Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
By William Shirer
There are few threads of thought to consider in this book. First there is a prevailing theme throughout the book represented by the German word lebensraum, meaning “more land.” For the people of neighboring lands an onslaught of terror was felt. Hitler’s original goal was always to conquer Russia and the Slavs as he despised Communism and the Jews that were driving the Russian state of mind as he believed it to be. This belief took root in him as a vagabond in Austria where he felt oppressed by Jewish merchants and businessmen. Secondly and ironically he always looked to the East and waged war with the West, presumably out of some poorly thought out strategy. While he held a vengeance towards France, he was willing to leave England and the West alone. Albeit his actions of bombing London for months on end contradicted even that of his many shallow convictions. Third was a theme that became a consistent irony was one where on the eve of every onslaught upon a neighboring country, leaders held out hope that “it would not happen”. One could make an argument in defense of Poland and perhaps even France individually, but collectively the world leaders could not gain consensus on eminent threats or preventive action. They had to wait until the fox was in the hen house. Fourth, I am left aghast at Neville Chamberlain as he sold out the Austrians and the Czechs, but more so, the world leaders who through silence allowed this to happen. After closing the last page in this book I stand even more firmly in my view that this world of ‘East’ or ‘West’ ideologies owes a world of tribute and gratitude to Sir Winston Churchill. Finally, though the book incriminates Hitler, it is also about German people with Hitler as their representative and scapegoat of the servant German mind. They had eleven hundred years of practice through the first and second Reich’s, and shallow convictions seemed to loom just below the surface of the German people of this time as well.
I read this book with the purpose to better understand the “collective conscience” or, better said, “collective unconsciousness” of the German mind. I was rewarded with a history that provided a multi faceted accounting that indicts not just Hitler’s regime but also the German people. Fundamentally there are a couple characteristics in German philosophy that enabled the madness of Hitler’s mind to prosper. In the book the reader begins to understand the mind of Hitler and to also appreciate that his madness was not single-minded. Before him came a long line of German history & philosophers that not only influenced Hitler, but the German people as well. Hitler had in his favor great oratory skills to convey and congeal a German collective conscious, harvested from already fertile soil. At Hitler’s determent he lacked the skills to see the world in a way that he could achieve his goals. Along with Hitler’s alchemy of words the crucible event that enabled a willing audience was the legendary stab-in-the-back the German people felt, and emphatically felt by Hitler, with the Armistice that concluded the First World War. Germans felt betrayed by their leaders in 1919. Hitler brought German honor [a deceitful and conflicted mind, compelling me to read further back beyond this book] back from the hibernation.
Hitler’s conquest strategy included propaganda and sleuth diplomacy that were undermined by amateur war strategy and a complete misunderstanding of the world. With regard to war miscalculations, Hitler missed the mark on his understanding of the English and the Russian willingness to remain beaten. His delusional mind conspired against him to leave newly conquered territory undefended or a job not quite finished. This led him to over reach the capabilities of the Wehrmacht, (war machine)] and he eventually found his generals requesting a retreat and regroup.
So to exacerbate the situation Hitler held a fundamental flaw that he carried to his own death, which was to never surrender or retreat. When you look at the wisdom of Churchill’s Dunkirk –v- Hitler’s Stalingrad you find the fundamental error in Hitler’s war strategy. At a human drama level, it is interesting to note that Hitler’s experience in the Netherlands in WWI caused him to pause long enough for Churchill to get most of his army out of harm’s way. At the same time, and to Hitler’s credit as a man of his word, at his core belief he expected his soldiers to die for his country, not surrender, which led to German demise at Stalingrad. With an overwhelming mountain of evidence of his propensity for a contradicting word, there was one word or code he held himself to. This one word came as a detriment to many German lives through the war years, and it was exactly that same word, code of honor, that took his own life securing an end to the nightmare. His suicide right or wrong, was not an act of cowardice, but the final result of his most deeply held convictions.
The toughest aspect to read about was the chapter called “The New Order.” When reading about the Rise of the Third Reich you become impressed with facts that Hitler had a lot of help in all circles of German society. The Wehrmacht was not his first internal conquest, but subsequent to his assent to even the head of the Wehrmacht, he groomed even more help to conquer more lands. It is when you get to the New Order chapter; of the prosecution of Jewish Poles and conquered non Aryan people you become overwhelmed with the overall mentality the German people as represented by their collusion. First you read about the German soldiers actually executing people in horrid ways. As the nightmare continues you read about German businessmen like Krupp bidding on devices like gas chambers. You do not get to wake up from the nightmare until you read about German doctors performing medical experiments and then writing reports and giving lectures to the German medical society and no one raises a note of objection. Like a bad dream it continues with reading about the collection of jewelry and dental work form the death camp victims and then fenced through the Reich Bank and then filtered through German pawnshops to be purchased by Aryan German people. And the German people bought it! Hence the author closes this bad dream with the following quote:
Such, has been sketched in this chapter, were the beginnings of Hitler’s New Order; such was the debut of the Nazi Gangster Empire in Europe. Fortunately for mankind it was destroyed in its infancy – not by any revolt of the German people against such a reversion to barbarism but by the defeat of German arms and the consequent fall of the Third Reich.
I think it is very important for history students to clearly understand that the prime subject is the people of the Third Reich who held a philosophy that allowed Hitler to be their prime mover towards a blight that should hang over their heads for years to come. To simply blame it on Hitler would be a grave mistake. Austria appreciates this and makes it a crime for anyone to suggest publicly that those heinous crimes were not committed. As a valuable lesson of how they got there should be a lesson on how they and the world healed. I am not sure where that is written.
