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The Coming of the Third Reich
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 21 hrs and 11 mins
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Summary
There is no story in 20th-century history more important to understand than Hitler’s rise to power and the collapse of civilization in Nazi Germany. With The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard Evans, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans’s history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as it shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian’s art and the book by which all others on the subject will be judged.
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Overall
- SHM
- 25-11-11
A mam-moth work
The book is a very thorough introduction to the history of Germany during the period leading up to the Nazi rule. It's the first of three volumes and itself is divided into three separate audio files. It's well arranged into general themes and dips back into the Bismarkian period as well as across Germany's borders into Austria, to give a comprehensive treament of the lead up to the Third Reich.
The reading is poor. The reader's American accent is not the problem - it's quite mellow. But he seems unfamiliar with even normal American English pronounciations - dockers steal goods from the "kwayside" (quayside) , and people are "booeyed up" (bouyed).
The real frustration is that he seems to be reading the book for the first time without any understanding of what he's reading. He reads it line -
by line -
with meaningless pauses as he gets to the end of each line. Most of the time this is a mild but constant irritation. At some points though, he confuses or distorts the meaning of what was written. We hear that soldiers "returning from the front sometimes disarmed
- then arrested workers"
Or about a "collapse of the Reich
- created by Bismark" ( of course it was the Reich that was created by Bismark but sounds as if Bismark created the collapse!)
This leaves the hearer frequently wondering what was meant by the last sentence. Sometimes the pause is a valid one but the he fails to give it the proper intonation so that it sounds like another arbitrary one. So we hear that the "collapse of the Wilhemina Reich was their chance to -
and they seized it" ( he means "too" but pronounces it as if he is about to tell us what it was that they had a chance to do).
The subject of the book is not light and there is a lot of complex information to understand. The reader should be helping with that understanding conveying meaning in his voice. Unfortunately this reader does not appear to understand what he is reading and hinders that understanding as a result.
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28 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Shaun
- 10-08-10
Comprehensive and highly academic
This is indeed a comprehensive history of the rise to the power of the Nazis, starting with a history of Germany in the 19th century.Hitler doesn't even get a mention until about halfway into the book! This book is not for the fainthearted and certainly not for the lay reader, and is aimed at the serious history student. What does irritate is the American narration - why not a British reader? - and his peculiar treatment of some words. For example, he always pronounces 'bourgeois' as 'burr-geois' which really irritates after the tenth time! But if you are looking for a serious study, then look no further.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Rev David Linaker
- 11-03-19
Excellent scholarship, terrible narration
This wonderfully researched and accessibly presented book was marred by the terrible American narrator who couldn’t pronounce basic terms such as Wilhelmine correctly leading to irritation!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Hudds Man
- 28-10-14
Here's how it happened
Would you consider the audio edition of The Coming of the Third Reich to be better than the print version?
If I had time to read I would but using the audio version I can listen in the car.
What didn’t you like about Sean Pratt’s performance?
Read as though he hadn't seen the words before. Some inappropriate pauses and weird pronunciations. Quay pronounced to rhyme with way instead of like key.
Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I was surprised by the background and it helped me understand how and why Germany fell into this trap in 1933.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Marcus
- 14-01-11
Solid and vast telling of a familiar tale
Having studied a lot of this period there was still plenty of new material and analysis. How the battle between the Nazi's and the left wing parties played out was particulary interesting. However it didn't grip fully as there are still two parts to go and I still haven't decided to get them.
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2 people found this helpful
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- SWTW
- 02-10-20
Great text, woefully bad narration
Why is such a great historian as Evans being so terribly let down by Audible's choice of narrators ? His majestic "Pursuit of Power" was badly mangled by Napoleon Ryan, whose mellifluous tones were marred by an evident disinterest in the meaning of the words he was reading - but that was as nothing compared with the mess that Sean Pratt makes of things here. As others have pointed out, his phrasing and cadence are strangely random, or perhaps determined by line breaks on the page, sometimes with confusing or laughable results. And if we must have an American narrator for a text written by an Englishman about a European subject, could he not have tried a more natural pronunciation of Nietszche's name? Hearing someone talk about 'Nee-chee' this side of the pond just tends to provoke hilarity.
Didn't help that I started listening to this straight after finishing Nadia May's wonderful reading of Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism - truly from the sublime to the ridiculous in audio terms.
Thankfully, even the worst narrator can't detract from the underlying quality of Evans' text. I shall just grit my teeth and move on to the next volume.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Connor
- 21-10-17
A sobering and necessary piece of history.
an excellent and very thorough description of the methods used by the Nazis (and fascism in general) to take over all aspects of life in a headlong drive towards war.
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1 person found this helpful
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- michael Billington
- 08-07-13
An essential Work
Where does The Coming of the Third Reich rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This is one of the finest audiobooks I have purchased and would recommend it highly to anyone interested in history.
What other book might you compare The Coming of the Third Reich to, and why?
I would compare this book to William Shires Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, and the works of Ian Kershaw. For the comprehensive nature and its exploration of the forces which led to the rise of the Nazi's.
Have you listened to any of Sean Pratt’s other performances? How does this one compare?
I have listened to Sean Pratt's performance on Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life. I would say this is a better effort.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I was disgusted at the descriptions of the virulent anti-Semitism which pervaded much of German society.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Burning Crowe
- 27-11-11
History of the Highest Standard
I know I did this all wrong, but I actually came to this book last, having already listened to the other two parts of the trilogy.
Perhaps of the three, this is the most dry, but you know, it kind of has to be. It focuses on the political machinations surrounding the Nazis through to 1933. Some of the political nuances are not that easy to follow, but Evans doesn't shy away from them. He shows how the Nazi party were able to exploit dubious precedents to create the veneer of legality.
It really is (just like the other parts) brilliantly written, inuitively organised, and clearly narrated at a comfortable pace.
I cannot recommend this series highly enough.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 13-12-23
The Third Reich explained
A fascinating account of a humbled nation's renewal and ultimate destruction.
Expert synthesis of the macro and micro elements.
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