Michael Burleigh nos ofrece una visión radicalmente nueva del Tercer Reich desde su gestación hasta su destrucción final.
Antes de la aparición de esta obra, ganadora del prestigioso Premio de Ensayo Samuel Johnson 2001, no existía una historia completa sobre la Alemania nazi, a pesar de que ha sido uno de los fenómenos más estudiados del siglo XX.
Este libro demuestra que el abandono de la democracia y la tolerancia que protagonizó el Tercer Reich estaba extendido por la Europa de la época. Narra cómo un movimiento pseudorreligioso, imbuido de un sentimentalismo demagógico, parecía ofrecer la salvación a una Alemania exhausta por la guerra y la creciente inflación. Muestra las consecuencias de la desaparición del gobierno de la ley en favor del terror. Pero, a diferencia de otros recientes estudios de este periodo, no condena a toda la nación alemana. Explica lacompleja moralidad utilizada para «legitimar» el Holocausto por parte de quienes lo llevaron a cabo y recrea con brillantez las complejidades de la vida bajo un régimen totalitario, que gobernó casi toda Europa durante cuatro años.
Reseñas:
«Estas pasmosa investigación le dejará sin aliento. Más profunda que cualquier otra, es el producto de un verdadero genio.»
The Sunday Times
«Esta brillante visión de una gran tiranía es una importantísima contribución para entender el siglo XX.»
Booklist
In this sweepingly ambitious overview of World War II, Michael Burleigh combines meticulous scholarship with a remarkable depth of knowledge and an astonishing scope. By exploring the moral sentiments of entire societies and their leaders and how such attitudes changed under the impact of total war, Burleigh presents listeners with a fresh and powerful perspective on a conflict that continues to shape world politics. Whereas previous histories of the war have tended to focus on grand strategy or major battles, Burleigh brings his painstaking scholarship and profound sensibility to bear on the factors that shaped choices that were life-and-death decisions. These choices were made in real time, without the benefit of a philosopher's reflection, giving a moral content to the war that shaped it as decisively as any battle.
Although the Nazis and the Japanese had radically different moral universes from those of their Allied opponents, the Western Allies found themselves aligned with a no less cruel dictatorship after rejecting the option of appeasing aggression. The war was the sum of myriad choices made by governments, communities, and individuals, leading some to enthusiastically embrace evil and others to consciously reject it, with a range of more ambiguously human responses in between. Spanning both major theaters, Moral Combat sheds a revealing light on how entire nations changed under the shock of total war.
Emphasizing the role of the past in making sense of the present, Burleigh's book offers essential insights into the choices we face today-in some circles it is always 1938 and every aggressor is a new Hitler. If we do go to war, we need to know what it will mean for the individuals who command and fight it. Original, perceptive, and astonishing in scholarship and scope, this is an unforgettable and hugely important work of Second World War history.
"Respected British historian Burleigh delivers a long, riveting account of awful events and the perverted reasoning behind them."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)