To help substantiate my question mark on the healing of a wounded society, I raise the intriguing passages of the conspirators, those who conspired to rid the world of Hitler, and specifically by 1944 when it was apparent that Germany would lose the war, the conspirators hatched yet another plot to overthrow Nazi Germany. This plot would derive another armistice that would preserve a pre Nazi Germany. After reading 1036 pages of atrocity, this reader had no sympathy for a group who a.) Was guilty of war crimes and b.) Displayed a sense of treason only when they felt doomed. It was on their minds though that a defeat of arms to the West would help them pass the blame on to the Nazi’s and absolve them of their crimes on the basis of they were following orders. Unfortunately the West took the bait as there developed a common interest in the prevention of Bolshevisms throughout Europe. The conclusion left, even in the face of Nuremberg Trials, too much history to be swept under the carpet. It is doing no one any good if these lessons are not taught to our youth. As poetic justice a 50 year sentence in Berlin and East Germany may have been the medicine required to cure the ailments of the German mind.
To keep my own perspective in check this book helped me see that the West can be considered anything of the British Empire while the East is all the rest. Looking briefly at British world history leaves me with more reading to do before putting just the Germans in check. It is now clearer to me that all the popular arguments for or against the Iraq war are flawed. I continue to find disappointment in those who vehemently only echo the shallow words of talking heads, without taking a deep look our grave moment in history. It is through reading this history that I find the ironically enlightened conclusion.
I read this book to gain perspective on the German mind that allowed such terror to exist in their land. From this perspective perhaps one could better apply a remedy to the terror imposed upon people in today’s world. Coincidently I saw the movie The Last King of Scotland where Forest Whitaker did a remarkable job transforming the terrorist myth of Edie Amien into a person full of fear. This book does an equivalent job with Hitler. The author sums up the many failed plots to overthrow Hitler with the following assessment of the German mind:
This paralysis of the mind and the will of grown-up men, raised as Christians, supposedly disciplined in old world virtues, boasting of their code of honor, courageous in the face of death on the battlefield, is astonishing, though perhaps it can be grasped if one remembers the course of German history, outlined in an earlier chapter, which made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man and put a premium on servility.
Who did they serve? Why did they serve? I have a saying that goes like this “desperate people do desperate things.” In their material world the Germans felt desperate in consideration of their new lot in post First World War circumstance. Today’s instruments of world terror, despite of their ideology [Islam] are desperate. Not because of any direct imposition of the West, but because of the oppression of their rulers. Their Imams shine a light on ‘salvation’ of sorts. Much like Hitler did in 1930. Much like what became the remedy for Germany was an undeniable defeat of arms, looms the world destiny today.
Alternatively, let’s look at their leaders. Could a conspiracy of sorts be hatched from this? Well, let’s look at Hitler one last time. According to the authors documentation there is a personal dynamic in Hitler that is exposed in his relationship with Eva Braun. She was his kept mistress through out his whole reign of power. Their love was also kept a closely guarded secret. It was a love only to be exposed in the end when they wedded and then purposely moved on to another existence. Why and what would the reader learn from this?
Hitler knew what he wanted so much so that he wrote a book, Mein Kampf. He was 100% dedicated to the purpose of his book that was solely born from a mind devoid of love. This book was a roadmap to his destiny. When he wrote the book Eva was not in his life and he was not about to make any adjustments to accommodate his heart. He would not allow distractions from the thoughts of his delusional mind. While he put is love on hold the rest of Germany did not, giving Hitler the focus and mental edge where in conjunction with his great oratory skills we was able to win the mind of a pre-occupied people. Pre-occupied with their own plight in life. Germany then fell under the spell of a loveless being, a creature with a mind that played tricks on itself. He was left with the power to remake the perfect world into his world as he held it in his mad mind.
Had Hitler recognized that a perfect world had already been created, had he been raised in a life that allowed this recognition, in a society devoid of corrupt philosophy, perhaps a person of Hitler’s oratory skill would have found his or her way to the pulpit bestowing heart felt peace and love. When you live only in your mind and without the benefit of love, beginning with yourself you eventually find fear. Fear that the world could be other than what is reality. Fear that you could be wrong and therefore you could be totally invalid as a human being. Is it possible to elevate the consciousness of the world leaders beyond fear?
All world leaders use diplomacy that for some reason does not carry the tune below. These words resonated with the hippies of my day. Then like many hippies, me included we became caught up in the real world of making a living. At the ripe age of fifty-one these words sound prophetic and the way to peace, in reflection. But at the same time I am not about to sit back and allow Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, and a cartel other “axis” lunatics repeat history in the same way unlikely partners in crime did in the 1930’s and 40’s. Ironically, singing songs to these folks does not work; developing a collective consciousness hasn’t proved a timely solution. I hate to say it, but the only thing that brought a Reich of Germany around to peace to be a defeat of arms. There is no Fourth Reich..
Perhaps these words could be the sneak attack if enough of the world joined hands with the world leaders in the loop and sang it. But, perhaps I’m just a dreamer.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
I got these words off the Internet…oddly the one missing word is you.
