A State of Evil

Review by BRIAN LADD

Published: December 18, 2005

HISTORIANS of Nazi Germany know they will be measured against the remarkable success of William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," a 1,200-page doorstop that has been selling briskly for four and a half decades. Shirer's tale of a titanic struggle between good and evil, peppered with sneering characterizations of Nazi bigwigs, has long been the bane of history professors. As a Berlin-based journalist in the 1930's, he watched the crowds cheer Hitler, and came away with a rather sour opinion of Germans in general. He presents Hitler as "but a logical continuation of German history," the culmination of an authoritarian tradition that encompassed Luther, Hegel and Nietzsche, among many others.

Most scholars have little patience with attempts to explain history through national character. According to Richard J. Evans, a professor of modern history at Cambridge University, the Nazis' use of German symbols and traditions should not distract us from the frighteningly modern character of their regime. Of course it was suited to Germany - it could not have functioned otherwise - but to say this does little to explain its horrors.