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Hi all,
I'm looking for books about the Third Reich. I'm currently reading William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. So far it's very focused on Hitler, and I'd like to eventually read some books that have a broader perspective. I may eventually read books on particularly people like Goebbels, but right now I'm more interested in learning about the Third Reich itself, as more of an overview. Anyone have suggestions?

Hi Sophia! I saw this book on one of the lists I get and thought of you. Don't know if you would be interested but check out: " An Uncommon Friendship" by Bernat Rosner. I get many daily lists and will provide you what I find. An Uncommon Friendship: From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust

Schindler's Ark

I recommend Richard J. Evans' 3-parter! I've only finished the middle one, The Third Reich in Power, and this seems perfect for what you're looking for! If you're interested in the build-up to the Third Reich or the Third Reich at War then books 1 and 3 will be great too :)

Here is one not many are aware of.

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields? That does look interesting.

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War is good.

I've heard very good things about Evans' books, need to read those.

Pen & Sword Books Limited is publishing a series of books by people who knew Hitler, for instance: Hitler Was My Friend: The Memoir's Of Hitler's Photographer by Heinrich Hoffmann and introduction by Roger Moorhouse, The Hitler I Knew: Memoirs of the Third Reich's Press Chief by Otto Dietrich, I Was Hitler's Chauffeur: The Memoirs of Erich Kempka, With Hitler to the End: The Memoirs Of Adolf Hitler's Valet by Heinz Linge, and He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Secretary by Christa Schroeder.

Lately I've been reading Hitler's Navy: A Reference Guide to the Kriegsmarine 1935-1945 by Jak P Mallmann Showell

Classic video: Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. I also like Eva Braun's Home Movies in 3 volumes

Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant might be interesting, the movie was anyway.

I know some others but, again, they haven't been translated AFAIK.

Two very good books.

Sophia,

The Night of the Long Knives - Max Gallo

The Nazis - by George Bruce

Hitler's Young Tigers - Rupert Butler - about the Hitler Youth

Curse of the Death's Head - Rupert Butler, about the SS Totenkopf Division

Blitzkrieg - Len Deighton - from the rise of Hitler to the fall of Dunkirk

Linked with blitzkrieg try 'Panzer Leader' by General Heinz Guderian - he gives an insiders view of Hitler & the German High Command.

From a soldiers point of view try
In their shallow graves - Benno Zieser
The Forgotten Soldier - Guy Sajer
Rommel - Ronald Lewin

As Linda mentioned Pen & Sword have a huge number of books about WW2 and the Nazis - I've bought books from them over the years and funny enough they approached me and ended up publishing my own historical novel last year - my own work is not a WW 2 novel.

I read these a long time ago and still have them in my library. There all about the Nazis and the occult.

The Occult Reich
The Occult and the Third Reich: The Mystical Origins of Nazism and the Search for the Holy Grail
Zodiac And Swastika
Hitler, the Occult Messiah

One of my favorites:
The Spear of Destiny

and more recently read
Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler

Tytti wrote: "Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler's Jewish Clairvoyant might be interesting, the movie was anyway.

I know some others but, again, they haven't been translated AFAIK."

Thanks for listing this book. I added it to my to read shelf.

If you want a new perspective which gets behind the rise of the Nazi state and close to Hitler himself, try my new novel Hitler's First Lady, Kindle or paperback. My family had connections which give me insider information so you will find this especially interesting Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Thanks, everyone. I just added a bunch of these titles to my Amazon "History" wish list.

If you want a picture of Hitler that is the opposite of the occult point of view try Ian Kershaw's Hitler in one volume or two. The one-volume edition is on Kindle. Kershaw downplays any charisma or dark powers. He claims that Hitler was rather ordinary except that he had a gift of gab. The society in Germany after World War 1 created him, according to Kershaw, to help get revenge for perceived national humiliation. In other words Hitler was in the right place at the right time, or at the wrong time considering how things turned out

Mr. Shirer's Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-41 is also a good read.

Linda. You are right about Ian Kershaw. Where my novel, Hitler's First Lady, offers an extra dimension is that it is based upon the experience of those who were part of the secret inner circle closest to Hitler, about which little to nothing has been written down to provide a basis for research in the conventional way. So it is a useful addition to the reading programme.

As a child I grew up on the battlefields of the German War, with my parents demanded their home to open to the German soldiers who were fighting, we fed and housed them, and our job as children were to collect the military dog tags off the dead German soldiers body.

No child should see such trauma. It's all in my book, memoir titled "The Chocolate Bar". A journey of life & war.... Author, Agathe von Kampen

Sophia wrote: "Hi all,
I'm looking for books about the Third Reich. I'm currently reading William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. So far ..."

Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is a bit of a dense read. I believe it was part of his thesis for Harvard, or something like that. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating read offering an unique perspective. Definitely worth adding to any Third Reich history library.

I've heard of Goldhagen's book, actually. I understand it refutes Christopher R. Browning's book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, which I read for a class some years ago. Browning argues that many of the genocidaires of the Holocaust were ordinary men who did what they did not so much out of ideology but more due to pressures of social psychology. For instance, one would kill so as not to force one's comrades to have to do one's share of the killing. I gather Goldhagen makes a case for how antisemitism really was the driving force... though I haven't looked at his book so I may be remembering that wrong.

Sophia wrote: "I've heard of Goldhagen's book, actually. I understand it refutes Christopher R. Browning's book, [book:Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland|64..."

