The Third Reich, a regime which instigated the most destructive war in modern history, still evokes fascination and horror today. Yet how were the lives of ordinary German people of the 1930s and 1940s affected by the politics of Hitler and his folllowers? Looking beyond the catalogue of events, this book reveals that daily life involved a complex mixture of bribery and terror, of fear and concessions, of barbarism and appeals to conventional moral values, employed to maintain a grip upon society. The essays presented here by eight leading historians shed fresh light on familiar topics, the role of political violence in Nazi seizure of power, the German view of Hitler himself, and also focus upon less well-known aspects of life in the Third Reich, such as village life, the treatment of 'social outcasts', and the Germans own retrospective view of this period of their history.