“The Coming of the Third Reich”, by Richard J. Evans

602 pages, Penguin, ISBN-13: 978-1594200045

The Coming of the Third Reich is the first book in “The Third Reich Trilogy”, a series of narrative history books by the British historian Richard J. Evans that covers the rise and collapse of Nazi Germany in detail with a focus on the internal politics and the decision-making process. In this first volume, Evans focuses on the nature of German society at the time and, in a way, deemphasizes the role Hitler himself played in the coming of the Reich; when put in the context of Germany as a whole, Hitler was just what Germany wanted, and Evans explains why that is in this book. The first words of the first chapter set the theme for the entire work: after 1918, Germany wanted another Bismarck, a strong leader. Many Germans were united in their common hatred of the imposed Weimar democracy and despised the Versailles treaty and its restrictions on Germany. This, then, is the book’s central theme: how the Nazis managed to forge a one-party dictatorship in a democratic society so quickly and with so little organized resistance. For a short introductory start into the coming of the Third Reich, this is fair enough; if it were a specialized monograph, I would complain that it is too superficial. And this probably serves well as my comment on the whole book: it is a large work and covers a huge scope; therefore certain compromises must be made for depth. Did he do it right? I would say yes; Evans summarizes the failures of the Weimar Republic, the interim state which moved Germany from monarchy through a short-lived democracy after the First World War to disaster. Weimar failed, essentially, because it had insufficient support on the inside: neither the majority of the electorate nor of the party spectrum had a democratic orientation.

The stew in the pot during this period had a mélange of rabid ingredients, not least of which were: Anti-Semitism (not a German invention, which is why many observers, as well as victims, refused to anticipate its ferocity); Social Darwinism (the concept of racial hygiene); Nationalism and Pan-Germanism; Secularism as an underlying condition of most elements of this brew; the Romantic youth movement; Anti-Bolshevism (enhanced by the events following the revolution in Russia and the start of the Soviet Union); Anti-Communism (fueled by several botched attempted revolutions in Germany); the experience of World War I defeat (never accepted, explained away by the “stab in the back” theory); the humiliation of the Versailles treaty; and a kind of mock socialism, replacing the enemy “capitalism” of “The Jew”. While many right-wing groups had existed before and during the time of the Nazis, the NSDAP – Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, The National Socialist German Workers’ Party – succeeded through a combination of a strong message that they tailored to each audience, the personality of Hitler which other parties across the political spectrum lacked, and strong-arm tactics on the streets. This volume is, much like William Shirer’s classic effort The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a narrative account of the events surrounding the events of the Nazi era. It is a massively documented effort to record the story of the Third Reich in chronological order, and much as Shirer did, attempts to “give voice to the people who lived through the years” of Nazi rule.

The author is quite passionate in voicing his own concern that history once more render for the reader an intelligent recounting of the experiences of ordinary individuals, of the sheer complexity of their existential constraints, and of the available options and often incomprehensible choices they faced. So, what Evans aims to give to the reader in the early 21^st Century is a better understanding of the Nazi era by recreating all of its elements, in all their complexity and interweaving perplexity, thus reminding readers that, as L.P. Hartley said, “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”. Given the fact that it remains as important today as ever to understand both how and why the Nazis came to power with such speed and relative ease, it is critical to better appreciate the nature of life in the Third Reich, to comprehend why their opponents failed to stop them, and to better realize the nature and the operation of the machinery of the Nazi regime once it had grasped the reins of power. Moreover, it remains crucial to understand the complex mechanism through which the operation and goals of the Third Reich so quickly and fatefully engulfed the rest of Europe and then the world in such a bloodbath of carnage and ruin.

Indeed, while the 20^th Century has no shortages of such catastrophes, including the Soviet purges of the 1930s, none of the other such events had such terrifying and cataclysmic consequences for the rest of the world. What Evans offers us here is the masterful opening volume of a trilogy explaining in excruciating detail and breathtaking comprehensiveness the story of how Germany led Europe and the rest of the world into the depths of Hell. It is a book well worth the time and effort to read.

