“The clearest and most gripping account I’ve read of German life before and during the rise of the Nazis.” —A. S Byatt, Times Literary Supplement

There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans’s history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as it shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian’s art and the book by which all others on the subject will be judged.

Praise

“Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich…gives the clearest and most gripping account I’ve read of German life before and during the rise of the Nazis.” —A. S Byatt, Times Literary Supplement

“Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich is an enormous work of synthesis—knowledgable and reliable.” —Mark Mazower, New York Times Book Review

“[A] first-rate narrative history that informs and educates and may inspire readers to delve even deeper into the subject.” —Booklist

“Brilliant.”–Washington Post

“The generalist reader, it should be emphasized, is well served. …The book reads briskly, covers all important areas—social and cultural—and succeeds in its aim of giving “voice to the people who lived through the years with which it deals.” —Denver Post

“One finally puts down this magnificent volume thirsty, on the one hand, for the next installment in the Nazi saga yet still haunted by the questions Evan poses and so masterfully grapples with.” ―Abraham Brumberg, The Nation

“This first part of what will be Evans’ three-volume history of Hitler’s regime is the most comprehensive and convincing work so far on the gall of Weimar and Hitler’s rise to power.” ―Foreign Affairs

Richard J. Evans was born in London and educated at Oxford University. He has taught at Columbia University and Birkbeck, University of London, and since 2014 has been the Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge. His many publications include an acclaimed three-volume history of the Third Reich and a recent collection of essays, The Third Reich in History and Memory. A Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, he is a past winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and was twice a History Honoree at the Los Angeles Times Book Awards. In 2012 he was appointed Knight Bachelor in the Queen’s birthday honors list, for services to scholarship.