Alan Bullock   Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Penguin). Ever since it was published, this scholarly yet highly readable tome has ranked as the classic single-volume biography of the failed Austrian artist and discharged army corporal whose evil genius fooled a nation and caused the deaths of millions.

 

Joachim Fest   The Face of the Third Reich (Penguin). Mainly of interest for its biographies of the gallery of rogues surrounding the Führer - Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler, Speer et al.

Klaus P. Fischer   Nazi Germany (Constable/Continuum). Offers a well-balanced general history of the Third Reich and its origins.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen   Hitler's Willing Executioners (Abacus). One of the most important recent contributions to the history of the Third Reich, this controversial tome sets out to prove that guilt for the implementation of the Holocaust lies with a far broader constituency than the Nazi elite.

Adolf Hitler   Table Talk (OUP/Knopf). Hitler in his own words: Martin Bormann, one of his inner circle, recorded the dictator's pronouncements at meetings between 1941 and 1944. The early Mein Kampf (Pimlico/Noontide), a series of rambling, irrational and hysterical outbursts on every subject under the sun, is also of interest, as it genuinely constituted Hitler's blueprint for power.

Ian Kershaw   Hitler (Penguin). A well-nigh definitive new two-volume biography of Hitler, the first part covering the years up to 1936, the second the last nine years of his life.

Claudia Koonz   Mothers in the Fatherland (Methuen/St Martin's Press). Perceptive study of the role of women in Nazi Germany. Includes a rare and revealing interview with the chief of Hitler's Women's Bureau, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink.

William Shirer   The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Mandarin/Simon & Schuster). This makes a perfect complement to Bullock's book: Shirer was an American journalist stationed in Germany during the Nazi period. Notwithstanding the inordinate length and excessive journalese, this book is full of insights and is ideal for dipping into, with the help of its exhaustive index.

James Taylor and Warren Shaw   A Dictionary of the Third Reich (Penguin). The handiest reference book of the period.

Hugh Trevor-Roper   The Last Days of Hitler (Macmillan/Chicago UP). A brilliant reconstruction of the closing chapter of the Third Reich, set in the Berlin bunker. Trevor-Roper subsequently marred his reputation as the doyen of British historians by authenticating the forged Hitler Diaries , which have themselves been the subject of several books.