On to (the) War!

This morning I (finally) finished the second volume of three on the history of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power (1933-1939) by Richard J.Evans (see my previous post on January 1, 2011). Tomorrow I will return it to the library and hopefully sign out the third (and final) volume of the trilogy. The third volume covers the war years.

Reading this work has been an immense challenge. Despite the author's intention to make this history more "people oriented," it is a rather dry, academic work. It definitely is not as engaging as Ken Burns's PBS documentary on WWII: The War.

A few statistics about volume 2:

• 941 pages.
• 113 pages of "Notes."
• Bibliography is 73 pages long. Many of the works cited are in German.
• 41 pictures on 16 pages(not numbered) divided into 2 sections. Pictures were not cross referenced with the text.
• 22 maps, also not cross referenced with text. Many of these seemed pointless to me because they seemed to be a way to display statistics rather than clarify geographical issues.
• Published 2005 by The Penguin Press (NYC).

A few statistics about my reading:

• Initially signed the book out on August 9, 2010.
• Renewed book at least 7 times.
• Finished (today) January 16, 2011 (i.e., about 5 months).

I tried to read about 15 minutes each morning.

After all this effort on reading about this period in history, I feel kind of numb. The brutality of the Nazis and their control of the population is shocking and frightening. It would be a mistake, I think, to merely chalk up the Nazis as an abberation of evil. After reading these two volumes, I think (hope) I have a better appreciation for the susceptibility of a population to slide into totalitarianism. In this current "war on terror", we need to be very careful if we want to avoid sliding down a similar slope.