Southern Ann Arbor, October, 1951. Jefferson Avenue in foreground

Southern Ann Arbor, October 1951. Jefferson Avenue in the foreground, Packard runs off Main Street at an angle, past Perry School.

Snowy winter in Louisa County Iowa, 1929

A Vintage United State Photo

Kanas City Missouri

The Wright brothers set up a workshop at Kill Devil Hills, above the beach at Kitty Hawk in September 1900. They assembled their first glider there.

Augustus Waller was demonstrating his capillary electrometer to the Royal Society in London in 1887.

Augustus Waller was demonstrating his capillary electrometer to the Royal Society in London in 1887. To the enormous relief of the assembled luminaries, his dog Jimmy, who had one front and one back paw immersed in a saline solution containing the electrodes, was not electrocuted.

The rugged motorcycle and sidecar, which could negotiate all terrains, saw widespread service in both world wars.

England Cricketer David Gower in 1980

Sidecar in early 19th century.

Chief Abushiri - A leader of coastal resistance to German and British Coloniation in East Africa in 1888-89

Add caption

The site of battle of Isandhlwana 1879 a Zulu victory over British Forces

Who is Mao Tse-tung?

The leader of some 700,000,000 Chinese is Mao Tse-tung Chairman of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China. A soldier, politician, poet, and scholar, he is considered by many as the leading interpreter of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Himself of peasant origin, Mao has deviated from orthodox Marxism by placing the peasantry rather than the urban proletariat in the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle, in accordance with existing realities in China.

Like many of the Chinese Communist leaders, Mao Tse-tung came from an area of Central China where militarism had made itself most harshly felt, where relations between landlords and peasants were at their worst, and where Western ideas were looked upon with disfavor. He was born on December 26, 1893, in the village of Shao Shan in Hsiang T'an county of Hunan province, the eldest of four children of Mao Jensheng.

His mother's family name was Wen. He had two brothers: Tse-min (who died in a Nationalist prison in 1941) and Tse-t'an (who was killed in the early 1930s); and one sister. His father, once a poor peasant, paid off his debts after serving in the army.  And gradually acquired three and a half acres of land and a rice-trading business. He treated his family and his servants harshly, providing them with only the barest means of sustenance. Mao's mother, a devout Buddhist, gave charity to the poor behind her husband's back and hoped that her son might eventually enter the priesthood.

Mao Tse-tung a frail child, began to work in his father's fields at seven and sympathized with his father's farm laborers and with the p. a city-ridden but rebellious peasants Hunan. In his youth he engaged in a "dialectical struggle" against the authority of his father, forming a "united front" with the other members of his family. On at least two occasions he ran away from home. Entering the local private elementary school at the age of eight, Mao studied the Confucian classics but grew to dislike Confucius, whom he identified with the authoritarianism of his father and his teachers. He much preferred the romantic novels of ancient China.

After completing elementary school at thirteen he returned to the farm, where he helped his father with accounts. In September 1907 Mao entered middle school at Hsianghsiang, fifteen miles from home, with the reluctant approval of his father, who wanted to apprentice him to a rice merchant. At the school, he studied science and other modem subjects and came into contact with the ideas of the reform movement of K'ang Yu-Wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, who sought to modernize the Manchu dynasty.

During vacations, Mao and a schoolmate became wandering scholars, exposing their bodies to the elements and earning their way by writing scrolls. In 1911 Mao entered secondary school at Changsha, where he wrote anti-Manchu political essays. Although he had not yet fully accepted the policies of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary Kuomintang movement, he decided in late 1911 to join the Nationalist regular army, where he served as an orderly to the younger officers.

He was discharged in the summer of 1912. In late 1912 Mao, who no longer received an allowance from home, entered the tuition-free teachers' training college at Changsha, and remained for six years. There he first became influenced by Socialist writings, although his understanding of Socialism was superficial. He also founded the New People's Study Organization, many of whose members later joined the Communist movement. Graduating in 1918, shortly after his mother's death, Mao did not return home but went to Peiping, where he helped to organize a "work and learn" program for students who wished to study in France.

