Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich

Historian Evans (The Hitler Conspiracies) draws on newly released documents to piece together compelling biographical accounts of the Third Reich’s key players, who strategized to murder millions of people, and the ordinary Germans who made the genocide possible. Evans draws upon archival materials to provide an unsparing account of Nazi leaders and their followers as he focuses on the harm enacted by people who would later downplay their participation. Notorious, high-profile participants like Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Joseph Goebbels (whom Evans calls “Paladins”) had long been antisemitic. Lesser-known middle-class citizens who aided and abetted the Nazis considered themselves mere supporters or observers, but Evans chillingly describes how their denouncement of family members and acquaintances led to the deaths of thousands. Narrator Leighton Pugh’s impeccably paced audio presentation drives Evans’s point home, forcing listeners to consider the dire consequences of German functionaries’ everyday actions.