Nazi Germany

The history of National Socialism as movement and regime remains one of the most compelling and intensively studied aspects of twentieth-century history, and one whose significance extends far beyond Germany or even Europe alone. This volume presents an up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the history of Nazi Germany, with ten chapters on the most important themes, each by an expert in the field. Following an introduction which sets out the challenges this period of history has posed to historians since 1945, contributors explain how Nazism emerged as ideology and political movement; how Hitler and his party took power and remade the German state; and how the Nazi 'national community' was organized around a radical and eventually lethal distinction between the 'included' and the 'excluded'. Further chapters discuss the complex relationship between Nazism and Germany's religious faiths;the perverse economic rationality of the regime; the path to war laid down by Hitler's foreign policy; and the intricate and intimate intertwining of war and genocide, with a final chapter on the aftermath of National Socialism in postwar German history and memory.

Excellent...work of exceptional quality. It is difficult to think of a better guide to Nazi Germany (even in German). It should gain an immediate place at the top of all reading lists., In a brief format it provides a broad, state-of-the-art picture of Nazi Germany. The editor and the authors deserve credit for this service to scholars and teachers of the field., Jane Caplan's book encompasses overviews on the most important topics on an up-to-date level by experts who have established reputations from major research publications on their area...in their effort to combine precise information with balanced reflection of historical perspectives, most of those chapters achieve a remarkably high level of density while still being readable. This is no small achievement., Caplan and her team of authors have succeeded in producing an extremely useful volume, which will definitely become standard reading for all university courses on National Socialism.

Jane Caplan is a Professor of Modern European History and a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. She has worked mainly on the history of Nazi Germany. Her current research interests include the history of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and the documentation of individual identity in 19th-century Europe, especially the written and visual marks of identity on and of the body. She is executive editor of New German Historical Perspectives, and a memberof the editorial board of History Workshop Journal.