Nazi Germany Confronting the Myths

by Epstein, Catherine A.

• ISBN13: 9781118294796
• ISBN10: 1118294793
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-01-27
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths provides a concise and compelling introduction to the Third Reich.  At the same time, it challenges and demystifies the many stereotypes surrounding Hitler and Nazi Germany.

• Creates a succinct, argument-driven overview for students by using common myths and stereotypes to encourage critical engagement with the subject
• Provides an up-to-date historical synthesis based on the latest research in the field
• Argues that in order to fully understand and explain this period of history, we need to address its seeming paradoxes – for example, questioning why most Germans viewed the Third Reich as a legitimate government, despite the Nazis’ criminality
• Incorporates useful study features, including a timeline, glossary, maps, and illustrations

Author Biography

Catherine Epstein is Dean of the Faculty and Professor of History at Amherst College.  She is the prize-winning author of Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (2010).  Her previous publications also include A Past Renewed: A Catalog of German-Speaking Refugee Historians in the United States After 1933 (1993) and The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and their Century (2003).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Preface x

1 Germany before 1933 1

2 Hitler and the Nazi Movement 21

3 The Nazi Party-State 45

4 The Racial State 69

5 Nazi Germany in the 1930s: A Popular Regime? 97

6 War and Occupation, 1939–1941 123

7 Genocide 149

8 Total War, 1942–1945 179

Epilogue 211

Abbreviations and Glossary 223

Timeline 225

Index 229