“The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945”, by Gerald Reitlinger

502 pages, Arms & Armour Press, ISBN-13: 978-0853681878

The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945 is author Gerald Reitlinger’s thorough and authoritative history of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) and its growth from a small paramilitary formation designed to protect the Nazi leadership at rallies to one of the most powerful organizations in Germany. From 1929 until the regime’s collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe. Reitlinger records its foundation as a police guard of about two-hundred members, to its development and growth over a decade later into a force of a half-million with a wide diversity of functions, and (thank God) its ultimate destruction of what had morphed into a vast criminal enterprise. Ultimately, the SS would possess its own military divisions in the field, the ubiquitous Gestapo offices across the Reich, and about a dozen Vernichtungslager (extermination camps) in Poland; this was in addition to such projects as “Germanic” archaeology, the cultivation of wild rubber roots and medicinal herbs, and the control of several nightclubs. In the end, the SS was an example of bureaucracy gone mad (if you are not amazed at how this kraken-like monstrosity seized hold of every police and civil branch within an increasingly-menacing police state then lord help ya).

Be careful with the first 20% or so of the book, as these German names and their relationships to one another can get pretty confusin’, but stick with it as ultimately these nefarious actors become more well-defined as every conversation or statement from the main characters is routinely cited from firsthand accounts; helpfully, the book includes an extensive bibliography and biographies of dozens of characters in the upper echelons of the Nazi military, SS and civil bureaucracy. Reitlinger weaves a remarkable tapestry of names, places and events in order to give the reader a better understanding of the inner workings of the Nazi government, their secret orders to exterminating the Jews, Slavs and other Untermenschen (sub-human) races, the often public denials of the concentration camps by members of the highest rank, the contests for power under Hitler, and the seductions and betrayals between officers and agents at the heart of the German Reich.

But Alibi of a Nation is so much more than a history of the SS; it is also – maybe even primarily – an especially brilliant piece of political analysis and a full-scale attack upon a popular fraud perpetuated by the inheritors of Germany. The fraud Reitlinger mercilessly scorches is the idea that the SS concealed its operations from the political and military leaders, a fraud that has been assiduously propagated since the downfall of Hitler to enable Germans to deny their knowledge of – and, hence complicity in – the SS atrocities. His major effort goes into demonstrating the role of the SS at the top levels of Nazi policy and administration and in their role of “Working Towards the Führer”. In reality, the book concerns Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Karl Dönitz and the conflicts and pressures and manipulations and murder plots within the Party hierarchy. If the structure and activities of the SS (there is a lengthy, almost unbearable section on the death camps) are carefully expounded, the SS is seem primarily as an instrument and embodiment of the inner political and personal views of the total Nazi regime.

Reitlinger has written an important scholarly addition to any library, a bleak book that details the most insidious plots and conversations among some of history’s most brutal mass murderers, the corruption of their officers, and the incredible processes of armies within armies, states within the states, and secret intelligence forces within the police and other ministries.

“The Times Atlas of World History”, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough

360 pages, Hammond, ISBN-13: 978-0843711257

The Times Atlas of World History is an historical atlas first published by Times Books Limited (then a subsidiary of Times Newspapers, Ltd., and later a branch of Collins Bartholomew, which is a subsidiary of HarperCollins, and which in the latest editions has changed names to become The Times Complete History of the World; and I thought bank mergers were ridiculous). The first two editions were created by Barry Winkleman, the editorial director of Times Atlases and Managing Director of Times Books, and were edited by the Oxford Chichele Professor of Modern History Geoffrey Barraclough. It is divided into seven sections:

• The world of early man 
• The first civilizations
•  The classical civilizations of Eurasia 
• The world of divided regions 
• The world of emerging West 
• The age of European dominance 
• The age of global civilization

The book is prefaced with an eleven page World Chronology which is quick-view timeline across general geographic regions. It is suffixed with a Glossary (38 pages), helpful in cross-referencing names and places, and an index (26 pages). Each section is further divided into given subjects and contain between one and nine maps, charts to show economic, demographic, manufactures, agricultural output, drug trade and other data as needed. Occasionally illustrations are included on a topic. In the introduction to the first edition, Geoffrey Barraclough notes that the desire of The Atlas was to provide a history based on the viewpoint of its creators, hence the spread of Islam, for example, is centered at Mecca, as might have been the view of the 7^th Century Arabs.

