Books like Gesicht des Dritten Reiches by Joachim Fest

Ian Kershaw's Hitler offers an intimate and compelling biography of Adolf Hitler, focusing on his rise to power through vivid descriptions of key events and figures in Germany's history. The author's research is supported by many previously untapped sources, bringing us closer to understanding the mysterious and controversial figure that Hitler was.

"Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe"--

"In a remarkable synthesis of key scholarship and historical resources, Frederic Spotts portrays the "National Socialist revolution" as much less a social than a cultural revolution. Spotts maintains that Hitler viewed himself first and foremost as an artist, that his activities were largely directed to the promotion of the arts, and that his driving ambition was to create a supreme culture state, while at the same time using the arts to disguise the heinous crimes that were the means to fulfilling his ends." "Unlike the traditional biographical view that Hitler was an "unperson," who had no life outside politics, Spotts, author of the distinguished Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival, shows that Hitler's interest in the arts was as intense as his racism. Spotts offers the first analysis of Hitler's own work as a painter as well as of his art collection - one Hitler intended to make the finest in the world. Spotts's argument is punctuated with evocative photographs and reproductions from Hitler's 1925 sketchbook." "Hitler's vision of the Aryan super-state was, as Spotts points out, to be expressed as much in art as in politics. Culture was not only the end to which power should aspire, but the means of achieving it. This fundamental assessment of Hitler's career and artistic life in the Third Reich boldly shows how the arts were at the center of his life and that he was at the center of the arts. He dissolved the line between art and politics and - through the notorious spectacles, parades, festivals, films, rallies, Wagner's operas and (late in life) Lehar's operettas, political theatrics, monumental architecture, even the autobahn and the Volkswagen - turned the entre German populace into participants in his National Socialist drama." "A revealing, detailed, and highly conceptual work, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics provides an additional key to an understanding of the Third Reich - in many ways the key to the first lock on the first door. It has, until now, been only noted in the more speculative psychological portraits, biographies, and straightforward histories of the Third Reich."--Jacket.

Gitta Sereny’s biography of Albert Speer reveals the former Nazi Minister of Armaments—through interviews, unpublished manuscripts and Speer’s own prison testimony—a complex portrait of a man who rose, struggled and ultimately faced his own conscience.

The best biography yet on the self-described "second man in the Reich." Albert Speer has long occupied a singular niche in history: that of the "good Nazi," a decent and civilized man whose first love was architecture and who wished nothing more than to rebuild Germany from the misery of WW I and the worldwide depression of the 1930s. He skillfully cultivated this image until his death in 1981. Speer willingly conceded a general responsibility for his role in the Reich, and even admitted in the '70s that he had some inkling of what was happening to the Jews, but he never admitted personal responsibility for the Holocaust or the war. Naval historian van der Vat begins with a vexing question: If Speer was Hitler's right-hand man, how could he possibly claim ignorance of the genocide that was (in the words of the author) "the driving force" of the regime? Considering Speer's responsibilities heading the ministry of armaments during the war--one highly dependent on slave labor--his claims of ignorance are hard to believe. Yet many did believe him. Biographer Gitta Sereny, in *Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth* (1995), seems to accept his remorse as genuine, and she finds her subject sympathetic. No less an authority than Simon Wiesenthal also believed Speer. The highly respected German biographer of Hitler, Joachim Fest, and the social psychologist Erich Fromm concurred. Van der Vat is, thankfully, immune to Speer's charms, even after having interviewed the Nazi in 1976. Beginning with a serious study of Speer as architect, van der Vat proceeds to examine his role as minister of armaments, In that capacity, Speer was personaly responsible for the evacuation of 75,000 German Jews as forced labor. Also important is that Speer now emerges as partially responsible--along with Goebbels,--for the "spectacles" of the Reich. Writing with irony and intelligence, van der Vat forces us to confront Speer anew. [Kirkus Reviews][1] [1]: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dan-van-der-vat-3/the-good-nazi-the-life-and-lies-of-albert-speer/