Richard J. Evans' Hitler's People collects biographical profiles of the Third Reich's leaders, from the Fuhrer down to his small-time henchmen and hanRichard J. Evans' Hitler's People collects biographical profiles of the Third Reich's leaders, from the Fuhrer down to his small-time henchmen and hangers-on. It's not a novel approach (Evans admits a debt to Joachim Fest's The Face of the Third Reich) but Evans executes it with aplomb: colorful profiles of Eminent Nazis are laced with deflating anecdotes and wry humor that bring them down to earth without diminishing their evil. Hitler is viewed as an angry, petit bourgeois malcontent who shared the passions and prejudices of many of his background - tied with his oratorical skill and political savvy, it goes a long way towards explaining his success in seducing German voters to his side. Evans' portraiture of Goebbels, Himmler, Goering and other Hitler intimates offers fewer surprises, if only because this rogue's gallery has been profiled many times before (though I enjoyed the story of Goebbels being grabbed bodily off a train platform by a bodyguard, his legs kicking feebly in the air as the train left the station). Later chapters chronicle lesser-known, but still important figures like Robert Ley, the head of the German Labor Front who mated quasi-socialist ideas about land collectivization with a psychotic "Back to Nature" fascist agrarianism; the lawyer-bureaucrat Hans Frank, who grew fat off of his corrupt, brutal rule of occupied Poland; the vile propagandist Julius Streicher and the feckless conservative Franz von Papen, who became Hitler's Vice Chancellor expecting to manipulate him, only to be quickly outmaneuvered and put in his place. A final section discusses more marginal figures, from concentration camp guards (notably, an interesting dissection of the myth around Ilse Koch) to military officers to filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, using them to examine specific aspects of Nazi rule and culture more closely, while also deconstructing common narratives like the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth or Riefenstahl's insistence that she knew nothing about Nazi crimes. Evans' book makes a good companion to his Third Reich Trilogy, showing the kinds of people drawn to National Socialism and how they used the regime to advance their own, often conflicting, frequently idiosyncratic agendas - or how, finding success and comfort under the fascist umbrella, they didn't bother to challenge its precepts. A worthy addition to popular literature on Nazi Germany....more
Danny Orbach's The Plots Against Hitler reassesses the German Resistance to the Third Reich. Orbach focuses primarily on the military resistance (civiDanny Orbach's The Plots Against Hitler reassesses the German Resistance to the Third Reich. Orbach focuses primarily on the military resistance (civilian resisters like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and would-be assassin Georg Elser receive only brief look-ins), especially the Oster Circle which mobilized in 1938 after Hitler's sacking of high-ranking generals Werner von Blomberg and Werner von Fritsch. The narrative centers on Carl Goerdler, the Mayor of Leipzig who initially viewed Hitler as an "enlightened dictator" but grew appalled by his increasing brutality towards Jews and political dissidents; Ludwig Beck, who resigned from the Army amidst the Fritsch-Blomberg Affair and tried to organize military officers against the Fuhrer; Hans Oster, who pushed to overthrow Hitler during the Sudeten Crisis of 1938; Henning von Tresckow, who was horrified by atrocities on the Eastern Front and engineered several assassination plots; and, eventually, Claus von Stauffenberg, a decorated soldier who directed the organization in its final years and personally tried to assassinate Hitler with a briefcase bomb. Orbach is much more generous to the conspirators than many recent historians: he notes the conservatism and occasional antisemitism of the plotters, that Tresckow (despite his disgust with the SS) was quite possibly implicated in war crimes himself, and acknowledges that it took many of them years to turn against Hitler. But he also argues that most had sincere moral objections to the Nazis, and weren't simply motivated by pragmatism or belated recognition that a losing war would destroy Germany. Orbach's main criticism of the plotters is that, sincere though they were, they had little clear vision for what would replace the Nazis: Goerdler in particular frustrated his Allied contacts during the Sudeten Crisis by insisting that Germany retain its territorial gains of the past few years, which convinced the British that he and his colleagues wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. Similarly, Beck and Goerdler seemed to envision a conservative autocracy, though Stauffenberg had a vague vision of a coalition between anti-Nazi conservatives and Social Democrats that annoyed his more reactionary colleagues. Orbach shows that it's difficult to accurately assess whether the conspirators' tangled motives outweighs the courage of their actions, or whether the morality of trying to kill Hitler outweighs their failure, which mostly resulted in the execution or imprisonment of thousands of dissidents. Wisely, he leaves it to the reader to decide what they take away from this story. A good narrative of a well-worn subject. ...more
Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism is rightly considered one of the best works examining the make-up of far right ideology. Paxton (who has wriRobert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism is rightly considered one of the best works examining the make-up of far right ideology. Paxton (who has written extensively on the history and politics of Vichy France) focuses primarily on Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the two most successful fascist movements, and how their ideology functioned in both theory and practice. Fascism, as a right wing populist movement, often co-opted the anti-Establishment rhetoric of the Left (most notably in Mussolini's early tirades against capitalism and the Catholic Church) to gain popular support while making clear that their principal enemies were on the Left. Few distinctions are drawn between communists who sought the destruction of society, socialists who advocated substantial reforms or weak-kneed liberals who permitted the former to exist, at the expense of the country's strength and virility; all are enemies of the state. Thus when Hitler and Mussolini found themselves in proximity to power, they courted rather than spurned industrialists, church leaders, the military and middle class, forging alliances that raised them into office. It's a counterfeit populism that mobilizes the Masses (or at least the chosen Masses) in favor of reactionary ends. But neither is fascism strictly conservative, as it (nominally) elevates the middle classes and places race and party loyalty above considerations of capital, church and birthright.
