Nilesh Rathod's Reviews > The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

History is written by the victors. This humongous volume of historical treasure oodles out time and again with the sense of this understanding in how the author tries to influence the interpretation of the facts of the narrative, which otherwise are largely drawn from documented evidence and testimonies of those who survived to live the story.

That in my opinion is the only negative one can draw from this book. On dwelling further as to why the author would do such a thing, I quickly understand that he lived those years in the thick of the National Socialist Empire and would naturally be drawn easily to lend his mind to the narrative and therefore I cannot entirely blame him for doing so.

On a factual stand-point, the author has spent enough time, almost 3 volumes of the 7 before he reaches the Nazi war. He has explained in detail the circumstances that lead to the ascent of Hitler, The Nazi Party, The National Socialist movement and even some of the other key players who had decisive roles in shaping the 21st century. The well researched and vivid accounts do give a precise answer to some extent the mindset which led to the larger German people to fall for their claims and later for the propaganda which led to the firm belief in Hitler and his ways. That explains to some extent why the larger German population could have fallen for a tyrant like Hitler. This incidentally was one of the biggest questions I seek an answer from this book.

The role of the rest of the world in avoiding an armed conflict and delaying it to a time so late that if Hitler wouldn’t have made some of the military blunders he did; history would have taken a different turn today. The author brilliantly explains the advances and the mistakes of both the Allied powers and the Axis powers and how their gains and failures contributed to this conflict. There are lessons to be learnt for all powers from this debacle. Human mind will never change, the self-centered foreign policy of nations without a thought for a unified world peace and united only in their greed led to the war in the first place. Have led to the ones before this and will lead to the ones after this.

Almost 80 years hence, we see this in every sphere of our world, if we don’t learn from the lessons of this war, earth would be subjected to another war and bloodier than any other in the past annihilating vast spheres of population and land in a whiff. The 2nd world war took a few years to achieve a fraction of that, the 3rd will be finished in a blink of an eye and there would remain nothing to defend. The narration gives an uncompromising example of how human shortsightedness led to total disaster, again and again and will do once again.

Lastly while the narrative of the actual combat and its follies or victories are mostly stated facts and interested me only that much, the ideology that led to the retributions and the reprisals unleashing a war of annihilation with scorched earth policies, the gas chambers, the Einsatzgruppen SS, mass execution of captured forces and so forth are what made me think.

While these horrors were unleashed by both sides and there is enough evidence that exists elsewhere of those too, the author here only speaks of those unleashed by the Nazis. I would pardon that because this book is not about the second world war but about the Nazis. I believe it is this reason why the book has been by several reviewers called one-sided and biased.

To summarize my view, if there is one book that must be read to understand the mindset behind a regime and a tyrant one on that, your search would end here. A must read for every human capable of doing so.