Paul Garson

There have been dozens of photo histories of Hitler's Nazi Germany published over the years. Usually, they feature fairly standard photographs of Nazi leaders and military men, parades, rallies, weaponry, combat scenes and so on. Paul Garson takes a different approach, offering over 500 pictures snapped by German civilians and soldiers. The result is a fascinating look into everyday life in the Third Reich as experienced by 'average Germans.'

The images in Garson's book are many and varied - photographs of a family posing with their son in uniform, an air force officer and his dog, soldiers celebrating Christmas and honor guards goose-stepping in a parade are intermixed with those showing soldiers taunting a Jewish man and guards patrolling a POW camp. Taken together, the images form a fascinating, behind-the-scenes portrait of life in Hitler's Germany. Recommended.

Mike O. / Marathon County Public Library
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… (mer)

The photographic collection New Images of Nazi Germany is a startling work on a topic that has had much glut from the publishing world. However, this book, compiled and with commentary by Paul Garson, features rarely and never before published photographs from Germany during the Nazi regime, as well as occupied countries. There are horrifying images of war and hate that are synonymous with the Third Reich's destructive spread across Europe, including graphic images of the aftermath of battles, executions of the enemy within and outside their borders, and the victims of their death camps of the Holocaust.

However, this collection also includes far more mundane pictures of the average German under totalitarianism, not the Reich's political enemies and "Undesirables" marked for purging. We see the every day life of families and individuals before and during the strain of wartime, and soldiers being trained or at downtime during breaks between fighting. These images have their startling element, too, because they show the banal environment in which evil was able to thrive.

There are stories of heroes within these photographs, too, not only in underground resistance, but from average Germans who secretly hid Jews and spied against the Nazis.

The story of Nazi Germany, and its wave of destruction through World War II and the Holocaust, is not only the story of its fascist rulers, of its corrupt elite, or of its military power. It is also the story of mundane people who directly or indirectly allowed it to happen. And the mundane people who fought against it.… (mer)

This collection of mostly new and amateur photographs from Nazi Germany is a good, if not at all outstanding addition to the ever-expanding backlist of Third Reich-related books. For the most part, the images are candids or group shots of ordinary Nazis and citizens of the Reich, rather than the usual mix of triumphalist propaganda and grisly horror, so this book helps provide some balance to the more frequently seen memorabilia. The "explanatory" text doesn't contribute all that much, unless the reader is particularly interested in German cameras, but I would recommend this book to those fascinated by the period, with the caveat that it's much more supplemental than essential.… (mer)

A fascinating collection of WWII images - almost all of which I had never seen before. It took me over a month to work my way through the text, and it was worth every minute. (Those who said they read through the book in a week or less are either lying, have a inordinate amount of free time on their hands, or have tremendous reading skills the likes of which I have never seen before.) I only have two complaints: first, the text is a bit too technical at points, particularly the captions. They need to be shorter, more digestible, and less repetitive. Secondarily, the formatting is particularly awkward, mostly because the captions are so long that they break up the narrative passages in a way that makes them hard to follow. That being said, I can tell that the author takes great pride in his work, and his collection is certainly worth looking at.… (mer)