Review of "Resistance and conformity in the Third Reich."

Martyn Housden. Resistance and Conformity in the Third Reich. London and New York, Routledge sources in history, 1997. Pp. xi, 199. Paper $18.95. Perhaps one could say “enough is enough”. Adolf Hitler might well be the most written about person in history. National Socialist Germany remains of continuing interest, even though Hitler’s Reich died more than a century ago. Perhaps it is the fascination with a unique phenomenon in history, with the evil and macabre that attracts historians and their students without an end in sight. Asking a typical freshman class what they know about Konrad Adenauer or Ludwig Erhardt or Richard von Weizsacher results in a reaction of complete ignorance. Asking the same group what they know about Adolf Hitler will result in considerable bits of information, not necessarily always correct. More often images created by the media rather than real knowledge shape the responses. Probing further will inevitably lead to the question, “how could all this happen in a country where people to a large extent were well educated and certainly considered themselves one of the most civilized countries of the western world.” Martyn Housden, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary European History at the University of Bradford, has attempted to provide answers to that question in a relatively brief, less than 200 pages, textbook as part of the admirable series “Routledge Sources in History.”