We understand Adolf Hitler and the rise and fall of Nazi Germany far better than we did 25 years ago, and that is due largely to the work of the British historian Richard J. Evans. His magisterial trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War, is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the forces that shaped the world between the end of World War I and 1945. Evans is a wonderful stylist as well as a keen analyst, and in his latest book, Hitler’s People, he deftly focuses on the personalities and temperaments of those who fell under the sway of Nazism and abetted the most evil regime in modern history. Any reader will come away wiser about the Third Reich, if still confounded that it existed at all.
Jim Kelly: For many decades, most historians of Nazi Germany have tended to focus on the country’s institutions and traditions and even German citizens themselves to explain what you call “this darkest of all chapters in modern history.” The biographical approach of examining Hitler and his lieutenants was downplayed lest it look like all blame was being placed on just a few. That has now changed. Why?
