The Third Reich in Power

Every two years I teach a Learning Expedition about the Holocaust. In between I like to read another handful of books about the topic (broadened out to include WW2 and other context-building avenues).

I use what I learn to think about revamping both the Expedition and its arts-integrated final product. And now the school year looms so I'm busy churning over changes and refinements



I just finished Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich in Power, and as was the case with its predecessor The Coming of the Third Reich I cannot imagine another more comprehensive and yet engaging history of this place and time period appearing in my lifetime. The level of detail marshalled, the attention to different social strata and regions, the careful coaching of readers through complex contextual matters...it doesn't get better than this. The index alone runs to nearly 150 pages, and is a valuable resource for further teaching materials and research.

In class we'll have to approach Trump's radical faux populism and demagoguery a bit...the kids can decide if he is really a fascist or not.

Book #2 of 2015

I've read and enjoyed a couple dozen books about WW2 and/or its key figures. This is one of the best, penned by a skeptical, analytic historian, a very careful and methodical researcher who doesn't make claims without first tracking down all available accounts and assessing the deviations. And yet Trevor-Roper is never dull--he's scathingly funny in his descriptions of Nazi Court insiders like Himmler and Goering, and his writing about Speer contains the finest analysis of that troubling figure I've encountered. This little book about the last days in that Berlin Bunker is a classic. Highly recommended, but mostly for readers with a more than casual interest in the subject.