Subsequently, he took a menial position as an assistant at the Peiping L^niversity library while studying in his spare time. During this period, he had no great ambition and would have been satisfied with eventually taking a minor government post. In 1919 he returned to Hunan province, where he edited the Hsiang River Monthly Review, and organized Hunanese students in an effort to overthrow a corrupt military governor.

In 1920 he became a teacher in the first normal school at Changsha. Having in the meantime become a convinced Marxist, Mao was caught up in the May Fourth movement, which originated in student demonstrations in Peiping on May 4, 1919, that protesting against the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that granted Japan the former German concessions in China.

This movement formed the core of the Chinese Communist Party, which held its founding congress in Shanghai in the summer of 1921. Mao, representing a small group of Communists in Hunan, was one of the twelve founding members of the party. The congress rejected affiliation with the Communist International in Moscow, and it was not until 1922 that the party established formal relations with the Comintern. After the founding congress, Mao returned to Hunan, where he set up the provincial branch of the Communist party and organized several trade unions.

After the Communist party decided, in 1923, to collaborate closely with the Kuomintang in a united front against the northern militarists, Mao became a member of the Kuomintang, while continuing to serve as a member of the central committee of the Communist party. He was regarded at this time as representing the extreme right-wing of the Communist party. He continued to be active in both the Communist Party and the Kuomintang until 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek's massacre of the Shanghai workers brought about the break between the two parties.

In the spring of 1925, Mao had come to recognize the potential revolutionary role of the peasants and began to organize peasant unions in Hunan. In 1927, under party instructions, he wrote Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan, ascribing a central role to the peasantry in the revolutionary class struggle. At first, the report was tabled by the central committee of the party, but later in the year, it was published in the central party organ.

In September 1927 Mao led some 2,000 Hunan peasants in the abortive Autumn Harvest Uprising, and he was removed from his Politburo position and from the Hunan provincial committee. He then retreated with the remnants of his forces to Chingkanshan mountain in Kiangsi province, where he was joined in April 1928 by Chu Teh, a former warlord who had gone over to the Communists. Together they established the Fourth Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, with Mao as political commissar and Chu Teh as a military commander. During his years in the mountains, Mao continued to develop the tactics of guerilla warfare.

In November 1931 the first national congress of Soviets was held at Juichin in Kiangsi province, marking the formal establishment of the China Soviet Republic, and Mao was elected chairman of the provisional Soviet government. Meanwhile, in late 1930, Chiang Kai-shek had begun his "extermination campaigns" against the Communists. Four of these campaigns were successfully repulsed by the Red armies, but in the fifth campaign, which took up the greater part of 1934, the Communist forces were severely defeated.

In October 1934 the Communists, pressed by Kuomintang forces, began their long march some 6,000 miles northward from Kiangsi to Shensi province. This legendary march was marked by heroism on the part of the Red forces, only a fraction of whom survived. In its course, Mao greatly increased his stature, and at the party conference held at Tsunyi in Kweichow province from December 1934 to January 1935, his authority was virtually unchallenged. Arriving at northern Shensi province in October 1935, Mao re-established the Soviet Republic of China, with headquarters first at Pao An and later at Yenan.

Meanwhile, the pressure of the Japanese, who had invaded Manchuria in 1931, was mounting, and in March 1936 Mao called for an anti-Japanese united front with the Kuomintang. As a result of Mao's efforts, an agreement was reached in the spring of 1937 after the Communists had pledged to abandon the agrarian revolution. During the Japanese war, Mao lived in a cave in Yenan, where he raised his own tobacco and spent his nights studying and writing political essays. By 1938 he was universally recognized as the authoritative leader and theoretician of the Communist movement.

His primer on guerilla warfare was published in 1937. In the New Democracy (1940) Mao justified the compromise between the Kuomintang and the Communists and depicted democracy as an interim stage between feudalism and Socialism. In Coalition Government (1945) he called for a government reflecting the will of the people. Although Mao had acquired a reputation of being merely an agrarian reformer, in practice he tended to be increasingly influenced by the policies of Stalin.

