Day 250 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

All 1143 pages of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich need to be read by everyone. I said that in a previous post and after finishing the book, I’m saying it again.

This is not a biography on Hitler and it is not a manual on how WWII was begun and fought. It is a book of how a lowly corporal from WWI was able to rise to power, win the hearts and minds of his countrymen, and dominate Europe for twelve years. It is a story about all of those around him. It is a history of a dark era in not just Germany, but of all humanity.

It shows those of us who didn’t grow up during that time just how a man like Hitler could come to power. It shows how we need to be diligent in researching the background of those we elect to hold office over us. It shows us what can happen if we vote based on emotion or public opinion. It shows how easily the lust for power, its grip on ordinary people, can take over and do unspeakable things.

I have sixteen chapters to cover since my last blog on this book. I’m just going to hit some of the things that stuck out to me – things that I never realized before, or things that just made me shake my head in wonder.

As I read page after page of Hitler’s manipulation of people, I was stunned that no one saw it coming. I mentioned before that if people had read Mein Kampf, they would see the heart of Hitler and probably could have stopped him before things got out of control.

Time and again Hitler ignored treaties he signed, promises he made, deals he struck. Prime Minister Chamberlain of Britain took him at his word. Poland was invaded. Austria. Czechoslovakia. And still foreign ministers vied for Hitler’s assurances that he’d not invade this country or that one.

The edge Hitler had over these people was that he could read them and until Winston Churchill came along, Hitler continued to fool everyone.

Among the players in this tale, three stood out: Churchill, Stalin and Mussolini.

Churchill, unlike his predecessor Chamberlain, saw right through the German dictator and his plans. He didn’t believe a word out of his mouth.

Stalin was Hitler’s equal in cunning, yet up to the day that Germany attacked the USSR, he believed that Hitler wouldn’t do such a thing – at least not at that point in time. It was very interesting to read the parlay between the two countries.

Mussolini. I’m not sure what to say about this guy. For some reason, this fascist dictator trusted Hitler, though it was proven, time and again, that Hitler was doing things behind his Axis partner’s back. But when Hitler spoke to him, he seemed to become enchanted. Even more amazing was that Hitler seemed to truly like Mussolini. After the Italian was booted from office, Hitler arranged a daring rescue – and succeeded – at a time when the tide was turning against the German army.

But this book is packed with interesting people. Like I said, it’s not about Hitler or the war – it really is about people. Of course, Hitler is the central figure, but Shirer goes to great lengths to show us what Goering, Beck, Bormann, Himmler, Rommel, etc were like. He pulls from private diaries, captured documents from the Nazis after the war, volumes of material from the Nuremberg trials – and his own personal interaction with many of the figures. It was so interesting to see how people perceived Hitler and how they interacted with him.

Another thing that just made me shake my head was the fact that there were numerous conspiracies to overthrow him – yet they all sought Britain’s assurance that they’d be backed by the country if/when they took Hitler down. They had plots by the hundreds, people close to Hitler who could mobilize the army against him, and yet, for some reason they wouldn’t act without Britain’s backing. Britain, I guess, had received or heard of so many schemes over the years that they refused to “guarantee” anything. So… these “revolutionaries” did nothing but talk.

One of the most disturbing chapters in the book is “The New Order.” In this chapter Shirer tells of what Hitler had envisioned his empire. We all know the horror of the holocaust and Hitler’s hatred of the Jews, but I never realized how much he hated the Soviets. On page 952 Shirer states, “There were more Soviet war prisoners than all others put together—some five and three-quarter million of them. Of these barely one million were found alive when Allied troops liberated the inmates of the POW camps in 1945.”

He tells of how the Germans let people die of starvation or exposure (mainly the Russians and Poles) as they were transferred to either concentration camps or areas where they’d be used as forced labor. He tells horror stories about babies being born on the trainloads of prisoners and then thrown out of the window. He tells of how children ages 10-14 were kidnapped and forced to work for the Germans – the parents never knowing what happened to them. He talks about the “liquidation” of entire towns. He talks about they perfected their killing techniques – especially the gas chambers (Auschwitz, towards the end of WWII was setting records of gassing 6000 people per day). And he talks, albeit briefly, of the “scientific experiments” done on people. This is not a chapter for the weak-stomached person to read.

Shirer then goes into how the tide turned against Hitler: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the USA into the war, D-Day, and Hitler’s mistakes in his leadership of the army. Probably the stupidest thing he had done was to lay out a command that no tank divisions could move without his order – so when the Allies landed at Normandy, Rommel couldn’t mobilize the tanks to defend the beach. Hitler thought it was just a diversion and went to bed – not waking until 3:00 the following afternoon and by then it was too late.

Having just seen the Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie, I found chapter 29 enlightening because it covers the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt. The movie, for the most part, was accurate to what Shirer reports as happening though some events and quotes attributed to Cruise’s character (Stauffenberg) were actually planned or said by General von Tresckow or General Olbricht. But the movie left out all of the mishaps and blunders which make it an even more interesting story. The biggest blunder was that they never thought to cut the phone lines in Berlin. All in all, still a decent movie, but the real story is more fascinating.

The book wraps up with the final attempts of Hitler’s underlings still betraying each other, vying for power, even after Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945. The Third Reich which was to last 1000 years lasted an entire seven days after the death of its founder – twelve years, three months and one day since Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

I stated in an earlier post of how well documented/cited this book is. If you’ve ever opened a Bible and seen all the little numbers marking the Scripture verses, that’s what this book looks like due to all of his sources. Don’t let the size of this book intimidate you – it is a good read and I’ll state it again – one that everyone should pick up and go through. It will surprise you at the similarities between Germany of the 1920s-30s and the USA today…