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"Summer 1936: the eyes of the world were trained on Berlin, elaborately decked out for the Olympic Games. Aside from the swastikas unfurled inside and outside the massive stadium, visitors to the games saw scant evidence of a repressive regime. Nazi Germany and its unchallenged leader, Adolf Hitler, were on their best behavior. Yet, away from the spectacle in Berlin, an ominous war machine was in the making." "As Ian Kershaw opens this monumental volume, large segments of the German population idolize Hitler for bringing the nation out of economic despair. Supported by four pillars of the Nazi regime -- the Party, the armed forces, the industrial cartels, and the civil service -- Hitler is poised to realize his Mephistophelian vision: the subjugation of Europe under the Thousand Year Reich and, in the process, the annihilation of the Jews. Meanwhile, a continent still carrying the scars of the First World War largely ignores his blueprints for conquest." "Soon Hitler embarks on expansion. With chilling efficiency, he annexes Austria with the support of rabid local Nazis, and then, after hoodwinking European leaders in Munich, undertakes a lightning conquest of Czechoslovakia. His invasion of Poland plunges Europe headlong into a cataclysmic war, a war that Hitler is convinced he alone has the genius to conduct. In unsparing prose, Kershaw describes the slaughter of conquered troops and civilians alike as German soldiers, accompanied by fanatical SS units, sweep into country after country." "For three years, Hitler's armies have the upper hand. But once the tides of battle turn in favor of the Allies, Hitler, no longer the invincible warlord, becomes an increasingly desperate gambler. Rarely leaving his "Wolf's Lair" he continues to mastermind the war, his public appearances and radio broadcasts limited to whipping up fervor among his countrymen against Jews, "Bolsheviks," and others deemed enemies of the Aryan race." "Drawing on many previously unutilized sources, Kershaw describes the Draconian measures taken by Hitler's henchmen -- Himmler, Goebbels, Goring, Bormann, and others -- to tighten the Nazi grip on the home front without significant resistance from the German people. In the Fuhrer's name, Gestapo and SS leaders orchestrate and carry out the persecutions that lead to the death camps of the Holocaust." "After the D-Day invasion and a steady stream of defeats on the Eastern Front, Hitler is virtually alone in insisting that victory is still possible. When Hitler asserts that his survival after an assassination attempt by German officers on July 20, 1944, "is a sign of Providence that I must continue my work," Kershaw depicts a beleaguered fanatic prepared to leave his country in ruins. Ten months later, while his shattered forces desperately attempt to stave off the Russian onslaught on Berlin, Hitler spends his final days, chillingly documented here, in a bunker under the city until he ends his life with a pistol shot to his head." "Throughout this masterful account, Kershaw never loses sight of the German people and their massive support for Hitler and the Nazi regime. "Decades would not fully erase," he observes, "the simple but compelling sentiment painted in huge letters" in Munich shortly after the surrender to the Allies: "I am ashamed to be a German." Book jacket."--Jacket.… (more)
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A good example was his daily routine while he lived in Berlin. He was usually awakened between eleven and twelve o'clock by a knock on his bedroom door from his butler. He would eat his first meal of the day about one o'clock and then start his work for the day. He began with someone reading him a summary of the news of the day. Then he would meet with different members of the government or the party for a discussion of ongoing projects or new plans. The meetings were generally small groups or individuals. He did not hold a meeting of his official cabinet from 1938 until his death.
In the afternoon he would have tea and cakes and make small talk with his secretaries acting the part of a Viennese petite bourgeoisie. A typical dinner would include some of his inner circle who would be treated to a monologue by Hitler on topics from history to diet. Hitler loved to talk about the superiority of his vegetarianism. After dinner there would be more meetings or perhaps work on a speech that was coming up. Then beginning about twelve or one o'clock he often watched movies with many of the same people from dinner until he went to bed as late as five o'clock.
The only task he put serious work into was preparing and making speeches. He was chief propagandist for the regime. The speeches usually focused on the same themes; Jews, Bolsheviks and the enemies of Germany. The same program he set forth in Mein Kampf. Certain anniversaries, such as January 30 when his regime took power, would be the occasion for a speech. Often the speeches were made to mobilize the people for foreign policy events or internal Nazi Party campaigns. During the war, particularly after the attack on Russia in 1941, there were fewer occasions for speeches. This was the life of the leader of Germany and the Nazi Party.
The government was run by the civil service and the Party. Kershaw uses a concept he calls "working towards the Fuhrer" to explain how many of the government programs were planned and carried out. Some ambitious party member or government worker would come up with a program inspired by Hitler's ideas and either make a formal proposal to Hitler or begin carrying it out. Sometimes Hitler would take the lead as when he initiated the four year economic plan and appointed Goering to lead it. The author makes it clear that Hitler knew about and approved the Holocaust. It was part of his program from the beginning and he was careful not to leave any fingerprints on the workings of it. The administration of the German government was a hodgepodge of competing government and party functionaries all working to curry favor with the Fuhrer.
The Army was the third center of power in Germany. Hitler's plans for military expansion won their support at the beginning of his regime. After he took power all members of the military swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. As the war progressed Hitler acted as commander-in-chief and spent most of his time in command centers established on the Eastern Front. After the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 Hitler purged the army high command and exercised closer personal control over all of the military. The attempt came very close to success.
Toward the end of the war he moved into the bunker next to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. As the Russian artillery moved closer and closer Hitler still had his afternoon tea and cakes and talked about victory. As he realized defeat was inevitable his last campaign was the destruction of Germany to destroy the future of the German people. They had failed him and did not deserve to survive. On his last day he married Eva Braun and then they both committed suicide and their bodies were burned. His last remains were his lower jaw bone and a partial plate.
The only emotion I felt at the end of the book was a deep satisfaction that Hitler was dead. He was a true megalomaniac who was able to get millions of people to join in his psychotic belief in himself. The author speaks of a pseudo-religious belief translated into the mysticism of national salvation and rebirth. The book is a chronicle of what happened I do not believe there is a rational answer as to how or why.
Kershaw's main concern seems to be to defuse the myth of Hitler as a master-strategist or a Machiavellian leader. The most Kershaw is prepared to allow him is a gift for timing his attacks. Kershaw stresses that Hitler only had one real strategy: to put himself into a situation where the only way out was forwards. Once he had overstretched himself and was facing defeat (from 1943 on) he had no response left, and simply went to pieces. Another thing that comes out very strongly is the chaotic way Hitler ran his administration. He seems to have been morbidly suspicious of any sort of collective decision-making process, so he tended to delegate vaguely-defined, overlapping powers to individuals and leave them to fight it out between themselves. As Kershaw points out, one consequence was that the most ruthless, radical policies tended to dominate, and another that Hitler himself was always at arm's length from any policy decision (hence people could say "if the Führer only knew..." and his individual popularity survived far longer than that of his party).
Two examples: The D-Day landings barely rate a
It's a terrible, terrible story. Once again we ponder on why those around him were paralysed such that they could not even influence what this 'madman' did. Heinz Guderian tried; the assassination plotters tried; the young students in Munich tried; and in the final days of the war Albert Speer disobeyed orders for German property to be destroyed when retreating. But for the rest it was a cabal of true-believers, thugs, and self-promoters.
This is a wonderful (and long) book; I have not read the first volume.