The Third Reich, a regime which instigated the most destructive war in modern history, still evokes fascination and horror today. Yet how were the lives of ordinary German people of the 1930s and 1940s affected by the politics of Hitler and his folllowers? Looking beyond the catalogue of events,
this book reveals that daily life involved a complex mixture of bribery and terror, of fear and concessions, of barbarism and appeals to conventional moral values, employed to maintain a grip upon society. The essays presented here by eight leading historians shed fresh light on familiar topics, the
role of political violence in Nazi seizure of power, the German view of Hitler himself, and also focus upon less well-known aspects of life in the Third Reich, such as village life, the treatment of 'social outcasts', and the Germans own retrospective view of this period of their history.
1. Richard Bessel: Introduction
2. Richard Bessel: Political Violence and the Nazi Seizure of Power
3. Gerhard Wilke: Village Life in Nazi Germany
4. Detlev Peukert: Youth in the Third Reich
5. Ian Kershaw: Hitler and the Germans
6. Michael Geyer: The Nazi State
Reconsidered
7. William Carr: Nazi policy against the Jews
8. Jeremy Noakes: Social Outcasts in the Third Reich
9. Ulrich Herbert: Good Times, Bad Times: Memories of the Third Reich
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Richard Bessel is Professor of Twentieth Century History at the University of York. He works on the social and political history of modern Germany, the aftermath of the two world wars and the history of policing. He is co-editor of German History and is a member of the editorial board of
History Today. His recent publications include Patterns of Provocations: Police and Public Disorder, and 'Mobilizing German Society for War', in R. Chickering and S. Foerster (eds) Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization in the Western Front, 1914-1918.
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