From 1942 to 1944 he instituted a far-reaching "rectification" program aimed at tightening party discipline and purging undesirable elements. At the seventh party congress, in April 1945, Mao was elected chairman of the central committee and of the revolutionary military council. When the war with Japan ended in August 1945 the Communists were in a strong position. For a time, they made attempts to reach an agreement with the Kuomintang.

Following a conference between Mao and Chiang Kai-shek shortly after the Japanese surrender, Mao complained about some bitterness that Chiang had treated him "like a peasant." Mao was said to have been strongly criticized, in late 1945, by some of the more radical elements of his party for his willingness to grant too many concessions to the Kuomintang in the effort to form a coalition government. During this period, he was still looked upon by many Western observers as an agrarian reformer with strong democratic tendencies.

After the Failure of efforts by General George C. Marshall, representing the United States government, to bring about a coalition government, the civil war resumed in the summer of 1946. The Communists constantly increased the number of their peasant adherents by promising them land redistribution. When the Red armies crossed the Yangtse River on April 21, 1949, the end of Kuomintang rule on the Chinese mainland was in sight. A few months later Mao Tsetung was virtually the supreme ruler of China.

On October 1, 1949, a week and a half after the republic had been proclaimed by the Chinese people's political consultative conference, Mao Tse-tung was elected chairman of the new central people's government, and an organic law and common program were adopted. In December 1949 Mao left China for the first time to visit Moscow for Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's seventieth birthday.

The visit resulted in the negotiation, in February 1950, of a thirty-year treaty of "friendship, alliance, and mutual assistance" between China and the Soviet Union. On the domestic scene, Mao proceeded with great vigor to transform the face of his war-torn nation. During the early 1950's he instituted a series of rectification campaigns against waste, bureaucracy, and corruption.

Against the landlords, he began a reign of terror that lasted until 1954. Mao himself admitted later, in 1957, that during these early years some 800,000 persons were liquidated. (Other estimates of the number of persons killed by the Communists run much higher.) The first five-year plan, providing for large-scale industrialization and collectivization of agriculture was launched in November 1952. By 1956 about 83 percent of all Chinese peasants were on collective farms.

Under the constitution of September 1954, emphasizing a unified state and set up the basic organs of government, Mao was installed as Chairman of the People's Republic of China and of the National Defense Council. He was also made honorary chairman of the national committee of the Chinese people's consultative conference and was elected a deputy to the National People's Congress.

At the same time, he retained his Communist party positions as chairman of the central committee, chairman of the Politburo, and member of the Politburo standing committee. He was re-elected to these positions in the party in September 1956. On February 27, 1957, fearing the possibility of revolts such as occurred in Hungary in 1956, and noting the adverse economic conditions prevailing in China at the time, Mao gave a major speech on "the correct handling of contradictions among the people."

He conceded that contradictions could and did exist within a Socialist society and said that these could best be resolved, not by the terror that had marked the early years of Communist rule, but by means of free discussion and criticism. "Let a hundred flowers blossom! Let a hundred schools of thought contend!" he declared.

Although the new policy was received with great enthusiasm, criticism of the government far exceeded the expectations of Mao Tse-tung. By June 1957 the government again instituted police rule and suppressed its critics by force. Under an economic program designated as the "big leap forward' - Mao, in April 1958, launched a model commune, which he named "Sputnik."

A few months later people's communes were established on a nationwide scale. Unlike the earlier collective farms, which were economic institutions under county administration, the communes were political units under party rule and controlled virtually every phase of an individual's life.

However, the communes failed to alleviate the adverse economic situation and by mid-1961 the government was forced to grant farmers a greater degree of freedom and some measure of free enterprise. In late 1958 Mao requested that he not be reelected as head of state in the elections of January 1959 in order to concentrate more fully on questions of Marxist-Leninist theory and on policy matters.

