Richard Evans's history of the Third Reich - it will be completed by a third volume covering the war - is an invaluable work of synthesis. The mass of specialist studies we now have makes a general history all the more useful, and not only, as Evans suggests, for those who know little about the subject. Evans, a social historian, aims to cover 'not only politics, diplomacy and military affairs but also society, the economy, racial policy, police and justice, literature, culture and the arts . . . to bring these together and to show how they were related.'

LRB 19 July 2007 | PDF Download