If nothing else, Paxton can be credited for reconsidering the hoary old totalitarian framework, which too often depicts fascism and communism as two sides of the same coin. What animates fascism, instead of a socialist vision of proletarian revolution, is a militarist nationalism that leads, almost inevitably, to imperialist war; the Party's promised a grievance against enemies of the People, both internal and external, often defined by race or religion; a sense that those in power are under threat, if not actively oppressed, by their victims; that the law is secondary to the needs of the movement; and that violence is always justified by invisible, but omnipresent enemies conspiring against the government. Not all of these mindsets are unique to fascism, of course; students of communism could find some, or all of these precepts practiced in Soviet Russia and other leftist regimes. But the fact that fascism coopts the system for its own ends, rather than working to replace it, remains a fundamental distinction. The racist mass murders of fascism and the brutal wages of Soviet collectivization can be equated in body counts, but not ends or even means.
Paxton wisely eschews the psychosexual analyses of fascism's appeal which some, mostly left-wing writers still entertain. Nor does he view fascism merely as the tool of hyper-capitalism, another pat explanation that's lingered despite. My one objection to Paxton's arguments is that, while he notes that successful fascist governments rarely bothered with ideological purity, he dismisses governments like Francoist Spain as insufficiently fascist by his criteria. It's true that Franco downplayed the Phalange's influence on his government soon after his seizure of power, and that his regime became largely indistinguishable from a standard authoritarian state. On the other hand this struck the present reader as he very pragmatism he discusses elsewhere; it seems no more to void Franco's connection to fascism than the Night of the Long Knives meant that Hitler wasn't a true Nazi. But this is a relatively minor quibble, in context. Paxton provides a valuable, well-considered framework for assessing the Far Right, allowing us to draw our own connections between the Axis Powers and their modern counterparts; that while Fascism rarely metastasizes into full-on genocide, its roots and ideas remain powerful and dangerous. ...more
Robert Gellately's Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe is a workmanlike account of the rise of 20th Century totalitarianism. GellaRobert Gellately's Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe is a workmanlike account of the rise of 20th Century totalitarianism. Gellately's book dutifully recreates the Russian Revolution, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to power in Germany and the terror and repression perpetrated by each. Gellately rightly stresses that violence and terror were inimical to the Soviet Union from its onset, with Lenin encouraging arrests and executions of political opponents, dissidents and other sundry "reactionaries"; the main difference between him and Stalin, often viewed as a usurper to his revolution, is that his bloodshed served some clear ideological purpose. Stalin, while he labored to recreate Soviet society in socialist terms, seemed motivated by paranoia and prejudice as much as Marxism. Gellately's command of German National Socialism feels shakier: he leans on a premise that the Third Reich was a "dictatorship of consensus" where Hitler enjoyed the support of a broad swath of the German public, allowing him to be more lenient than Stalin in terms of terrorizing his subjects. This is unprovable at best and downplays how much Hitler's early purges and extensive police apparatus cowed dissenters into line; certainly the Nazis were sensitive to, and sought favor of the public but it's a stretch to extrapolate from that, and approval of Nazi military and diplomatic successes led to broader support of fascist policies. The book concludes with a potted history of World War II and the Holocaust that, while adequately rendered, doesn't add much to our general understanding (though Gellately's discussion of Stalinist deportation of ethnic minorities in the USSR is well-rendered). The anachronic structure also leads to some jarring shifts in time and structure, especially when a narrative account of WWII suddenly jerks backwards three years for the next chapter. Not a bad book despite a few shaky arguments and structural issues, but historians and well-read buffs won't find much they haven't encountered elsewhere. ...more
