A Concise History of Nazi Germany

Those looking for a concise description and explanation of Nazi Germany cannot do better than to read Joseph Bendersky’s book, with its balanced and penetrating new introduction. Bendersky decries loose and polemical analogies based on the Nazi experience. But nazism, he argues, does relate to some anti-democratic and anti-Semitic currents in the twenty-first-century world. -- Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, American University
Widely used in university classrooms, Bendersky’sA Concise History of Nazi Germany has long been a classic text. Based on the latest scholarship, it is a reliable and a very accessible guide through the Nazi regime and its relevance to understanding contemporary challenges. -- Gerald J. Steinacher, University of Nebraska, author of Nazis on the Run
For anyone interested in how a democracy can develop into a brutal dictatorship, this book is indispensable reading. Bendersky provides not only the details but also the analysis and the historical insight that explain the weak points of democracies and the characteristics of totalitarian rule. Both thoughtful and emotionally compelling, this book illuminates with the precision of the specialist and yet the language of the casual reader the everyday decisions that led to the single greatest catastrophe of the modern world. -- David Pan, University of California, Irvine
Those seeking to understand the hows and whys of Hitler’s Third Reich should start here with Joseph Bendersky’s masterful synthesis of the German experience during the 1930s and ‘40s. -- Karl A. Schleunes, University of North Carolina at Greensboro