This is a book of collected essays by several authors, including the famous Ian Kershaw, that features some very good information. The book deals with several aspects of life within Nazi Germany including how the Nazis came to power, youth, the "Hitler myth", the policy against the Jews, and the way the Nazi state was run. The differing installments are well-written, and although some parts can be dry this book is a good introduction to what daily life was like within the Reich.

Life in the Third Reich offers eight essays on various aspects of Nazi culture. As Richard Bessel notes in his introduction, the Third Reich is not just the story of good versus evil but is a more complex study characterized by contradictions and paradoxes. Germans who disapproved of the violence of Hitler's SA may also have appreciated the Nazis' efforts to put down crime and restore social order to a nation influx. Germans who feared the Gestapo agents and the nation's drive toward war also welcomed the Anschluss with Austria and the incorporation of the Sudetenland.

Bessel's essay is entitled "Political Violence and the Nazi Seizure of Power." Bessel looks at the violence that helped the Nazi party gain power, which was often seen as legitimate when working as an "auxiliary police" force, and the violence against Jews, which was seen as excessive and hindered Nazi support. Still, the old guard allowed Hitler to come the power and Nazi violence at that time had its limits (i.e. there was no terrorist activity). Gerhard Wilke's "Village Life in Nazi Germany" looks at Koerle in north Hesse and how Nazism altered social relationships. A very interesting essay is "Youth in the Third Reich" by Detlev Peukert. Peukert describes how the increasingly coercive and drill-minded nature of the Hitler Jugend led to a youth subculture of gangs like the Edelweiss Pirates and movements like Swing jazz. Ian Kershaw explains the seven bases of the Hitler myth in "Hitler and the Germans." "Social Outcasts in the Third Reich" by Jeremy Noakes includes information on such topics as eugenics and sterilization. Other essays cover the Nazi state, policies against the Jews, and "Good Times, Bad Times: Memories of the Third Reich."

This book is an excellent source of topics not often covered in other books. It is well-researched by some of the best historians of Nazi Germany and includes two sections of b&w photos.

Bessel has a Malthusian-Sonderweg approach towards all of Germany's social problems. Germany's population boom, from 49.2 million in 1890 to 67 million in 1913, its military roots with the crucial Prussian Law of Siege July 4th 1851 - the military take over of state activities in preparation of war, respectively, to Bessel, were the reasons for all irrational decisions that included the subsequent declaration of war and with a rising death toll. Irrational decision-making, also led to neglect of agriculture causing widespread malnutrition - as farmers were employed in the military, thus handicapping food supply, and inefficient high tech manufacturing - as under-skilled women and war-cripples were employed as replacements. Due to this, asserts Bessel, skilled war weary soldiers, in large numbers began joined ranks of the industrial workforce: awaiting the end of war. Maintaining that war weariness, which led to voluntary demobilization, helped the unprepared Demobilization Commission in stabilizing the situation: as most soldiers had already joined civilian ranks, Bessel argues, Germany was able to avoid a political revolution. The planning commission, had foretold this political upheaval; fortunately it never happened, as voluntary demobilization, argues Bessel, had commenced sometimes during the war; thus saving the commissions from its ineffectiveness. Rise in consumerisms, to Bessel, had also been overlooked by the commission, and this soon led to hyperinflation that combined with the Versailles Treaty, gave rise to public resentment. Resentment, claims Bessel, was also present in the cultural-economic sphere where it was felt that introducing women and children into the workforce had sowed the seeds of moral decline. The fear that mass culture was destroying the aesthetics of the society, in spite of the fact that price control and rapid economic mobilization had led to stability, was mounting to an almost revolutionary level. This revolutionary atmosphere, moreover, would be intensified with the continuing fall in real wages and the inflated fiscal deficit. The fall in real wages along with the government's inability to further subsidize companies to provide mass employment, to Bessel, had resulted in an alarming fall in living standard, and a serious housing problem by 1928. Combined with falling living standards, the opposition towards the role of women and children in manufacturing during the war and after (moral decline), to Bessel, led to the fall of the Weimar republic. In spite of the failure to address socio-political causes to hyperinflation, Bessel, does a good job in outline demographic causality that led to the failure of Weimar democracy. His work through Germany's provides detail structural picture rather than immediate political and cultural events that could lead to the fall of a democracy. Germany After The First World War is a masterpiece that gives insight into a nations sociopolitical scene and highlights how the working class would get disillusioned with democracy.