Fristsche, Life And Death In The Third Reich

Abstract

Historian Peter Fritzsche's latest work, Life and Death in the Third Reich, is an attempt to study the relationships between Germans and Nazis. In doing so he reveals the appeal of the Nazis on the German public and the depth of collective guilt among the Germans for racism, the Holocaust, and World War II, in other words, the crimes of the Third Reich. In this endeavor, Fritzsche joins other key historians, including Christopher R. Browning ( Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, 1993) and Daniel Goldhagen (Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, 1997). Fritzsche's previous work, Germans into Nazis (1999), examined-the role of the post-World War I era on Germany, the impact of the Treaty of Versailles, and the creation of the Volk. His new monograph seems almost a natural extension of the first study.