Germany 1918-1945 – From days of Hope to Years of Horror

Newton, Douglas J. Germany 1918-1945: From Days of Hope to Years of Horror. Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1990. Print.

I found the book just by walking through the shelves upstairs in the Library. I didn’t use the library catalog, as I was just searching for anything I thought would apply to our current unit of study. The aspect of the book that caught my eye was the big ‘Germany’ on the cover as well as the fact that the dates covered in the book are the same dates covered in our current unit. 1918-1945. As Germany was also the leading reason of international discourse during this the time, I believed getting a book that centered around Germany, would be beneficial due to the fact that we could better understand Germany’s Repertoires of Power, their intersections with other governments at the time, their uses of intermediaries, and the imperial imaginaries that lead Germany to becoming the Third Reich. The book discusses the days of hope in the Weimar years, includes a picture essay regarding the invasion of the Ruhr. The book goes in depth about the experience of Nazism, including the economics, the imposition of dictatorship, and the social life in the Third Reich. Finally the book ends with another picture essay about The Hitler Youth and Posters and Artwork of the Crisis years. In this section Douglas Newton discusses German communication of the era, Nazi foreign policy, the premature war (Prague Crisis), the escalation of Horror, as well as the New Order. This book is particularly effective because it goes in depth about Germany life at the time using primary and secondary sources, as well as discussing all nations that had interactions with Germany at the time. The book discusses propaganda, military strategy, social living, and the many political imaginaries of the time.