A Concise History of Nazi Germany

Fifth Edition

Joseph W. Bendersky

This balanced history offers a concise, readable introduction to Nazi Germany. Combining compelling narrative storytelling with analysis, Joseph W. Bendersky offers an authoritative survey of the major political, economic, and social factors that powered the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Now in its fifth edition, the book incorporates significant research of recent years, analysis of the politics of memory, postwar German controversies about World War II and the Nazi era, and more on non-Jewish victims. Delving into the complexity of social life within the Nazi state, it also reemphasizes the crucial role played by racial ideology in determining the policies and practices of the Third Reich. Bendersky paints a fascinating picture of how average citizens negotiated their way through both the threatening power behind certain Nazi policies and the strong enticements to acquiesce or collaborate. His classic treatment provides an invaluable overview of a subject that retains its historical significance and contemporary importance.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 280 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-5381-4082-6 • Hardback • September 2020 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-5381-4083-3 • Paperback • September 2020 • $41.00 • (£35.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / Germany, History / Jewish, History / Military / World War II

Courses: History; World History; World War 2, History; Europe; Germany, History; Europe; Holocaust, History; Europe; 20th century

A Concise History of Nazi Germany

Fifth Edition

Hardback

Paperback

Summary

This balanced history offers a concise, readable introduction to Nazi Germany. Combining compelling narrative storytelling with analysis, Joseph W. Bendersky offers an authoritative survey of the major political, economic, and social factors that powered the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Now in its fifth edition, the book incorporates significant research of recent years, analysis of the politics of memory, postwar German controversies about World War II and the Nazi era, and more on non-Jewish victims. Delving into the complexity of social life within the Nazi state, it also reemphasizes the crucial role played by racial ideology in determining the policies and practices of the Third Reich. Bendersky paints a fascinating picture of how average citizens negotiated their way through both the threatening power behind certain Nazi policies and the strong enticements to acquiesce or collaborate. His classic treatment provides an invaluable overview of a subject that retains its historical significance and contemporary importance.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 280 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-5381-4082-6 • Hardback • September 2020 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-5381-4083-3 • Paperback • September 2020 • $41.00 • (£35.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / Germany, History / Jewish, History / Military / World War II

Courses: History; World History; World War 2, History; Europe; Germany, History; Europe; Holocaust, History; Europe; 20th century

Author

Joseph W. Bendersky is professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Chronology
Nazism and the Contemporary World: Meaningful and Dubious Historical Parallels
Part One: The Origins and Development ofNazism, 1919–1928
1 Weimar Democracy in Crisis
2 The Rise of Hitler and Nazism
3 The Historical Roots of Nazi Ideology
4 Party Structure, Propaganda, and Followers during the “Early Years of Struggle”
Part Two: The Seizure and Consolidationof Power, 1929–1934
5 Parliamentary Paralysis and the Nazi Breakthrough of 1930
6 Hitler’s Legal Path to Power
7 The Pseudolegal Revolution
Part Three: The Nazification ofGerman Society, 1934–1938
8 The Total State versus the Dual State and Polycracy
9 Political Biology, Culture, and Society
10 SS Terror, Anti-Semitism, and Resistance to Nazification
Part Four: The Rise and Fall of theNazi Empire in Europe, 1933–1945
11 The Führer as Statesman: Ideology and Foreign Policy
12 The Führer as Warrior: Victory and Conquest
13 From Domination to Retreat
14 The Holocaust, Resistance, and Defeat
Afterword: From Nuremberg to Vergangenheitsbewältigung
Appendix: The Intractable Nazi Legacy in Film: Propaganda and History
Subjects Recommended for Reading and Research
Index
About the Author

Reviews

Those looking for a concise description and explanation of Nazi Germany cannot do better than to read Joseph Bendersky’s book, with its balanced and penetrating new introduction. Bendersky decries loose and polemical analogies based on the Nazi experience. But nazism, he argues, does relate to some anti-democratic and anti-Semitic currents in the twenty-first-century world.

— Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, American University

Widely used in university classrooms, Bendersky’sA Concise History of Nazi Germany has long been a classic text. Based on the latest scholarship, it is a reliable and a very accessible guide through the Nazi regime and its relevance to understanding contemporary challenges.

— Gerald J. Steinacher, University of Nebraska, author of Nazis on the Run

For anyone interested in how a democracy can develop into a brutal dictatorship, this book is indispensable reading. Bendersky provides not only the details but also the analysis and the historical insight that explain the weak points of democracies and the characteristics of totalitarian rule. Both thoughtful and emotionally compelling, this book illuminates with the precision of the specialist and yet the language of the casual reader the everyday decisions that led to the single greatest catastrophe of the modern world.

— David Pan, University of California, Irvine

Those seeking to understand the hows and whys of Hitler’s Third Reich should start here with Joseph Bendersky’s masterful synthesis of the German experience during the 1930s and ‘40s.

— Karl A. Schleunes, University of North Carolina at Greensboro