Personally, I’d prefer to sing my way out of my next fight. And at the same time I am not willing to ignore history and lose my personal freedom in a chorus of bliss
I am including these end notes as I suspect most will not chose to endure this book. These notes are the seeds to my review. I am sure my review will not move you as the book would. You need to endure it, the nightmare, as so many did and actually still do. I may say though the book may not change the way you look at war…but will change your views on its cause. When you look at a human race that killed more people as a “civilized society” in the 20th century than ever before, something needs to change. That change is not necessarily in our heads.
End Notes
The back drop of Hitler’s eventual stage to power
1. p 23. Though Hitler was to forget it when he cam to power in Germany, one of the lessons o f his Vienna years which he stress, at great length in Mein Kampf is the futility of a political party’s trying to oppose the churches. “ Regardless of how much room for criticism there was in any religious denomination: he says, in explaining why Schoenerer’s Los-von Rom (Away from Rome) movement was a tactical error, “a political party must never for a moment lose sight of the fact that is all previous historical experience a purely political party has never succeeded in producing a religious reformation.
a. My reaction is first that all the “self help” and keys to “success books” tell the reader to have a plan. AND Hitler did… Mein Kampf. We should learn from this
2. p23 But it was the failure of the Pan-Germans to arouse the masses, their in ability to even understand the psychology of the common people, that to Hitler constituted their biggest mistake. (my comment) An assessment Hitler made at age 21.
3. p25 Though refraining from participation in Austrian party politics, young Hitler salready was beginning to practice his oratory on the audiences.
4. p31 Thus emerged for Hitler, as for so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of “the stab in the back” which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republic and pave the way for Hitler’s ultimate triumph.
a. This is reference to the way the leaders of Germany capitulated in WWI when the German people thought that war was winnable.
5. p53 Thus the German Republic born, as if by fluke. If the Socialist themselves were not staunch republicans it could hardly be expected that the conservatives would be. But the latter had abdicated their responsibilities. They and the Army leaders, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, had pushed political power into the hands of the Social Democrats. In doing so they managed to also place on the shoulders of these democratic working class leaders apparent responsibility for signing the surrender and ultimately the peace treaty, thus laying the blame for Germany’s defeat and for whatever suffering a lost war and a dictated peace might bring upon the German people. This was a shabby trick, but in Germany it worked.
6. p60 The masses of the people, however, did not realize how much the industrial tycoons, The Army and the State were benefiting from the ruin of the currency. All they knew was a large bank account could not but a straggly bag of carrots.
The Mind of Hitler
7. p 81 relative to Mein Kampf : But it might be argued that had more non Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world pursued it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.
8. p 90 A crude Darwinism? A sadistic fantasy? An irresponsible egoism? Megalomania? It was all these in part. But something more. For the mind and passion of Hitler- all aberrations that possessed his feverish brain – had roots that lay deep in German experience and thought. Nazism and the Third Reich, in fact, were but a logical continuation of German History.
9. p97 There had been among the Germans, to be sure, some of the most elevated minds and spirits of the Western World. Leibnitz, Kant, Herder, Humbildt, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Beethoven – and they made unique contributions to civilization in the West But he German culture that became dominant in the 19th century and which coincided with the rise of Prussian Germany, continuing from Bismark through Hitler, rests primarily on Fichte and Hagel …..and then on Treitschke, Nietzsche, Richard Wagner…the succeeded in establishing a spiritual break with the West: the breach has not been healed to this day.
10. p. 104 with regard to Houston Stewart Chamberlain: This son of an English admiral, nephew of a British field marshal, sir Neville Chamberlain, and of two British generals, and eventually son-in-law of Richard Wagner…was drawn irresistibly towards Germany of which he ultimately became a German citizen and became one of the foremost thinkers and in whose language he wrote all of his many books, several of which and an almost blinding influence on Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler and countless lesser Germans. ….under Prussian influence was receptive to the glories of militant, conquering Prussia.
a. My reaction to this as you read about Neville Chamberlain giving away countries to Hitler…just what were they talking about in those meeting?
b. You read over and over Hitler never had aspirations for England or America. So much of Hitler’s life was deeply conflicted and fraudulent.
The Road to Power
11. p 117 Between 1924 and 1930 German borrowing amounted to some seven billion dollars and most of it came from American investors, who gave little thought to how the Germans might make eventual repayment. The Germans gave even less thought about it.
12. p 118 a Hitler quote: if out voting them takes longer than out shooting them (the opposition in political party) at least the result will be guaranteed by their own constitution.
a. My reaction, while you can claim the political landscape was manipulated by Hitler; the other parties played the same games and the German people did vote Hitler in to power.
13. p135 another quote of Hitler: there was to be no revolution to gain control of the State. That goal was to be reached by mandate of the voters or by consent of the rulers. To get that vote Hitler only had to take advantage of the times.
14. p144 Fritz Thyssen head of a German steel trust and many other industrial magnates invested into Hitler
15. p145 Dr Schact resigned from The Reichbank in 1930…and devoted the next two years of all his considerable abilities to bringing the Fuehrer closer his banker and industrialist friends
The Nazification of Germany
16. p198 The Reich enacted the Enabling Act – the law Removing Distress of the People an Reich as it was officially called. Its five brief paragraphs took the power of legislation, including control of the Reich budget, approval of treaties with foreign states and the initiating of constitutional amendments, away from Parliament and handed to over to the cabinet for a period of four years. More over the laws drafted by the Cabinet were to be drafted by the Chancellor (Hitler) and might deviate from the Constitution.
