June 1, 2017
World War II has been chronicled from every angle, but Childers, formerly the Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, aims for a comprehensive one-volume history of Nazi Germany for lay readers.
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Starred review from August 15, 2017
A riveting study delves deeply into the conditions of the perfect storm that allowed Hitler and his Nazi party to seize and wield unprecedented power.The Nazis, first and foremost, were opportunists. In this compelling narrative, historian Childers (Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II, 2009, etc.) begins with Hitler's lackluster early life and sense of thwarted ambition, which took a sharp new direction after Germany's crushing defeat in World War I. From Vienna, where he was first inculcated in virulent anti-Semitic influences, to postwar Munich, a hotbed of left-wing revolutionary turmoil, Hitler seized the two pillars of what would become Nazi ideology: anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism. He assumed leadership of one of the many small paramilitary parties that had sprung up before 1920 and rebranded it the National Socialist German Workers Party, complete with swastika symbol and thuggish paramilitary army, led by loyalist Ernst Rohm; the group was envisioned more as an ideological movement than a political party. From this point, Childers meticulously lays out the conditions that fed the growth of this objectionable group: Hitler's talent for oratory, which won over rich donors; the conservative Catholic Bavarian base that was tolerant of "nationalist-Volkisch extremists of all kinds"; the shocking leniency meted out to him after the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923; the inspired choice of Joseph Goebbels to organize a Nazi propaganda machine, instigating the party rallies and Hitler cult that appealed to disenchanted voters and heavily influenced the breakthrough election of 1930; and, as the author emphasizes, the fatally misdirected backroom connivances by former chancellor Franz von Papen and others, which handed the chancellorship to Hitler in 1933. Once in power, the Nazis ensured with breathtaking rapidity that everything began to "fall in line," with one edict after the other consolidating power and strangling the rights of Jews especially--all facing little resistance by Germans citizens or the rest of the world. An elegantly composed study, important and even timely, given current trends in American and global politics.
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Starred review from September 15, 2017
Historian Childers' comprehensive single-volume history of the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, with decided emphasis on the rise, begins with young Adolf Hitler, a struggling artist, opera fan, and wounded soldier, sublimating his misanthropic urges into politics and discovering a gift for public speaking. Before long, we are deep in the details of the political maneuvering, casual violence, and outright luck that would thrust Hitler and his nascent National Socialist party, still essentially a ragtag bunch of Hitler loyalists, into the German national spotlight. First seizing and then consolidating power, they would then set the wheels of the Nazi war machine into motion, resulting in the most destructive conflict the world has yet known. Drawing in part upon his own previous scholarly work on the Nazi constituency, Childers compellingly describes the appeal of Hitler's strident antidemocratic radicalism to a wide swath of German voters, including veterans, conservatives, and the financially frustrated. Could this sort of thing happen again? Though this concise, considered work can in no way be accused of being framed along current political lines, Childers' answer, suggested in a chapter called Making Germany Great Again and a few other hinted parallels, is clear enough.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
Starred review from September 1, 2017
Not since William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has a comprehensive single-volume history of the regime been released. Historian Childers (history emeritus, Univ. of Pennsylvania; Soldiers from the War Returning) does a magnificent job of balancing many details within an overarching narrative of the Nazis rise to power. Based partly on rarely seen primary documents, Childers's work focuses on the crucial decades of the 1920s and 1930s and touches on several themes. He asserts that Hitler's ascent as leader of the Third Reich was not inevitable and suffered several setbacks, any of which could have ended the Nazi movement. Hitler's anti-Semitism and racial philosophy were the abiding and constant principles of the party's policies. Although the Nazis were repeatedly defeated in the East, the annihilation of Jewish communities continued and even grew in momentum, ending only as Allied forces were within miles of the concentration camps. VERDICT Essential reading for World War II enthusiasts and those interested in the origins of the Nazi Party and the resulting Holocaust. [See Prepub Alert, 5/1/17.]--Chad E. Statler, Lakeland Comm. Coll., Kirtland, OH
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.