Book cover of Life and Death in the Third Reich

Book description

On January 30, 1933, hearing about the celebrations for Hitler's assumption of power, Erich Ebermayer remarked bitterly in his diary, "We are the losers, definitely the losers." Learning of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which made Jews non-citizens, he raged, "hate is sown a million-fold." Yet in March 1938, he


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Why read it?

2 authors picked Life and Death in the Third Reich as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Since its publication, I have assigned this book every time I taught my course on Nazi Germany at Williams College.

Through his use of diaries, letters, and anecdotes, in combination with his profound knowledge of the history of the Third Reich, Fritzsche shows how, after January 1933, when Hitler became Reich Chancellor, the German people came rapidly to support and even to create National Socialism in Germany. The German people here were not simply duped or terrorized by the Nazis. Fritzsche shows how, in various different ways and to various different degrees, Germans became Nazis.

And, through empathy with those


A book that discusses perpetrators, bystanders, and victims while covering both Germany and the countries it invaded, and all in just over 300 pages? This could have been a dense, dry affair—but it emphatically isn’t. Peter Fritzsche, a leading historian of the Weimar and Nazi periods, skillfully weaves letters, diaries, and novels into a compelling account from which you come away with an understanding of what the Third Reich really meant for a variety of different people. Some enjoyed a feeling of mission and power; some muddled through and hoped to survive the war; some came to realize that they


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