17. p205 a quote from Hitler “The revolution is not a permanent state of affair, and it must not be allowed into such a state. The stream of revolution released must be guided to develop into a safe channel of evolution.
18. p211 on foreign policy after Hitler left the Disarmament Conference in 1936: That the Allies at this time could have easily have overwhelmed Germany is a certain as it is that such an action would have brought an end to the Third Reich.
Life in the Third Reich
19. p 239 It would be misleading to give the impression that the persecution of Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi State tore the German people asunder or even greatly aroused the vast majority of them. It did not.
20. p 248 Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restraint, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they hade heard on the radio or read in a newspaper.
21. p 256 In such a manner were the youth trained for life and work and death in the Third Reich. Though their minds were deliberately poisoned, their schooling interrupted, their homes largely replaced so far as their rearing went, the boys and girls, the young men and women, seemed immensely happy, filled with zest for the life of a Hitler youth.
22. p259 General Ludendorf, in his book Total War ….published in Germany in 1935, had stressed the necessity of mobilizing the economy of the nation on the same totalitarian basis as everything else in order to properly prepare for total war.
23. p266 One particular swindle perpetrated by Hitler on the German workers deserves passing mention. ( interpreted by this author) This has to do with Volkswagon (the peoples car) …Hitler instigated a plan for the worker to commit from his wages 990 marks - $396 towards his own car…just like the Americans. Hitler took the money but the German people never saw their car.
24. p 267 what enabled the German mind to bend towards Hitler the author writes: In the past, for so many, for as many as six million men and their families, such rights of free men in Germany had been overshadowed, as he said, by the freedom to starve. In taking away the last freedom, Hitler assured himself of support of the working class
The Road to War
25. This great journal, one of the chief glories of English journalism, would plat, like the Chamberlain government, a dubious role in the disastrous British appeasement of Hitler. But to this writer, at least it has even less excuse than the government, for in its Berlin correspondent, Norman Ebbutt, it had, until he was expelled on August 16, 1937 a source of information about Hitler’s doings and purposes that was much more revealing than provided by other foreign correspondents …he much complained of both the “government and press” ( interpretation for efficiency) knowing what was really going on in Nazi Germany and how grandiose Hitler’s promises really were.
26. p 293 about the German defense capabilities in 1936: As General Jodl testified at Nuremberg, “considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces”
27. p 299 about Hitler in 1937: Most important of all, perhaps, he had released the dynamic energy of the German people, reawakening their confidence in a nation and their sense of mission as a great and expanding world power…..
28. p300 neither Great Britain and France, their governments and their peoples nor the majority of the German people seemed to realize as 1937 began that almost all that Hitler had done in his first four years was a preparation for war.
29. p 344 Chamberlain was quoted as saying that “what happened (at Berchtesgaden) was merely that two statesmen had agreed upon certain measures for the improvement of relations between two countries…It appeared hardly possible the to insist that just because two statesmen agree in the interest of relations between them – the one country had renounced its independence in favor of the other. …In view of the British Legation in Vienna, as I myself learned at the time, had provided Chamberlain with the details of Hitler’s Berchtesgaden ultimatum to Schuschnigg ( the Austrian Premier), this speech, which was made to the Commons on March 2, is astounding. But ir was pleasing to Hitler, He knew he could march into Austria without any complications with Britain.
30. p346 President Miklas of Autria testified that the Austrian government, which immediately had informed Paris and London of the German ultimatum, was continuing “conversations” with the French and the British governments through out the afternoon in order to ascertain their “frame of mind” When it became clear the their “frame of mind” was to do nothing more than utter empty protests, President Miklas a little before midnight, gave in. (to Hitler)
31. p 364 with regard to the Czechoslovakia: The furthest the British would go was to warn, as Dirksen says Halifax did, that : in the event of a European conflict it was impossible to foresee whether Britain would not be drawn into it”. As a matter of fact, this was as far as Chamberlains government would ever go – until it was too late to stop Hitler.
32. p 368 with regard to the German generals reluctance to war: [General Beck] “In full consciousness of the magnitude of such a step but also of my responsibilities I feel it is my duty to urgently of the armed forces ask the Supreme Commander [Hitler} call off his preparation for war.”… Beck took his memorandum to Brauchistich and augmented it orally with further proposals for unified action on the part of the Army generals….at the Nuremberg trials to the question : Did an officer have a higher allegiance than the one to the Fuehrer? Dozens of generals excused their war crimes by answering…they had to obey orders.
33. p 375 Alas for Beck, and for the future of most the world, it was Hitler and not the recently resigned Chief of the General Staff who proved to have the shrewder view of the possibilities of a big war.
34. p 376 Despite the angry questions in the House of Commons, the Germans noted, Chamberlain had not denied the veracity of the American dispatches….On June 1, the Prime Minister had spoken, partly off the record, to British correspondents, and two days later the Times had published the first of its leaders which were to help undermine Czech position…
35. p 376 It was on that day August 3, that Chamberlain had packed off Lord Ruciman to Czechoslovakia on a curious mission to act as “mediator” in the Sudeten crisis. I happened to be in Prague that day of his arrival and after attending the press conference and talking with members of his party remarked in my diary that “Runciman’s whole mission smells.
36. p 377 my diary notes for the first evening and subsequent days make it clear the Czechs knew perfectly well the Runciman had been sent by Chamberlain to pave the way for the handing over of the Sudetenland to Hitler. It was a shabby trick.
