Postwar historians like A.J.P. Taylor placed the rise of Nazism in the context of the spread of totalitarian governments across Europe, arguing that the course of European history made it inevitable. Evans’s detailed, unflinching narrative, which covers the period up to the summer of 1933, argues that the conditions in each country that gave rise to such tyranny varied markedly–and that in Germany, at least, Hitler could have been stopped at every key moment.
Evans doesn’t shirk from the uncomfortable conclusions his research yields. Watching the Nazis take over during the spring of 1933, lawyer Raimund Pretzel wondered why there were no protests from the 56 percent of Germans who voted against them. “The simplest and–if you looked deeper, nearly always–the most basic reason was fear,” Pretzel wrote. “Join the thugs to avoid being beaten up.” Though it’s been argued that political apathy brought Hitler to power, Evans suggests that electoral turnouts were good and that citizens were, in fact, highly aware. German history didn’t make Nazism inevitable. But Hitler’s policies did alleviate the humiliation caused by the Treaty of Versailles, which confiscated 13 percent of Germany’s land. The violence that erupted on the streets as parliamentary authority was destroyed–and the shouts of “Death to the Jews!” were largely ignored because many thought they would eventually be quelled. Evans notes that a bibliography of books on Nazism currently lists 37,000 works. But his thoughtful take clearly justifies one more.