He was replaced as Chairman of the People's Republic of China by Liu Shao-chi on April 27, 1959. Most observers agree that Mao's position of leadership remains undiminished, in view of the fact that he retains his chairmanship of the Communist party, where the real power in China resides.

Unlike Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, Mao Tse-tung has expressed little fear of the possible consequences of nuclear war and has maintained that China could absorb hundreds of millions of casualties and emerge victoriously. He believes that the threat of global conflict could be removed only by the victory of the Communist revolution over "the United States reactionaries and their lackeys." On the other hand, he has conceded that compromises between "imperialist" and Socialist countries could occur under certain circumstances.

Within the Communist bloc, Mao's stature has steadily grown, especially since the death of Stalin in 1953, and he is regarded by many as overshadowing Khrushchev as the ideological leader of the Communist world. His prestige was greatly enhanced when, at a meeting of world Communist leaders in November 1957, he was instrumental in bringing about the adoption of an "anti-revisionist" manifesto aimed at Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. In recent years relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union have become increasingly strained.

In private correspondence and at international conferences Chinese Communist spokesmen have accused the Soviet Union of having abandoned orthodox Marxist-Leninist doctrine and of having adopted a revisionist policy. Khrushchev, on the other hand, has accused Mao of seeking to incite a global conflict. Although Mao Tse-tung has renounced the ideas of Confucius, he is considered a scholar in the classical tradition of China.

A five-volume English translation of his writings has been published by Laurence and Wishart Ltd. and by International Publishers under the title Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (1954-62). As a poet, Mao relies heavily on ancient classical forms, although he maintains that all art and literature must serve the revolution. In 1957 he reluctantly permitted the publication of some of his poems, in spite of his fears that they might have an adverse influence on Chinese youth.

Mao Tse-tung was first married at the age of fourteen to a twenty-year-old peasant girl, in a traditional ceremony arranged by his parents. This marriage was never consummated. In 1920 he married Yang K'ai-hui, the daughter of a professor at Peking University who bore him two sons. She was executed by the Nationalists during the early part of Chiang Kai-shek's anti- Communist campaigns. Mao's third wife, Ho Tsu-cheng (or Ho Tse-nien), a former schoolteacher, was reportedly divorced by him and is said to be living in the Soviet Union.

She bore him five children, some of whom had to be abandoned to peasants during the long march of the 1930s. His eldest son. Mao An-ying. was reportedly killed in the Korean War in November 1950. Mao is now married to Lan Ping, a former stage and motion picture actress, by whom he has two daughters. Among the people of Communist China, Mao Tse-tung is regarded as a "living Buddha" hailed in song and story as "the people's great savior."

His portrait is displayed everywhere, and his theories are considered infallible. On the other hand, it has been said that he is a poor administrator. Although he has acquired some wealth through royalties on his writings, he avoids worldly vanities except for good food, wine, and cigarettes. He often travels among the peasants, wearing a simple uniform without insignia of rank. In 1956 he swam the Yangtse River from Wuchang to Hankow three times. He died on September 9, 1976.

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Motor cars had made their appearance in the closing years of the nineteenth century. By the time that war broke out the efficiency and reliability of the internal combustion engine. On which these machines depended, had improved tremendously and it was only a matter of time before they were adapted for a military role.

Although some experimental armoured cars had been produced in the first decade of the century. It was not until the war years when the situation created a demand that men turned their attention to their development and use. As a result, the armoured car evolved, followed by the tank.

The first armoured cars that appeared in 1914 were modified fast touring cars. Chassis of various manufacturers, including Wolseley, Talbot, Lanchester, Delauney-Belleville and Rolls-Royce were requisitioned and hastily armoured, armed and strengthened to be fit for war. These cars were open-topped and armed with a machine-gun which was able to fire over the side Armour.

Further development, based on bitter experience, was rapid and by first cars with completely enclosed turrets and all-round fire appeared on the roads in France. In the first month of hostilities, as the German Armies swept through Belgium, the armoured cars of a Naval Brigade and a Royal Naval Air Service squadron were transported across the channel to help in the defense of Antwerp.

