Promotion

Sign up for our newsletter to get 20% off sitewide!

Site Preferences

Show prices in:

What We Knew

Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany

What We Knew Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Eric A Johnson

By Karl-Heinz Reuband

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Feb 28, 2006
Page Count
464 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465085729

Price

$22.99

Price

$28.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $22.99 $28.99 CAD
  2. ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around February 28, 2006. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Buy from Other Retailers:

An American historian and a German sociologist seek answers from those who lived through Nazi Germany: how did the country stand by while one of the biggest genocides in history took place?

“A very important book.” —Financial Times
 
The horrors of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust still present some of the most disturbing questions in modern history: Why did Hitler’s party appeal to millions of Germans, and how entrenched was anti-Semitism among the population? How could anyone claim, after the war, that the genocide of Europe’s Jews was a secret? Did ordinary non-Jewish Germans live in fear of the Nazi state? 

In this unprecedented firsthand analysis of daily life as experienced in the Third Reich, What We Knew offers answers to these most important questions. Combining the expertise of Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, What We Knew is the most startling oral history yet of everyday life in the Third Reich.
 

Genre:

  • “A very important book.”
    Financial Times
  • “The authors of this absorbing and important book present the results of a major collaborative oral history project that is remarkable for its scope and sophistication.”
    Richard J. Evans, The Historian
  • “Fascinating . . . The strength of What We Knew is its diversity. The accumulation of memories of Kristallnacht and deportation, as experienced by victims and onlookers, helps to construct the bigger picture. . . . But it is the vivid detail, such as chips of bone in the Auschwitz air, which really shock.”
    Independent
  • “A wellspring of information, this text provides unprecedented insights into the mind-set and daily lives of ‘average’ Germans, and the lives led by Jews in Nazi Germany.”
    History in Review
  • “The scale and depth of the survey which forms the foundations for the book, the scholarly treatment of its results and the lucid argumentation of the two authors make this a highly impressive and valuable work.”
    H-Net Reviews
  • “A major contribution to the understanding of life in Nazi Germany.”
    Booklist
  • “Sober and sobering. But it's the gripping immediacy of the interviews, laced as they are with anger, guilt, sadness and, still among some Christian Germans, pride, that carries the book.”
    Publisher’s Weekly

You May Also Like

Summer of Fire and Blood
Summer of Fire and Blood $35.00 $46.00 CAD
Beyond the Wall
Beyond the Wall $21.99 $28.99 CAD
The Middle Kingdoms
The Middle Kingdoms $22.99 $29.99 CAD
Vertigo
Vertigo $35.00 $45.00 CAD
Look Away
Look Away $30.00 $39.00 CAD

Eric A Johnson

About the Author

Eric A. Johnson is professor emeritus at Central Michigan University. He served as a research professor at the University of Cologne from 1989 to 1995, was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton from 1995 to 1996, and was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study from 1998 to 1999. He is also the author of Nazi Terror and Urbanization and Crime. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
 
Karl-Heinz Reuband is professor of sociology, emeritus, at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He lives in Cologne, Germany.

Learn more about this author

Karl-Heinz Reuband

About the Author

Learn more about this author