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Rating: 
Summary: Well-rounded summary of the key players in the Third Reich
Review: Fest provides the reader with a well-written summary of the high-ranking and crucial members of Nazi Germany. This book is a good background for the general reader on the Third Reich and is an essential first-step in any investigation into the period.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential reading on the Third Reich
Review: Michael Burleigh's recent work "The Third Reich - A New History" was widely praised for its novel explanation of Nazism in the context of religion. Anyone who has read Joachim Fest's excellent book however will, among other things, know that this particular analysis was hardly new or innovative.
In form, The Face of the Third Reich is a psychological profile of both individual Nazi leaders and various sections of German society at the time. Through this approach though, the main causes of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis are explained.
Among other things, Fest lucidly illustrates the essential nihilism of the Nazi movement, whose ideology as such was based on the acquisition of power as as end rather than a means.
The vacuous adoration of and devotion to Hitler was in itself a cornerstone of Nazi philosophy, the Fuhrer cult providing the basis for Fest's religious analogies. He also discusses how initially vague assertions of Aryan superiority and Semitic evil were later focused after the seizure of power and developed and expanded on by Himmler and the SS.
The portraits of the main personalities are fascinating. Fest is invariably amazed by how such unremarkable individuals were able to attain such immense power and commit such extravagent atrocities. He shows how almost all were linked by a moral corruption and a cynical lust for power. The chapter on Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz is particularly arresting. Reading this, one is reminded of Orwell's 1984 and the ability of man to subjugate himself to authority and in turn to deceive himself into committing the most unfathomable crimes.
Fest is one of the foremost German authorities on Nazism and the book throughout is filled with an intellectual disgust and contempt of the regime. For anyone trying to make sense of that period, this book must be read.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading on the Third Reich
Review: Michael Burleigh's recent work "The Third Reich - A New History" was widely praised for its novel explanation of Nazism in the context of religion. Anyone who has read Joachim Fest's excellent book however will, among other things, know that this particular analysis was hardly new or innovative.
In form, The Face of the Third Reich is a psychological profile of both individual Nazi leaders and various sections of German society at the time. Through this approach though, the main causes of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis are explained.
Among other things, Fest lucidly illustrates the essential nihilism of the Nazi movement, whose ideology as such was based on the acquisition of power as as end rather than a means.
The vacuous adoration of and devotion to Hitler was in itself a cornerstone of Nazi philosophy, the Fuhrer cult providing the basis for Fest's religious analogies. He also discusses how initially vague assertions of Aryan superiority and Semitic evil were later focused after the seizure of power and developed and expanded on by Himmler and the SS.
The portraits of the main personalities are fascinating. Fest is invariably amazed by how such unremarkable individuals were able to attain such immense power and commit such extravagent atrocities. He shows how almost all were linked by a moral corruption and a cynical lust for power. The chapter on Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz is particularly arresting. Reading this, one is reminded of Orwell's 1984 and the ability of man to subjugate himself to authority and in turn to deceive himself into committing the most unfathomable crimes.
Fest is one of the foremost German authorities on Nazism and the book throughout is filled with an intellectual disgust and contempt of the regime. For anyone trying to make sense of that period, this book must be read.
Rating: 
Summary: worth reading, but short on objectivity
Review: Oversimplified and relentlessly negative. Filled with sweeping negative generalizations that ignore abundant evidence of positive characteristics of the Third Reich personalities. The caricatures painted of the key figures in the Third Reich are laughably unrealistic. As a serious history reference, this is a terrible book. It is so bad that it's actually worth reading: its sheer awfulness makes it a great example of how NOT to write a serious non-fiction book.
Rating:
Summary: worth reading, but short on objectivity
Review: Oversimplified and relentlessly negative. Filled with sweeping negative generalizations that ignore abundant evidence of positive characteristics of the Third Reich personalities. The caricatures painted of the key figures in the Third Reich are laughably unrealistic. As a serious history reference, this is a terrible book. It is so bad that it's actually worth reading: its sheer awfulness makes it a great example of how NOT to write a serious non-fiction book.
Rating:
Summary: Marred by errors and too dry
Review: This book was poorly translated and even in the original German, Fest is a heavy writer, turgid and hardly scintillating. This compilation is laden with errors, some major, some not, but the ultimate effect compromises the integrity of this book. It's absurd, for example, to make the statement that Hermann Goering's Nuremberg defense was anything but brilliant. One can loathe what Goering stood for and decry Nazism and its atrocities, but to deny that Goering stole the show at Nuremberg is historically inaccurate.There are many better summations of the Nazi leadership than here. This is as dry as timber and about as edifying.
Rating: 
Summary: Blitz biographies and absence of explanations
Review: What you get in this book is pretty much what the title promises you. The author (J.Fest) plunges into a psycho-social analysis of the Nazi elite and attempts (succesufully) to shed some light on the people who moved the strings of Nazism in Germany.
Admittedly, the author's heavy writting style will turn off a certain group of viewers. While his intentions on decoding the personas that played key roles of Nazism are honest and straightforward, the atmosphere of the book is rather characterised by abusing descriptions and verbal exagerations.
Short biographies and psychological profiles are on offer here: Hitler, Goering, Hoess, Himmler, Hess, Ribbentrop, to name but a few.
However, you'd be mistaken (in my view anyway) to assume that this book will help you understand what brought this fascistic movement to power. Before even deciding whether you should read this or not, start by reading "The rise and fall of the third Reich" or other books pertaining on fascism and the masses. What is absent here are the german people themselves. Fascism does not rise because of a few psychotic personalities , and, as was proven in Germany's example, it very often complicits the people themselves to grab the power mechanisms.
But, if you are interested in blitz-biographies, and short "explanations" then the "Face of the third reich" will be a good choice. Then again, when it comes to the major players of Nazism there are far better individual biographies and character accounts out there (one of them by the author himself on Hitler).
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