From their base in Dunkirk, these and others of the Belgian army were used for hitting and run attacks on the advancing enemy. While conditions were favorable the armoured cars were in their element but as the armies dug in and ground conditions worsened. The cars were no longer able to fulfill their main role.

Few armoured cars were used on the Western Front after the first winter and in early 1916 the cars of the RNAS squadron were transferred to other theaters of war where conditions remained suitable enough for their use. In Palestine, Egypt, Africa and on the Eastern Front they continued in use only returning to France in 1918. When the trench line had been broken and warfare returned to the fluid state.

On the Western Front, it was their descendant, the tank, that took over part of their role in France. Due mainly to the efforts and foresight of such men as Colonel E.D. Swinton, Lieutcolonel Hankey, and Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, a Landship committee was formed in early 1915.

It was headed by the then Director of Naval Construction, Mr. Tennyson d'Eyncourt and its main objectives were to explore the possibility of an armoured car that would climb a vertical step of 4ft 6ins and cross a trench ten foot wide. The prototype 'landship' first appeared in September 1915 when No. 1 Lincoln machine rumbled across Hatfield Park.

Its six-cylinder Daimler engine dragging it along at an incredible four miles per hour. A modified version of the tank, affectionately called 'Little Willie' underwent trials on September 19th but even while it was being put through its paces work had already begun on another machine built to a design by a Major Wilson and Sir William Tritton.

This tank underwent its official trials in January 1916 before Lord Kitchener, Mr. Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions, and other representatives of the War Office, at Burton Park, Lincoln. Christened 'Big Willie', 'HMLS Centipede' or, most aptly Mother, she was to provide the basis for the construction of all the tanks built in the war.

As a result of the trials, an order was made for forty machines, but this was subsequently increased to one hundred and fifty. To stifle curiosity and to maintain secrecy various ploys were tried to explain these large tarpaulined shapes that could be seen in railway yards and on trains as they were transported from the manufacturers in Lincoln and Birmingham to their training grounds in the grounds of Lord Iveagh's Elvedon Estate near Thetford in Norfolk.

Someone had the bright idea of painting incomprehensible Russian characters on the side, which, for those who could translate, read, 'With care, to Petrograd'. Discussions followed on what they should be called and of the many suggested three found most favor: 'cisterns', 'reservoirs' and 'tanks.

When the decision was made the word "Tank' took on a new and legendary meaning in the English language. Ten Marks of Tanks' were developed in the years 1915-18. Some never existed beyond the prototype and others were completed after the armistice and were not used in war.

The Mark I Heavy Tank, the direct descendant of Mother' was distinguished by two large rear steering wheels. One-hundred and fifty of these were supplied to the Army before being succeeded by the Marks II and III, also with steering wheels, but whose production numbers did not exceed fifty of each.

Mark IV appeared in April 1917 and was the first type without steering wheels although they had been removed from the earlier tanks when it was discovered that they formed a fragile and unnecessary appendage. Between April and December, over one thousand were made and supplied to the Army.

They were superseded in May 1918 by the more maneuverable Mark V. Each Mark was made in two types, a 'male' which was armed with two 6-pound naval guns and three machine guns, and a 'female' armed with five machine guns. Control of these monsters was a feat and of the crew of eight, four were required to steer and control the tank.

Moreover, communication, so essential for smooth running, was a problem in the dark and noisy confines and although hand signals and electric lights have experimented with a loud voice was essential. From the beginning of his offensive on the Somme in July, Field- Marshal Haig had been eager to use these new war machines. And by the beginning of September fifty tanks of 'C' and 'D' companies of the newly formed Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps were in France.

In the naive hope that they would break the deadlock, they were taken up to the front line and with little time for preparation or training on the new ground the crews were thrown into the fray. On 15th September, after an intensive three-day bombardment, thirty-two tanks (the remainder having broken down) advanced cautiously across no man's land towards an unsuspecting enemy. They set their sights on the fortified villages of Courcelette, Marinpuich and Flers and the trench systems running down to Bouleaux Wood near Combles.