Hauke Friederichs and Rudiger Barth's The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic (originally published as The Gravediggers) chronicles Germany's final sliHauke Friederichs and Rudiger Barth's The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic (originally published as The Gravediggers) chronicles Germany's final slide into fascism. The economic destitution and political instability of late Weimar ratchets into near-anarchy: civilians are restless, many are out of work or starving, while gangs of Nazis, Communists and other political factions battle in the street. Frederick and Barth's book focuses mostly on the wheeler-dealers in the Republic's cabinet, a group of conservatives whose lassitude, incompetence and contempt for liberalism doomed the country. President Paul von Hindenburg, the "wooden titan" who not-so-secretly pines for the Kaiser's return; Kurt von Schleicher, the last Chancellor of Weimar, an ex-general whose inveterate scheming alienates all potential allies; Franz von Papen, an unprincipled scallywag who's willing to ally with Nazis, conservatives or anyone who might grant him a sliver of power. Not that the Nazis are without their own factions: even as Hitler stands on the cusp of power, he wrangles with disloyal subordinate Gregor Strasser while dealing with the public's dissatisfaction with their increasing violence. Even so, Hitler plays a weak hand strongly: he purges Strasser after the latter contemplates an alliance with Schleicher, uses Joseph Goebbels' propaganda techniques to blame Nazi violence on Communists and their supposed Jewish benefactors and exploits Hindenburg's desire for stability. Ultimately, Germany fell to fascism because its rulers didn't believe in democracy; Hindenburg, Schleicher and Papen preferred repressive order to anarchic freedom, even if the former came from a "Bohemian corporal" shared little of their reactionary worldviews. Better a dead democracy than allowing socialists, communists or limp-wristed liberals a sniff of power.
Fredierechs and Barth capture all this maneuvering, backstabbing and ratcheting tension with crisp narrative pacing. Their book switches between street brawls, Berliners struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy, the bombastic debates and occasional fistfights in the Reichstag and the political scheming among the principles. Both writers are journalists by trade, which does show in their sprinkling of colorful but often irrelevant detail into the background (a few sentences mentioning Leni Riefenstahl or Ernst Lubitsch adds color but little understanding). As well with the book's clipped, almost stream-consciousness paragraphs that sometimes read like a reporter's steno pad ("Christmas Eve. Five degrees. Rain. So much for a White Christmas in Berlin."). The book's stylistic shortcomings are balanced by the authors' command of a dense subject, and their convincing presentation that fascism was far from a foregone conclusion. All the Weimar Republic needed to survive was clearheaded leaders, a functioning government, a public alive to the dangers of extremism and a willingness to check rather than accommodate fascism. Unfortunately, it had none of those things....more
David King's The Trial of Adolf Hitler is a crisp, reportorial recollection of the Beer Hall Putsch and subsequent trial. King starts the book with a David King's The Trial of Adolf Hitler is a crisp, reportorial recollection of the Beer Hall Putsch and subsequent trial. King starts the book with a blow-by-blow recounting of the Putsch, with mini-profiles of the main Nazi and conservative leaders woven into his narrative. Hitler's precipitous action alienated many far-right Bavarians who might otherwise have supported him, leading to a bloody fiasco that should have ended National Socialism before it properly began. But it didn't, thanks to a circuslike show trial that served as a platform for Hitler's grievances against Versailles, the Weimar Republic and sundry other boogeyman that captivated Germany. He benefited from a timid prosecution team, a judge (George Neithardt) openly sympathetic to the Nazis and the prestige of General Ludendorff, who unexpectedly found himself sidelined during his young protege's harangues. In exchange for this extraordinary propaganda boost, Hitler served a token prison sentence that only served to heighten prestige, allowing him to write Mein Kampf and solidify his toxic ideology in the process. Published in 2018, King's book provides a sadly timely account of how allowing fascists to commit crimes against the state with impunity can only weaken the state, while strengthening their cause....more
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