“‘Unsinkable’: The Full Story of RMS Titanic”, by Daniel Allen Butler

304 pages, Stackpole Books, ISBN-13: 978-0811718141

The story of the sinking of the RMS Titanic is almost too classically Hollywood to be believable: one of the most luxurious ocean liners of all time, billed as “unsinkable”, strikes an iceberg and sinks, resulting in the highest casualties of its time (prior to the sinking of the Titanic, the grand total of deaths on an ocean liner in the past forty years was six people) with poor people trapped below as the ship sinks, families saying tearful goodbyes at the lifeboats, and musicians playing even as the ship goes under? If it didn’t actually happen you’d think it was a bad, maudlin script and throw it in the circular file. But happen it did, and in “Unsinkable”: The Full Story of RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler we have purports to be just that: the tale of the Titanic, from start to finish. Butler gives us some background into the building of the Titanic and some general stats about the ship, but he wastes no time getting to the good stuff (the night of the sinking occurs on page 63), and Butler goes into almost exhausting detail covering almost every moment of the ship’s final hours…

…only, if you’ve ever read A Night to Remember by Walter Lord well, then, then you’ve read Unsinkable, too. The author tries to present himself as an original researcher who has painstakingly recreated the disaster for readers to immerse themselves in and, yes, he does put some interesting tidbits in (he’s one of the few Titanic authors who claims the last song the heroic band played was “Nearer, My God, to Thee”). But there is very little new under the sun, or in Unsinkable, and Walter Lord did it first. Oh, Butler discusses the crew’s response as well as the experiences of multiple passengers, from first class to steerage, and examining several myths about the treatment of the third class passengers once the ship started to sink.  It’s true that there were gates keeping the third class passengers from the rest of the ship, Butler says, but this was an immigration regulation and most of those gates were unlocked when the ship began to sink. It is in this replay of the Titanic story is best as it places the tragedy in the context of the social setting: “the men and women aboard the Titanic demonstrated almost every derogatory characteristic of Edwardian society: arrogance, pride, snobbery, prejudice, racism, chauvinism, and maudlin sentimentality. They also showed in equal measure the Edwardians’ capacity for self-confidence, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, gallantry, noblesse oblige, and devotion to duty”.

Another interesting fact that Unsinkable unearths is how the battle cry of “women and children first” affected the women’s suffrage movement: you see, “…the sad truth for the women’s suffrage movement was that, as Mrs. John Martin of the League for the Civic Education of Women put it, ‘We are willing to let men die for us, but we aren’t willing to let them vote for us.’ She was merely underscoring the basic hypocrisy of the suffrage movement of the early 20^th Century, a hypocrisy that the Titanic exposed and that the suffragettes had not considered: equality of rights also entailed equality of risk. The suffragettes lost much of their credibility as a result, as too many of their number, unlike the women of sixty years later, were eager to secure rights without accepting responsibility”. This was a fact I hadn’t considered, but is one that is inforce today: after all, how many feminists truly believe in equality of opportunity and equality of risk? The only good thing to come out of the Titanic sinking was that it illustrated how dangerously out of date the safety regulations on ships were. After he finishes covering the sinking and the rescue of the passengers, Butler spends several chapters discussing the numerous investigations and inquests that followed the sinking. The sinking was the direct cause of massive reforms on ocean liners, improving everything from the radio technicians shifts to the number of required lifeboats. The Titanic was a horrifying tragedy, Butler argues, but it was a tragedy that could have been avoided numerous different ways, and because of the sinking, ocean travel became safer for future passengers.

With every tragedy that befalls us it is fashionable to say that “the world is changed forever”. Well, with the sinking of the Titanic…the world changed forever: it signified the beginning of end of an era, not just the Edwardian age, but the end of the rigidly stratified class structure with its built-in inequities (it would take the first World War to truly bury it). Also, the hubris of technology suffered a blow; we were never so innocent again as to place our belief in “unsinkable” ships, or the infallibility of any work of man. For all of its appropriations, Unsinkable tells its tale of human hubris and short-sightedness well, and all in one slim easy-to-read volume, to boot…

…OH! I almost forgot to quote my favorite line in the entire book: “[Astor] had even written a science fiction novel, A Journey Into Other Worlds, whose hero, Colonel Bearwarden, was contracted by the Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company to make the Earth’s axis perfectly vertical, creating perpetual springtime.” Who knew Astor could channel Douglas Adams 40 years before his birth? And I want to read that book.