It's been a while since I read Goldhagen's book, but that is the premise. Antisemitism had been such a part of the fabric of German lives from the 19th and into the 20th century that it wasn't hard for the average German person to believe that the Jews were a blight on their society. What Hitler and his cronies managed to do, however, was to get many of the ordinary citizens to either participate or at least tolerate him taking the solution to the ultimate conclusion. Of course, there are many books written, and understanding the many complex reasons as to why the holocaust took place, will always be up for debate. I'll have to seek out Ordinary Men for a differing perspective.

This may seem simplistic, but for those of us interested in understanding the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and have read extensively on the subject, are we judged? I was reading a book on the Nazis and the Occult and someone I knew very well for years questioned my motives. I've seen individuals looking at a book shelf in my home and seeing books on the same, and having this look on their face as if I'm reading those books because I'm a fan of the Nazis and agree with them. Sure they're beside books on Abraham Lincoln and the Beatles, yet still people look at you funny as if questioning your motives for reading such books. Has anyone else run up against this?

David wrote: "This may seem simplistic, but for those of us interested in understanding the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and have read extensively on the subject, are we judged? I was reading a book on the..."

What an interesting question! I'm only just really getting into the subject of the Nazis and the Holocaust, but I've been studying genocides for a long time. I spent a good deal of time on the Rwanda genocide, for instance, as well as the Armenian genocide. I think I've mostly only talked about my reading to fellow history students so aside from the occasional wince, I haven't run into a lot of negative feedback. But then, I also teach at the high school level and often wonder what my students must think about my courses.

David wrote: "This may seem simplistic, but for those of us interested in understanding the atrocities committed by the Nazis, and have read extensively on the subject, are we judged?"

Well I have to admit I do find it a bit... interesting, at least if there is no personal connection. There seem to be a lot of Nazi literature written in English (at least when compared to Stalin/Soviet literature), not so much in other languages. Personally for me it's enough that I know about them but I don't want to read Holocaust novels, for example. But of course I am interested in Stalin's Purges, I guess mainly because he did such a good job killing my ethnic group.

One of the most perplexing aspects of monstrous crimes such as genocide is that they are perpetrated by people who in all other respects are quite ordinary and unexceptional. My portrait of Hitler in Hitler's First Lady seeks to convey this. It makes such people all the more frightening because they can emerge at any time. They are not just freaks of history.

Tytti wrote: "Well I have to admit I do find it a bit... interesting, at least if there is no personal connection."

I think sometimes something just sticks for someone. I have a friend who reads all about the war in Vietnam, though she has no personal connection. It just pushes her buttons for some reason. I've thought about why I'm so taken with genocide, though no one in my family was ever a victim or perpetrator (that I know of). I'm not sure. It's not out of voyeurism, though. I avoid photos and descriptions as much as I can as they make me sick. It's more that I believe sometimes the only justice you can give to people is to remember them.

I do think it's possible to read about the Holocaust because in a way, it's titillating. I've met people who are not so much sickened by horrors as entertained by them. Actually, if I'm going to be honest, I remember being thirteen and touring the tower of London and really enjoying looking at all the torture devices there, so I certainly went through a phase like that. But I also think a lot of people are fascinated by the nature of evil, and that's not really the same thing. To try to understand evil is to try to understand one aspect of humanity.

Sophia wrote: "I think sometimes something just sticks for someone."

I can understand that, after reading Gone with the Wind I was interested in the American Civil War. (I was eleven.) And I am interested in all wars, mainly because they are like turning points in history. And of course torturing devices are interesting, luckily those in Tower haven't been used in recent years...

I guess my pet peeve with the interest in Holocaust is simply that Stalin's crimes don't get nearly as much attention. I can't read anything about the Nuremberg trials because I get so angry that one of the judges was from the Soviet Union, it just makes me sick, knowing all the women they raped and the civilians they killed, even children, the deportations... And then I read comments from history majors who hadn't even heard of Purges or the annexation of the Baltic countries and even claim that they haven't been known about until recently. Well we knew about them.

And calling Stalin's Terror/Purges as "the Holocaust"? What is that about? One even said that Soviets and Nazis can be used interchangeably, they were taught that they were the same thing? The troubling part was that she was American, so Stalin of course was her country's ally...

Sophia wrote: "Tytti wrote: "Well I have to admit I do find it a bit... interesting, at least if there is no personal connection."

I think sometimes something just sticks for someone. I have a friend who reads a..."

I have no personal connection with genocide myself, but as you stated, I think some moments in history just capture our attention and that's that. I've just found that that interest can bring about judgement from people who do think you're finding some kind of thrill out of it. It's important to try and understand history, both the good and the bad.

For further reading, I'd suggest Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth and The Healing Wound by Gitta Sereny. I have Into That Darkness, but have yet to read it. I find her work in this area interesting.

I also visited the Tower of London and took in the exhibits. That, and many of the things I've read in history books led me to believe that the author Bret Easton Ellis was unfairly judged when he released American Psycho, a fictional tale of a serial killer. People questioned how could he come up with such perverse and sick ways for his character to kill. They figured he must be a sicko. The real answer is, all he had to be was well read on the history of humankind. All the sickness, all the atrocities, well, they're there. Those of us drawn to trying to understand that darkness, we might be fighting a losing battle, but you're right about one thing, it's victims do deserve to be remembered, their suffering never forgotten.

Sophia wrote: "Hi all,
I'm looking for books about the Third Reich. I'm currently reading William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. So far ..."

I suggest anything by Laurence Rees, whose works you can read about here on GR. He is open-eyed.