Richard Evans's trilogy – of which this book is the final part – is an invaluable synthesis. Highly readable, it brings together the insurmountable mass of recent scholarly studies on the Third Reich.
The first two volumes, on the rise of the Nazi party and its effect on German society, were the most important, for they attempted to answer some of the pressing questions we still have about the era. However, The Third Reich at War, written in an engaging and compelling style, continues the very high standard. Alongside Ian Kershaw's recent study of Hitler, this trilogy has a good claim to be “definitive” (as much as I dislike that word) but, unlike Kershaw, Evans does not focus on Hitler.
Instead, he aims for breadth, attempting to cover “not only politics, diplomacy and military affairs but also society, the economy, racial policy, police and justice, literature, culture and the arts.” On the whole, he pulls this off, though there are some frustrating omissions.
The Third Reich at War, by Richard J. Evans, Penguin Press, 800 pages, $50
There is little treatment, for example, of the views of exiled Germans or foreigners, an echo of the claim made by German novelist Frank Thiess and others that only those who had stayed in Germany could really understand the realities of wartime life. But as Evans himself acknowledges, the novels of those who had stayed in Germany, and who had found refuge through “inner emigration,” displayed a real understanding only through “the most assiduous reading between the lines.” And the observations of Thomas Mann, who was in exile from 1933, were very often far more revealing.
That said, Evans's use of firsthand accounts is perhaps the best part of the book. Interspersed throughout the narrative are vivid diary entries, most notably those of Victor Klemperer, whose I Will Bear Witness and To The Bitter End are the only diaries to give us a day-by-day account from 1933 to 1945. “I shall go on writing,” Klemperer wrote. “This is my heroism. I intend to bear witness, precise witness.” Polish doctor and historian Zygmunt Klukowski also features regularly, chronicling the mass executions of Poles in his district.
It is in Poland where Evans begins, before moving on, not chronologically but thematically, through the progress of the war. And it is in Poland where we are introduced to the initial treatment of those living a “life unworthy of life,” such as the mentally ill, who were the first to be gassed, and the Eastern Jews, who “scarcely qualified as human beings at all in the eyes of the German occupiers, soldiers and civilians, Nazis and non-Nazis alike.” Life in the occupied countries is explored at length, but the main focus is on the Germans themselves.
In one especially brutal and horrific scene, a group of Jews was savagely beaten to death while cheering civilians watched and laughed
Permeating the narrative is the “final solution of the Jewish question.” And here Evans is at his best, which comes as no great surprise. As the key expert witness in the David Irving trial, Evans mounted a devastating attack on Irving's particular brand of Holocaust denial, which maintains, among other things, that there is no evidence that Hitler ever ordered the final solution. Famous for its barely controlled rage, Evans's cross-examination demonstrated, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Hitler was always in control. This perhaps explains his apparent need to drive the message home throughout the book, such as his portrayal of the lesson Hitler learned from the mass murders of the mentally ill and handicapped in Poland: that “it was inadvisable to put such an order down in writing.”