37. p 379 the German hesitation to move on Sudetenland: But they needed assurances of another kind – whether, after all, they had been right in their assumption that Britain and France would go to war against Germany if Hitler carry out his resolve to attach Czechoslovakia….the sent agents to London to not only find out what the British government intended to do but if necessary influence its decision bi informing it that Hitler had decided to attack in a certain date in the fall, and that the German Staff, which knew the date, opposed it and was prepared to take the most decisive action to prevent it if Britain stood firm against Hitler to the last.
38. p 386 with regard to a German [Hitler] proposal: “Would Britain agree to a secession of the Sudeten region, or would she not?… a secession on the right of self determination. The proposal did not shock Chamberlain. Indeed, he expressed satisfaction that they “ had now got down to the crux of the matter.” According to Chamberlains own account, from memory, re replied the he could commit himself until he had consulted his cabinet and the French. He also stated “ he could state personally the he recognized the principle of detachment of Sudeten areas…He wished to return to England to report to the Government and secure their approval of his personal attitude”
39. p 388 Lord Ruciman was summoned from Prague to make recommendations…He advocated transferring the predominantly Sudeten territories to Germany without bothering a plebiscite. [General election]
40. p 406 Theodor Kordt, counselor of the German Embassy in London, that day, confiding that the Prime Minister [Chamberlain] was prepared to go a long way to meet Hitler’s demands in the Sudetenland.
41. p 411 of the German generals prior to Czechoslovakia: Neville Chamberlain, they claimed, was the villain! By agreeing to come to Munich he forced them at the very last minute to call off their plans to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime!
42. p 426 Germany was in no position to go to war on October 1, 1938, against Czechoslovakia and France and Britain, not to mention Russia….Chamberlain’s stubborn, fanatical insistence on giving Hitler what he wanted, his trips to Berchtesgaden and Godsberg and finally the fateful journey to Munich rescued Hitler from his limb [being overthrown by his generals] and strengthened his position in Europe.
The Diplomacy Prior to Hitler’s Attack on Poland
43. p 465 on Chamberlain just before Hitler attacked Poland: Great Britain, France, backed by Russia, could have taken action to stop Hitler at very little cost to themselves. But peace-hungry Chamberlain had shied away from such moves.. Not only that he had gone out of his way, he had risked, as he said, his political career to help Adolph Hitler get what he wanted in neighboring lands. He had done nothing to save the independence of Austria. He consorted with the German dictator to destroy the independence of Czechoslovakia, the only truly democratic nation on Germany’s eastern borders and the only which was a friend to the West and which supported the League of Nations and the idea of collective security. He had not even considered the military value to the West of Czechoslovakia’s thirty-five well trained, well armed divisions entrenched behind strong mountain fortifications at a time when Britain could only put two divisions in France and when the German Army was incapable of fighting on two fronts and according to the German generals incapable of penetrating Czech defenses.
Now overnight, in his understandable bitter reaction to Hitler’s occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain, after having undertaken to unilaterally guarantee and Eastern country run by a junta of politically inept Colonels, who up to this moment had joined with the Germans in carving up Czechoslovakia and whose country had been rendered militarily indefensible by the very German conquest which Britain and Poland had helped the Reich to achieve. And he at the eleventh hour risk without bothering to enlist the aid of Russia, whos proposals for joint action against further Nazi aggression he had twice turned down within the year.
Finally, he had done exactly what for more than a year he had stoutly asserted that Britain would never do: he left it to another nation the decision whether his country would go to war.
44. p 477 with regard to Stalin’s position on Poland:
1. To continue to pursue a policy of peace and consolidation of economic relations with all countries
2. …Not to let our country be drawn into conflict by warmongers, whose custom is to let other pull their chestnuts out of the fire
This was a plain warning from the man who made all the ultimate decisions in Russia that the Soviet Union did not intend to be maneuvered into a war with Nazi Germany in order to spare Britain and France and it was ignored in London, it was at least noticed in Berlin.
44. p 480 The significance or Litvinov’s abrupt dismissal was obvious to all. It meant a sharp and violent turning in the Soviet foreign policy. Litvinov had been an archapostle of collective security, of strengthening of the power of the League of Nations, of seeking Russian security against Nazi Germany by military alliance with Britain and France. Chamberlains hesitations about such alliance were fatal to the Russian Foreign Commissar.
45. p 494 Stalin’s distrust of Britain and France and his suspicion that the Western Allies might in the end make a deal with Hitler, as that had the year before in Munich, was thus publicized for the world to ponder.
46. p 502 It was a well-founded impression. As the confidential British Foreign Office papers would make clear, the political talks in Moscow had reached an impasse by the last week in July largely over the impossibility of reaching a definition of “indirect aggression” To the British and French the Russian interpretation of that term was so broad that it might be used to justify Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic States even if there ware no Soviet threat, and this to London at least – the French were prepared to be more accommodating. – would not agree
47. p 508 If the Fuehrer considered war “inevitable” then Italy would stand by her side. But the Duce reminded him that war with Poland could not be localized; it would become a European conflict. Mussolini did not think this was a time for the Axis to start such a war. He proposed a constructive peaceful policy over several years.
