Hi /his/
Always been interested in Nazi Germany.
Bought Inside the Third Reich a few years ago but haven't read it yet.
Looking for a book that tells me a ton of stuff from the start til the end of the Third Reich. My problem is I don't want anything biased in any direction. I don't want some Jew hating on Hitler and nor do I want an edgy Nazi sympathiser.
The books that I've found so far that seem most reputable are:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer. I heard this guy is very anti nazi Germany and it comes out in his writing
Hitler's War by Irving. Supposedly a lot of people say this guy can't be trusted while others say his book is everything you need to know
The Third Reich trilogy by Evans. Still looking into this one
Any recommendations?
Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is probably the most important book written on the Holocaust ever. It won't give you a complete picture of the holocaust apparatus, but focuses on the microcosm of a individual police battalion.
Ian Kershaw's Hitler biography is huge, but indespensible. It will tear down a bunch of myths before they can enter into your brain. He basically sorts through 60 years of historiagraphy and explains different works so you don't have to read them.
Well, I think one should realize that if the source is good it will be highly critical of Nazi Germany and its policies.
They were bad, either morally or economically, by and large. Lots of corruption and favorites playing, the inability of the average German to accept that they did wrong. The whole racism and warmongering thing.
Any good source will rightfully shit on Nazi Germany at least a little.
If you just want firsthand accounts that's as unbiased as you're really gonna get. In which case Max Hasting wrote The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 which is great and covers Germans and Russians mainly although not exclusively.
Not exactly a big picture kind of thing, but it covers how the war ended and the chaos that was Germany at that time.
Good read.
>>903399
>If you just want firsthand accounts that's as unbiased as you're really gonna get
stop perpetuating this meme. first hand accounts are by definition biased. historians trained to analyze sources do a good job analyzing differing sources and creating an accurate narrative.
>>903409
Yes a first hand account is "biased" but not in the same way something created after the fact using first hand accounts is.
Anything and everything is biased because it all comes from people, but a first hand account is just how they felt or what they were doing or what happened directly to them. It's not clouded by anything other than a hazy memory, unlike something created by a historian with a chip on his shoulder.
It's impossible to find a truly unbiased source, but first hand accounts are far less biased than most any collection and retelling would be.
>>903415
There are many many things that 'cloud' first hand accounts of an event more than a "hazy memory."
How much time passed in between the event and when they wrote it? What personal beliefs or personal history did they have that might affect how they write about an event? Did they know anyone involved in the event, or somehow related to the event, that could change their perspective? Who is the intended audience for the first hand account--did they write with a view to publish it for the public, in a private diary, in a letter to someone, etc? What agenda might they have had when writing their account?
These are just a few of the things you should be asking yourself if you read a first hand account, especially if you intend to take a broader understanding of a historical event or period from it.
>It's impossible to find a truly unbiased source, but first hand accounts are far less biased than most any collection and retelling would be.
No, no no. First hand accounts are not "far less biased." They can be the most biased because there are always reasons why they're written the way they are.
Take for instance the French Revolution, specifically the royal family being forced to Paris after the attack on the palace of Versailles. A revolutionary woman who described to a newspaper her account of participating in the march described it as pure national joy, the people triumphantly bringing the royal family to the heart of Paris to live among the people, far away from the decadent and corrupt court. She described the people waving bread in the air, cheering, singing. Yet an aristocratic woman wrote of that same exact event to a friend described it as a scene of horror: she saw the people cheering as they forced their God-appointed monarch and his family into imprisonment, holding high the heads of the guards who they slaughtered, shrieking and dancing around like wild animals.
Same event. Two vastly different perspectives.
>>903399
>>903399
>They were bad economically
Aside from your other drivel, this is the point which can be proven wrong the easiest.
Or how do you explain the fact that not even half a decade later after taking power the natsocs already managed to literally kill off unemployment and wipe away all traces of the great depression and the amateurish actions of the Weimar-era predecessor governments?
You can spout as many emotionally loaded insinuations as you like but it doesn't change the (economic) facts and numbers, they're all recorded and on paper.
why not start with mein kampf
>>905063
When you can borrow as much as you want and not worry about paying, of course the economy will improve in the short term.
>>905089
>Muh mefowechsel muddafugga
You do realize they were just a temporary measure due to the international sanctions against Germany which immediately started after the 1933 elections and were not meant to last permanently like the Federal Reserve of the US, right?
>>905063
The Nazi economy was unsustainable.
Sure, they put people back to work, but they did so at factories making tanks in some of the most inefficient methods possible.
The German economy was a linear one, a war economy, and without war they had no economy. Indeed, by the time WW2 started Germany was effectively bankrupt, of course the liberation of assets from places like Poland and Yugoslavia helped with this problem significantly.
Hitler was spending in excess of 30% GDP on making weapons and tanks BEFORE the war started. The thing about making weapons and tanks and bombs is that they take out of the economy, but aside from the wages paid they put nothing back INTO the economy. Russia learned this yet again during the Cold War. Long term military spending in excess of 10% of GDP is non sustainable, and Germany's economy was non sustainable. It reached its peak effectiveness by cutting corners and employing mass slave labor in 1944. Oh, and finally consolidating all production under a single organization, rather than having the loose amalgamation of companies simply act by guidelines and desires as they did in the years prior.
But oh yes, they took all the money the Weimar Republic had saved and built up to be invested and spent it all in 4 years. It got people back to work, sure, Germany had no reserves and nothing but a smile and bootheel to back up the new Reichmark, but hey, people were working so the Nazi's must have been good at economics right?
>>905063
>the amateurish actions of the Weimar-era predecessor governments?
the "amateurish actions of the Weimar-era predecessor governments" brought about a period of economic stability and growth following the absolute economic shambles that were the immediate postwar years
>>903345
You cannot find that, that period of history is spilled with political bullshit, if you are interested in history try to avoid this thing. We will never know the true.
Watch The Greatest Story Never Told
>>905640
yes that was completely unbiased
