Thomas Childers was formerly the Sheldon and Lucy Hackney Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards. Childers has held visiting professorships at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, Smith College, and Swarthmore College, and he has lectured in London, Oxford, Berlin, Munich, and other universities in the United States and Europe. He is the author or editor of several books about modern German history and the Second World War.
Historian Childers does a magnificent job of balancing many details within an overarching narrative of the Nazis' rise to power. . . . Essential reading for World War II enthusiasts and those interested in the origins of the Nazi Party and the resulting Holocaust. --Library Journal (starred review) Riveting. . . . An elegantly composed study, important and even timely, given current trends in American and global politics. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) An exhaustive but powerful timeline of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Childers dispels some common misconceptions about early Nazi history, while not sugarcoating their heinous atrocities. This book is a historical reminder of what happens when power goes unchecked. --Philip Zozzaro San Francisco Review of Books A narrative masterpiece that displays both Childers's profound expertise and genius for story-telling. --Walter A. McDougall, Professor of History and Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania, and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian [Childers] is a master of English prose, writing with clarity, elegance, and wit; his account of Nazi Germany is every bit as readable as Shirer's and deserves a wide audience. . . . Offers a series of important correctives to Shirer's narrative, based on a comprehensive knowledge of the research carried out in the half-century and more since The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was first published. --Richard J. Evans The Nation The new definitive volume on the subject, supplanting William Shirer's gold standard The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. . . . The book's main strength lies in its chapters on the rise and early years of the party. And with newly unearthed documents - many from Germany - that the author had access to. --Bob Ruggiero Houston Press