Breaking personal myths and totalitarian stereotypes, revealing the rise and fall of the Third Reich.
Taking into account the decisions made by the upper class and the real voices of the people at the bottom, a panoramic historical scene is constructed.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the coalition government by President Hindenburg. Within months, he established a dictatorship, jailed and killed his political opponents, terrorized people who did not support him, and drove Jews out of public life. He launched a military Keynesian contingency plan to revive the economy and achieve full employment through massive public works, huge arms spending, and cancellation of foreign debt. After surviving the harsh years of the Great Depression, Germany seemed to have been reborn as a ruthless and determined European power.
From 1933 to 1939, Hitler won the support of the majority of the country's population. While he was victorious at home, Hitler adopted a cunning strategy of pitting neighboring countries against each other, biding his time, and ultimately launching a full-scale attack on Poland in 1939. In early 1940, Germany was at the peak of its power. Many key battles and events occurred in the following years, and the Third Reich experienced a series of political, diplomatic, economic, and military developments and defeats. In May 1945, Hitler died and Nazi Germany suffered a defeat.
Professor Frank McDonald collected numerous documents including speeches, newspapers, government documents, party records, army memoranda, SS and Foreign Ministry documents, war trial evidence, witness interviews, diaries and memoirs. In chronological order, he told in detail how Hitler's rule evolved and how the Third Reich evolved from its rise to its fall. With an objective and comprehensive attitude, he restored a real Hitler through the interaction of numerous documents and materials, revealed the complicated political disputes, diplomatic evolution and cruel national conflicts behind the Third Reich, and depicted the dramatic changes in the fate of the Third Reich.
