A meticulously researched, sobering look at the Nazi era and the people who helped bring its evil intents to fruition - Kirkus Reviews

An important [and] sobering book that depicts the duplicity of manipulators, opportunists and psychopaths to convince gullible multitudes into becoming mass murderers. Professor Evans has produced an incisive commentary on the continuing fragile nature of the human condition. - The Jewish Chronicle

[Richard J. Evans] argues persuasively that only by examining individual personalities can we understand ‘the perverted morality that made and sustained the Nazi regime… . His book is enriched by the findings of recent scholarship and his pen portraits have all the excitement of novelty. Even his depiction of Hitler feels fresh -- Piers Brendon - Literary Review

A fascinating exploration of individual agency that never loses sight of the larger context... Evans has provided us with just the kind of probing, nuanced and unsparing study to help us think things through -- Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times

Evans dispenses his judgments about how Nazism happened and developed in bite-sized, almost laconic, pieces attached to the short biographies. This has the effect of inviting the readers to draw some of their own lessons.... if Evans’s purpose is getting the reader to think about what is particular and what is universal about the descent of one of the world’s most “civilised” nations into genocidal barbarism, then I believe it succeeds -- David Aaronovitch - The Financial Times

Evans has chronicled Nazi Germany before, but never with such urgency… His previous books, which include a masterful trilogy on the rise, rule, and destruction of the Nazi movement, are models of historical writing, a combination of narrative and exploration, scholarship for the sake of sc