facts of importance, such as the Reichstag Fire, are dissected and displayed for “viewing”. This is a service to the historical record that is difficult to overestimate. He returned and continued working for the army and drifted though various movements before finding a mentor who recognized that Hitler was a good orator. Soon Hitler was using is speaking skills to motivate various factions under the direction of his superiors. He became a leading speaker at the National Socialist German Workers Party and soon became their leader and tendered his resignation to the army. His vitriolic speeches and charisma transformed the party and soon their numbers began to swell and his speeches started to attract huge attendance.

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans

Upon finishing Richard Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich, however, I started to question my appetite. They started as little more than a gang of extremists and thugs, yet in a few years the Nazis had turned Germany into a one-party state and led one of Europe's most advanced nations into moral, physical and cultural ruin and despair. Many questions perplex us about the Nazis, about the atrocities they committed and about the beginnings of the Second World War. How could one of the most advanced, highly cultured, industrialized and modern nation states in Europe allow such horrors to come to pass? How could democracy be replaced so easily? How did an extremist party lurking at the fringes of political life take over the entire government in such a shot time without ever raising the wrath of the bigger parties or of the people? How did they establish a one party state without ever commanding a majority in any single election? A brilliantly clear and comprehensive exposition of the complex events of 1930-32 which led to the appointment of Hitler as Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933, corresponding exactly to the next chapter(s) I will be writing in my novel-in-progress CHOOSING HITLER. If the experience of the Third Reich teaches us anything, it is that a love of great music, great art and great literature does not provide people with any kind of moral or political immunization against violence, atrocity, or subservience to dictatorship.”

Berna Günen. "Richard J. Evans, Le Troisième Reich. L'avènement, vol. I et Le Troisième Reich, 1933-1939, vol. II" . Retrieved 2011-10-24.