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The classic column became a staple of Roman revival architecture in the United States.

The classic column became a staple of Roman revival architecture in the United States. 

A Concise History of Nazi

Within three years of their first electoral success, the Nazis acquired political power in Germany when Adolf Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933. That evening Hitler stood in the window of the Reich Chancellery waving to thousands of Storm Troopers who staged parades through the streets of Berlin. By June 1940, Hitler toured Paris as the conqueror of the French nation the Wehrmacht had defeated in a matter of weeks. 

The Nazis proclaimed that their Third Reich would be the greatest civilization in history and last for a thousand years. But the meteoric rise of Hitler and National Socialism was followed by an almost equally rapid defeat. The Third Reich lasted a mere twelve years.

By 1945, Hitler was forced to retreat to his underground bunker, where, surrounded by the ruins of his empire, he took his own life. Within the entire scope of modern history, the Nazi era occupies a minuscule span of time. Yet during that brief period, the Nazis instituted one of the most oppressive dictatorships known, launched a world war, dominated most of the European continent, and perpetrated crimes against humanity of staggering enormity. Indeed, the Third Reich drastically altered the political structure of Europe and the course of world history.

For these reasons, nazism still occupies a distinctive place in the collective consciousness of the Western world almost a century after the founding of this political movement. This remains the case long after the end of the Cold War eliminated the postwar territorial, political, and ideological divisions of Europe caused by Hitler’s war. Few other historical developments of such limited duration have plagued our consciences and attracted such widespread interest throughout the Western world so long after the event.

In stark contrast, interest in Soviet Communism has dropped precipitously, despite the significance of that oppressive regime, which lasted seventy years. And for the Germans, the Nazi dictatorship still looms like a dark shadow an “Unmiserable Past”—over the political culture of that nation, even though introduction for the past fifty years the German republic has proven to be one of the most democratic and progressive societies in human history.

The study of the Third Reich has also recently taken on a global dimension, as Chinese and Latin American academics display a serious interest in the subject. And increasingly political scientists and commentators invoke nazism as a historical framework for understanding and assessing militant Islamic movements. From research scholars and university classrooms to popular culture, books, and film, nazism stands as a subject that both fascinates and horrifies. The term Nazi has become almost synonymous with evil itself. For millions of people, the disturbing emotional response to anything associated with the Third Reich has certainly not lessened with the passage of time.

The mere mention of nazism still immediately conjures up in the minds of many persons ghastly images of destruction, barbarism, and the murder of innocents on a massive scale. When historians, philosophers, writers, and even laymen seek an extreme case to substantiate some ethical or moral argument, they often cite an example from the Third Reich. In a Western world characterized by uncertainty and moral relativism, nazism appears to be one of the few subjects about which a universal moral consensus exists. Widespread interest, revulsion, and moral condemnation do not, however, in themselves indicate historical understanding.

Over the decades, I have encountered general audiences and numerous students who have read widely about various aspects of the Third Reich. But often I have been surprised at how little they have grasped the nature of nazism or the reasons for its successes and failures. Despite their general knowledge, they could not explain the ability of the Nazis to seize power so quickly and implement their barbaric policies in such a culturally advanced society as Germany.

Yet these and other key questions are exactly what historians have argued over for almost a century. How could a nation once guided by the brilliant statecraft of Otto von Bismarck follow the reckless foreign policy of Adolf Hitler? How could the humanistic educational ideals of Wilhelm von Humboldt, respected and emulated around the world, be replaced so easily by the anti-intellectualism and hateful propaganda of Josef Goebbels?

Why was nazism attractive to so many, and why did Germans (and others) fail to resist the racial policies of the Third Reich that led to the extermination of millions of human beings? Was the Nazi rise inevitable, the natural culmination of German history or manifestation of a peculiar German national character? Or was it caused by a particular set of historical and social circumstances? Answering such questions and comprehending the essence of this movement requires an understanding that can only be derived from a systematic examination of the origins and history of the Third Reich.

