There are so many histories of the Third Reich that it’s impossible for the common reader to have read even a small proportion of them. Although there is a great body of work, important research continues into many aspects of Nazism, and a general history like this is the only way one can stay reasonably up to date.
The Third Reich at War is the final part of Evans’s monumental three part history that has emerged over the past few years or so. This is by far the largest volume, and covers the period from the Germans’ invasion of Poland to their final capitulation in Berlin. One of the areas that he devotes more time to than most historians is the T4 euthanasia programme, and there are compelling individual stories brought to the surface, including intended victims who were saved due to courageous interventions by their families and others.
Many aspects of the narrative are of course very familiar, but what is new, to me at least, is the wealth of individual testimony that Evans brings to the surface. I’ve not read a general history of Nazi Germany that spends such a great deal of time dealing with the effects of the war on Germans themselves. He doesn’t stint on military detail – quite the opposite – but he’s at his best when using the particular to inform the general.
His account of the military campaigns, from Barbarossa to the Ardennes is impeccable. Again, we are given a view of the life of the German solider as well as the macro-history of the war. As with so many aspects of the war, it is in the sheer numbers of people affect and lives lost that the true story lies. Although we can learn from individuals’ accounts, we must never lose sight of the immensity of the catastrophe.
While the account of the fighting is of course central to the book, it is the account of the Holocaust that is most memorable and harrowing. In particular, I will particularly remember – with utter horror – Evans’s account of the Operation Reinhard camps (i.e. Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Majdanek) and the sheer industrial scale of the slaughter. These camps accounted for a third of the Holocaust’s victims, yet they operated for only a little more than two years. Unlike Auschwitz they did not have a work camp attached to them – at its height, Auschwitz was the size of a large town – and thus were conceived solely for the purpose of extermination.
Evans’s descriptions of these camps are precise, and to the extent that this is possible, resist hyperbole. The problem is that the scale and monstrosity of the crime is such that even stating the plain facts is enough to stupefy one. Even a familiarity with the facts of the Holocaust does not prepare one for reading about it. It is a subject that we must never lose site of, or stop studying, no matter how distasteful such study is. Once learned, the sheer depravity, cruelty and barbarism that was possible under cover of war never leaves one’s memory. Evans’s account is the most powerful, wide-ranging and accurate account I have read.
This being a book by a British historian, one was keen to know how he treated the terror bombing of German cities in late 1944 and early 1945 – in particular the bombing of Dresden. He provides some anecdotal evidence that these raids had their desired effect of destroying morale, undermining faith in the Nazi leadership still further and driving workers from their factories. But there can be no doubt that the Allied raids were themselves a war crime, and a brutal scar on the moral superiority of the victorious powers. It’s shameful that the bombings still find their apologists in Britain, and while Evans goes further than most British historians, he is still rather dilatory in criticising Bomber Command and the Allied leadership. He seems content to relate the story in terms of statistics, which are horrifying enough, but is unwilling to back them up with outright condemnation.
This one criticism apart, this is an exemplary account of the Nazis at war, and the catastrophe that engulfed the whole of Europe and beyond. It is both detailed and sweeping, using specific contemporary accounts to balance the larger scale military context. It serves as an excellent general history for both experts and the general reader alike.
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