48. p 515 “The great drama” Hitler told his listeners, “ is now approaching its climax” While political and military successes could not be had without taking risks, he was certain that Great Britain and France would not fight. For one thing, Britain “has no leaders of real caliber. “The men I got to know in Munich are not the kind that start a new world war.” As in previous meetings with his military chiefs the Fuehrer could not keep his mind of England’s and he spoke in considerable detail of her strengths and weaknesses, especially the latter
49. p 526 the mindset of USSR in signing the Nazi Soviet Pact: We formed the impression [said Stalin] that the British and the French Governments were not resolved to go to war if Poland were attacked, but that the hoped the diplomatic line-up of Britain, France and Russia would deter Hitler.
50. p 544 Stalin’s cynical and secret deal with Hitler to divide Poland and to obtain free hand to gobble up Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Bessarabia was not known outside Berlin and Moscow, but it would soon become evident from Soviet acts and it would shock the rest of the world even at this late date. [1959]
51. p 561 Nobel in form and intent as all these neutral appeals were, this is something unreal and pathetic about them when reread today. It was as if the President of the United States, the Pope and the rulers of the small Northern European democracies lived on a different planet from that of the Third Reich and had no more understanding of what was going on in Berlin than what might be transpiring on Mars. This ignorance of the mind and character and purposes of Adolph Hitler, and indeed the Germans, who, with few exceptions were prepared to follow him blindly, no matter where or how, regardless of morals, ethics, honor, or the Christian concept of humanity, was to cost peoples led by Roosevelt, and the monarchs of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway and Denmark dearly in months to come.
52. p 593 Sir Nevile Henderson’s [British ambassador to Germany] disillusionment seemed complete. Despite all his strenuous efforts to appease the insatiable Nazi dictator, his mission to Germany, as he called it, had failed….And though would suffer one more typical, incredible lapse the next day, the first day of the war, an ancient truth was dawning on him: that there were times and circumstance when, as he at last said, force must be met by force.
53. p 595 Hitler has been in a fine fettle all day. At 6P.M on August 31 General Halder noted in his diary, “Fuehrer; has slept well...Decision against evacuation [in the West shows that he expects France and England will not take action.
Admiral Canaris {German}...one of he key anti-war Nazi conspirators, was in a different mood. Though Hitler was carrying Germany into war, an action which the Canaris circle had supposedly sw orn to prevent, by getting rid of the dictator, there was no conspiracy in being now that the moment for it ad arrive.
The War
54. p 642 The Wilhelmstrausse, it is now known from secret German documents, was encouraged to believe by reports it was getting from Paris through Spanish and Italian ambassadors there that the French had no stomach for continuing the war.
55. p 643 On Oct 2, Attoloco [Italy) handed Weisaeker [German] the text of the latest message from the Italian ambassador in Paris, stating that the majority of the French cabinet were in favor of a peace conference and it was now mainly a question of “enabling France and England to save face”
56. p 710 in Norway: The Wehrmacht commanders – Goering, Brauchitsch, Halder, Keitel, Jodl, Raeder and the rest – had for the first time had a foretaste during the Norwegian campaign of how ther demonic Leader cracked under the strain of even minor setbacks in battle. It was a weakness which would grow on him when, after a series of further astonishing military success, the tide of the war changed, and it would contribute mightily to the eventual debacle of the Third Reich
57. p 710 For the remaining neutral states Hitler’s latest conquest was also a terrifying lesson. Obviously neutrality no longer offered protection to the little democratic nations trying to survive in a totalitarian – dominated world. Finland had just found that out- and now Norway and Denmark. They had themselves to blame for being so blind, for declining to accept in good time – before the actual aggression – the help of friendly world powers.
58. p 734 after sweeping through Belgium and in northern France: Hitler was in very good humor…and gave us his opinion that the war would be finished in six weeks. After the he wished to conclude a reasonable peace wit France and then the way would be free for an agreement with Britain…
59. p 748 on the speculation of America being drawn in: On June 12, for example he [Hans Tomsen German ambassador to the USA] cabled Berlin in code “ most urget, top secret” that a well-known Republican Congressman” who was working “closely” with German Embassy had offered $3,000, to invite fifty isolationist Republican Congressman to the Republican convention so that they may work on the delegates in favor of an isolationist foreign policy…the same Tomeson want $30,000 to place ads in newspapers headed “Kepp America Out of The War.
60. p 760 with regard to German views prior to Operation Sea Lion: Jodl recognized that the fight against the British Air Force must have top priority. But on the whole he thought this as well as other aspects of the assault could be carried out with little trouble. He said: “ Together with propaganda and periodic terror attacks, announced as reprisals, this increasing weakening of the basis of food supply will paralyze and finally break the will of the people to resist, and thereby force its government to capitulate.
61. p 760 prior to a land invasion of England’ There seem to have been at least two reasons for the delay. One was the belief at OKW that the bombing of London was causing too much destruction, both to property and to British morale and that invasion might not be necessary.
62. p 776 Now Goering made the first of his two tactical errors. The skill of the British Fighter Command in committing it planes to battle against vastly superior attacking forces was based on its shrewd use of radar.
63. p 780 in a Hitler talk to an applauding German women’s group: “when they declare” Hitler continues, “that the will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground”. At this I noted the young ladies were quite beside themselves and applauded phrenetically.
64. p 803 Prior to Hitler’s turn to Russia: Ribbentrop gave a sly hint of the Four Powers – The Soviet Union, Italy, Japan, and Germany – to adopt a long range policy … by the delineation of their interest on a world wide scale.
