ABSTRACT
The history of the Third Reich has been extensively analysed but controversy about its every aspect shows no sign of abating. There isstill no real consensus, for instance, about Hitler’s role as Führer, Nazi foreign or economic policy, the structure of the Nazi state, the degree of popular support the regime enjoyed or the sequence of events that led to the Holocaust. The cataclysmic end of the Third Reich and the appalling suffering it caused have tended to ensure that German history between the years 1933 and 1945 has been studied as a uniquely horrendous event in world history. Auschwitz and the Holocaust have overshadowed not only the early years of the Third Reich, but the rest of modern German history. This feeling of horror has made it all the more difficult for historians to ‘historicise’ or normalise the Hitler regime and assess dispassionately the social and economic impact of the Hitler years on German history after 1945.
