Praise for the first 'This is an important new textbook on the Nazi period which is geared to intermediate and advanced undergraduates and will also interest general audiences ... this book is a real winner and deserves wide use.' - Bruce Campbell, German Studies Review 'An excellent job... provides a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of the origins of National Socialism in Germany, Hitler's rise to power, and the nature of the Nazi regime after 1933... no small achievement.' - David Crew, University of Texas, Austin Hitler’s Germany provides a comprehensive narrative history of Nazi Germany and sets it in the wider context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history. Roderick Stackelberg analyzes how it was possible that a national culture of such creativity and achievement could generate such barbarism and destructiveness. This second edition has been updated throughout to incorporate recent historical research and engage with current debates in the field. It includes Exploring the controversies surrounding Nazism and its afterlife in historiography and historical memory, Hitler’s Germany provides students with an interpretive framework for understanding this extraordinary episode in German and European history.
Educated at Harvard (AB 1956), the University of Vermont (MA 1972), and the University of Massachusetts (PhD 1974), Dr. Stackelberg retired in 2004 as Professor of History Emeritus after a thirty-year teaching career at Gonzaga University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and reviews in scholarly journals.
Clear and digestible historiography of Nazi Germany and its ideological and material origins in German historic development. Detailed account of how Hitler took power (or was rather given it) by the German elite in order to prevent a socialist revolution and how their shortsightedness allowed the Nazis to take total power and start a world war.
This struck a cord, coming from a (partly) German-Canadian family:
"If freedom to walk on the grass, for example, illustrates the Western conception of freedom from government regulation or control, then not wanting to walk on the grass epitomized the German notion of what it means to be truly free."
A very good book on German political and socio-economic landscape over past century and half. It answers a lot of of questions about the reasons and causes of the rise of Nazism and puts their policies in perspective. Note: Although WW2 is part of the overall narration in specific chapters, it is not a book on war details - which is presumed.
I used this book for background information for a paper. I really liked the layout, the information was well written and concise. It paints a very good picture of the atmosphere in Germany prior to World War I through the end of World War II.