65. p 816 on return from a trip to visit the Duce as the tide was changing: Hitler went north with a bitterness in his heart. He had been frustrated three times – at Hendaye, at Montoire, and now in Italy. In the lengthy winter evenings of the next few years these long exacting journeys were a constantly therme of bitter reproaches against ungrateful and unreliable friends, Axis partners and deceiving Frenchmen.
66. p 819 in an effort to gain Spanish support at the Rock of Gibraltar:… About one thing, Caudillo, there must be clarity: we are fighting a battle of life and death and cannot at this time make any gifts…The battle which Germany and Italy are fighting will determine the destiny of Spain as well. Only in the case of our victory will your regime continue to exist.
67. p 820 The Fuehrer is of the opinion [Raeder wrote] that it is vital for the outcome of the war that Italy does not collapse…He determined to …prevent Italy from losing North Africa.
68. p 821 It was at a war conference that Hitler described Stalin as “a cold blooded blackmailer” and informed his commanders that Russia would have to be brought to her knees “as soon as possible” “ If the USA and Russia should enter the war against Germany the situation would become very complicated. Hence any possibility for such a threat to develop must be eliminated at the very beginning. If the Russian threat were removed, we could wage war with Britain indefinitely. If Russia collapsed, Japan would be greatly relieved: this in turn would mean increased danger to the USA.
69. p 830 Hitler on the war with Russia: The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. The officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies.
70. p 833 Did any German, even one single German, protest against this planned ruthlessness, this well-thought-out scheme to put millions of human beings to death by starvation? In all the directives concerning the spoliation of Russia, there is no mention of anyone’s objecting – as at least some of the generals did in regard to the Commissar Order. These were not merely wild and evil fantasies of distorted souls such as Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Rosengerg. For weeks and months, it is evident from the records, hundreds of Germans officials toiled away at their desks in the cheerful delight of the warm spring days, adding up the figures and composing memoranda which coldly calculated the massacre of millions.
71. p 839 the Soviets went out of their way to appease Berlin as the date of the German attack approached. Stalin personally took the lead on this.
72. p 846 Keitel testifies in Nuremberg the following quote on Hitler: The main theme was that this was the decisive battle between two ideologies and that practices which we knew as soldiers – the only correct ones under international law – had to be measured by a completely different standard.
73. p 850 Of Hitler’s strategy on invading Russia: We have no chance of eliminating America. But it does lie in our power to exclude Russia. The elimination of Russia means at the same time a tremendous relief for Japan in East Asia, and thereby the possibility of a much stronger threat to American activities through Japanese intervention.
74. p 867 when facing disaster on the road to Moscow: Hitler’s triumph over the Prussian officer corps was thus completed. The former Vienna vagabond and ex-corporal was now head of State, Minister of War, and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces
75. p 868 Hitler’s fanatical order that the troops must hold fast regardless in every position and in the most impossible circumstances was undoubtedly correct. Hitler realized instinctively that any retreat across the snow and ice must, within a few days, lead to dissolution of the front and if that happened the Wehrmacht would suffer the same fate that had befallen the Grande Armee.
76. p 875 the Fuehrer coaxing Japanese aggression on the USA As to the United Staets America was confronted by three possibilities: she could arm herself, she could assist England, or she could wage war on another front. If she helped England she could not arm herself. If she abandoned England the latter would be destroyed and America would then find herself fighting powers of the Three-Power Pact alone. In no case, however, could America wage a war on another front. Therefore the Fuehrer concluded, never in human imagination could there be a better opportunity for the Japanese to strike in the Pacific than now.
77. p 883 Strangely enough, it never seems to have occurred to him [Hitler] or to anyone else in Germany until very late that Japan had her own fish to fry and that the Japanese might be fearful of embarking on a grand offensive in the Southeast Asia against British and Dutch, not to mention attacking Russia in the rear, until they secured their own rear by destroying the United States Pacific Fleet.
78. p 893 on Dec 8 1942: The Nazi Foreign Minister also informed the ambassador, according to the latter’s message to Tokyo, that on the morning of the eighth “ Hitler issues orders to the German Navy to attack American ships when-ever and where ever they meet them.
79. p 912 It was the darkest moments of the war for the Allies and correspondingly one of the brightest for the Axis. But Hitler, as we have seen, had never really understood global warfare.
80. p 916 The shifting of this powerful armored unit back to the drive on Stalingrad was one of the fateful decisions which Hitler made on July 23. His fanatical determination to take both Stalingrad and the Caucasus at the same time, against the advice of Halder and the field commanders, who did not believe it could be done, was embodied in Directive 45, which became famous in the annals of the German Army. It was one of the most fateful of Hitler’s moves in the war, for in the end, and in a very short time it resulted in failing to achieve either objective and led to the most humiliating defeat in the history of German arm, making it certain that he would never win the war and the days of the Thousand-year Third Reich were numbered.
81. p 917 The continual under estimation of enemy possibilities [Halder noted sadly in his diary that evening] takes on grotesque forms and is becoming dangerous. Serious work has become impossible here. Pathological reaction to momentary impressions and a complete lack of capacity to assess the situation and its possibilities give this so-called “leadership a most peculiar character.
82. p 923 For about twenty-four hours Hitler toyed with the idea of trying to make an alliance with France [occupied France] in order to bring her into the war against Britain and America and, at the moment to strengthen the resolve of the Petain government to oppose the Allied landings in North Africa. He probably was encouraged in this by the action of Petain in breaking off diplomatic relations with the United States …and by the aged French Marshal’s statement to the US charge d’affairs that his forces would resist an Anglo-American invasion.
