They started out as little more than a gang of extremists and thugs, yet in a few years the Nazis had turned Germany into a one-party state and led one of Europe's most advanced nations into moral, physical and cultural ruin and despair In this text Evans reveals how and why it happened, questions whether the rise of Hitler was inevitable and dramatically re-creates the maelstrom of disorder, economic disaster, violence and polarization that gave rise to the terror of the Third Reich