The Nazi Years: A Documentary History

by Joachim Remak

The Nazi Years brings together documents that tell the whole essential story of National Socialism, from its obscure ideological beginnings to its seizure of power to the exercise of that power in Germany and abroad—to the bitter end of the Third Reich. Historian Joachim Remak has collected, and has introduced with illuminating commentaries, key letters, speeches, memoirs, political tracts, secret memos and tabulations—written by the actors, victims, or simple witnesses of the time. Here is the fanatical enthusiasm of dedicated Nazis as revealed in their own writings—a catalog of anti-Semitism and propaganda, volkisch idealism and pan-Germanism, ideas of "natural selection" and "race eugenics." Here too is the history of sincere but ill-fated resistance to Nazism by church people and plain citizens, of the anti-Nazi underground, and of Count von Stauffenberg's plot to assassinate Hitler. Now available from Waveland Press, these vivid accounts by Germans at every level of society and of every political and moral persuasion provide a shattering view of one of the most terrible, tempestuous periods of modern history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

178 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1969

Reviews

[Inkworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found the paperback in a Savers and bought it because I just finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer. This is a great supplemental text to the people, places and events which comprised the Third Reich. It was an easy and enjoyable read.

[Bethany DuVal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating collection of writings leading up to and during Nazi Germany. There are excerpts from letters, articles, secret instructions, speeches, a resistance pamphlet and more.

The author does a great job of getting at the GOOD things Germans would have seen in Hitler’s rule in the beginning and how people assumed that his more extreme views would never be applied.

Throughout the book, I found myself reflecting on my own attitudes and the culture around me. It’s so easy to say, “I would never fall for that,” and yet the tactics used by Hitler and his followers will be very familiar to anyone who has been in a high-control group or who simply pays attention to modern politics.

This is my second reading of the book. I wanted to find a quote that has stuck with me from my first reading. It comes from the Journal of the SS, and I think of it every time Christians talk about how the Church needs to be more masculine:

"Who is there among us who does not, deep in his heart—provided he can still feel with his blood—have a profound , a strangely haunting sense of shame when, walking though the German countryside, ... he comes across a picture of the crucified Jesus.

"The gods of our ancestors look different. They were men, and had a weapon in their hand, symbolizing the attitude to life that is innate to our race—that of action, that of a man's responsibility for himself. How different the pale crucified one, expressing by his passive attitude and by his decided look of suffering, humility and an extreme of self-surrender, both qualities which contradict the basically heroic attitude of our race."