83. p 932 on Hitler’s attitude towards his generals who surrendered rather that fight to the death on General Paulus: Hitler’s venom toward Paulus for deciding to live became more poisonous as he ranted on “ You have to imagine he’ll be brought to Moscow – and imagine that rattrap there. There he will sign anything. He’ll make confessions, make proclamations – you’ll see. The will now walk down the slop of spiritual bankruptcy to its lowest depths…
84. p 934 as the tide turned and Russia was on the march into Germany: For the first time the civilian German people, like the German soldiers at Stalingrad and El Alamein, were to experience the horrors which their armed forces, and inflicted on others up to now.
85. p 943 getting even : France was forced to pay 31.5 billions of total, its contributions of more than 7 billions coming four times the yearly sums which Germany had paid in reparations under the Dawes and Young plans after the first war – a tribute which seemed such a heinous crime to Hitler.
On the New Order
The Atrocities on Man Kind committed by the German People
A collective conscious...not of just Adolph Hitler
86. p 949 about the conditions of the slave labor camps: Dr. Jeager reported the situations of Krupp and even to the personal physician of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the owner but in vain. Nor did his reports on other Krupp slave labor camps bring any alleviation.
87. p 951 Even the Slav women seized and shipped to Germany for domestic service were treated as slaves. As early as 1942 Hitler had commanded Saukel to procure a half million of them “ in order to relieve the German housewife” The slave labor commissar laid down the condition of work in the German house hold. “There is no claim to free time. Female domestic workers from the East may leave the household only to take care of domestic tasks…”
88. p 971 There had been the records show, some lively competition among German businessmen to procure orders for building these death and disposal contraptions and for furnishing the lethal blue crystals. The firm of A Topf and Sons of Erfut, manufacturers of heating equipment, won out in its bid for the crematoria at Auschwitz. The story of its business enterprise was revealed in a voluminous correspondence found in the records of the camp.
89. p 973 Of the deposits of the jewelry, and gold dental work removed from the dead victims of the death camps: The Reich bank, in fact was overwhelmed by “Max Heilger” deposits. With its vaults filled to overflowing as early as 1942, the bank’s profit minded directors sought to turn the holdings into cold cash by disposing of them through municipal pawnshops. [my words and the German public bought these items]
90. p 979 of the medical experiments: Although the “experiments” were conducted by fewer than two hundred murderous quacks – albeit some of them held eminent posts in the medical world – their criminal work was known to thousands of leading physician of the Reich, not a single one of whom, so far as the record shows, ever uttered the slightest public protest.
91. p 986 of the “freezing experiments” in Dachau: Apparently a few German Luftwaffe medics were beginning to have their doubts. When Himmler heard of this he wrote Field Marshall Milch protesting about the difficulties caused by the “Christian medical circles” in the Air Force….he suggested that he find a “non-Christian physician, who should be honorable as a scientist” to pass on Dr. Raschers valuable works.
92. p 987 of the “freezing experiments” in Dachau: According to the testimony at the ‘Doctors Trial’, ninety-five German scientists, including some of the most eminent men in the field, participated, and though three doctors left no doubt that a good many human beings had gone to death in the experiment there was no questions put as to this and no protests therefore made.
93. p 994 Such, has been sketched in this chapter, were the beginnings of Hitler’s New Order; such was the debut of the Nazi Gangster Empire in Europe. Fortunately for mankind it was destroyed in its infancy – not by any revolt of the German people against such a reversion to barbarism but by the defeat of German arms and the consequent fall of the Third Reich, the story of which now remains to be told.
The Fall
94. p 1036 Just as ominous for the conspirators was the military situation. The Russians, it was believed, were about to launch an all-out offensive in the East. Rome was been abandoned to the Allied forces. In the West the Anglo-American invasion was immanent. Indeed, there was a growing number of conspirators, perhaps influenced by the thinking of the Kreisau Circle, who began to feel that it might be better to call off their plans and let Hitler and the Nazis take responsibility for the catastrophe. To over throw them might merely perpetuate another stab-in-the-back legend, such as that which had fooled so many Germans after the First World War.
95. p 1081 This paralysis of the mind and the will of grown-up men, raised as Christians, supposedly disciplined in old world virtues, boasting of their code of honor, courageous in the face of death on the battlefield, is astonishing, though perhaps it can be grasped if one remembers the course of German history, outlined in an earlier chapter, which made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man and put a premium on servility.
The Last Days
96. p 1108 One fine evening early in April Goebbels has sat up reading to Hitler from one of the Fuehrer’s favorite books, Carlyle’s of Fredrick the Great. The chapter he was reading told of the darkest days of the Seven Years War, when the great King felt himself at the end of his rope and told the ministers that if by February 15 no change for the better in his fortunes occurred he would give up and take poison.
97. p 1120 Hitler to one of his secretaries: “No Hanna” she says the Fuehrer replied. “if I die it is for honor of our country, it is because as a soldier I must obey my own command that I would defend Berlin to the last”
98. p 1131 The last sentence [of is will and testament] was straight out of Mein Kampf. Hitler had begun his political life with the obsession that “territory in the Easr” must be won for the favored German people, and he was willing to end his life with it. All of the millions of German dead, all of the millions of German homes crushed under the bombs, even the destruction of the German nation had not convinced him the robbing of the lands of the Slavic peoples to the East was – morals aside – a futile Teutonic dream.