Based upon the major historical studies and the latest research, this book explains the crucial events and factors involved in the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Although not designed for experts in the field of German history, it covers many important aspects of nazism often neglected in more specialized studies or biographies that deal with only certain dimensions of the Nazi movement or its illustrious personalities. The popularity of this book has remained strong among students and general readers.

However, the enormous amount of important new research and publications on this subject since A History of Nazi Germany first appeared has required several revisions. The second edition reorganized and expanded the text to include the fruits of the burgeoning field of Holocaust studies. It also integrated the new data and interpretations contributed by social history. Social historians, often assisted by quantitative methods, provided competing interpretations of the various social groups from which the Nazis recruited members and voters.

They likewise broadened our knowledge of German women during the Nazi rise to power as well as of the multidimensional relationship women had to the nature and policies of the Third Reich. The third edition continued to reflect the trends in social history while reemphasizing the crucial role played by racial ideology in determining the policies and practices of the Third Reich. This edition showed more of the complexity of social life within the Nazi state.

It clarified the situation of average citizens negotiating their way with both the threatening power behind certain Nazi policies and the strong enticements to acquiesce or collaborate with others. German Christians struggled to preserve a central place for religion in social life against Nazi paganism and euthanasia programs.

Simultaneously, individuals and groups in public, government, and business sectors became complicit in the persecution of the Jews out of economic or institutional self-interest. Although some young Germans were fanatical members of the Hitler Youth, many were as rebellious as an adolescent generation. It was a society, however, whose laws, policies, and expectations were increasingly determined by a Nazi racial ideology based upon a biological and Darwinian perception of life, society, and history.

A fundamental Nazi domestic goal was to purify the Aryan race and German society by eliminating those Germans deemed unfit physically, mentally, or behaviorally. The Nazi objective for European civilization was the ethnic cleansing of the so-called inferior races across the continent through war, enslavement, and genocide.

This racial purification would open the way for the domination of the Aryan master race in the Thousand-Year Reich envisioned by Hitler and Nazi ideologues. This is continuing to incorporate the incessant flow of impressive research published by the outstanding scholars working in the field of German history. The most recent literature has made it necessary to clarify and highlight the ideological and political distinction between nazism and conservatism found in earlier editions.

Although these two forces shared certain common characteristics (nationalism, antiliberalism, anti-Marxism, anti-Semitism, etc.), they were starkly differentiated by their essence and their visions of a future for Germany and the world. Rather than being an extension of the extreme right, Nazism was a unique synthesis of various previously opposing historical forces and ideologies, especially nationalism and socialism. At heart, the Nazis were not only fanatical racialists but truly social revolutionaries. As the advocates of the sweeping revolutionary transformation of society, the Nazis were as much the enemies of conservatives and reactionaries as they were of democracy and the left.

Only by perceiving this significant difference can one truly understand the essence of this new movement, or its appeal to such a wide-ranging constituency of followers and voters. This edition addresses the illuminating new scholarship on war crimes trials and the controversies over German memory and the Third Reich. And among other revisions, it expands coverage of often-overlooked persecuted groups such as homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In addition, given the technological advances in media that have made films readily available as educational instruments, a section has been included in highly recommended documentary and feature films from the period or about the Third Reich. If used properly, in conjunction with relevant readings, such films can bring the period to life while enhancing our understanding of the multidimensional aspects of the Nazi phenomenon.

These films are invaluable tools in grasping the nature and horrific consequences of the National Socialist movement, as well as in comprehending the varied responses to nazism from the 1930s through World War II and into debates over its legacy for contemporary Germany and its historical memory. This new research has been integrated while retaining the strengths of the earlier editions, particularly their brevity and reliability.

One of this work’s most attractive features, however, has been its organization and writing style, which combine narrative storytelling with analysis. Students, general audiences, and historians have found it captivating reading as well as an easily understandable explanation of the origins, nature, and consequences of nazism. The intriguing account of the Third Reich for those seeking a brief, though thematically comprehensive, the study of a subject that retains its historical significance and widespread contemporary fascination.

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