Sharing the assessment made by Evans, historian Michael Burleigh prefaced his discussion of Goebbels and the fanatical pursuit of "Total War" in his work The Third Reich: A New History with a review of the state of German morale caused by negative reports from the front and the relentless Allied bombing campaign, which immediately after the short-lived fever of total war mobilization, was further drained by "military disasters and the persistence of wartime inequalities"; all of which contributed to a progressive isolation of the Nazi leadership.[29] Burleigh also highlights how the "exhortations of heroic death and sacrifice bore scant resemblance" to the German people's mood and that the "population shrank from anything tainted with ideology" but preferred the solace they found in the Church to deal with their loss and grief.[30]