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Books: Our heavenly leader, hallowed be thy name The French revolution was a new kind of religion, one without God: Historian Michael Burleigh won the Samuel Johnson prize for 'The Third Reich' " but still thinks we're all too fixated on the N

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From: The Independent on Sunday
Date: 20051002
Author:Mark Bostridge

When Michael Burleigh's 1,000-page history of The Third Reich was published five years ago, his fellow historian Niall Ferguson " a member of a profession not easily given to backslapping compliments " called it 'the product of authentic historical genius'. The Third Reich went on to win the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, was translated into 15 languages ('even Estonian', Burleigh notes), and to date has sold over 250,000 copies. Yet both Burleigh and his publishers were taken unawares by the book's runaway success. For a start, Burleigh's treatment of the Nazi regime refused to cater ...

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