by Richard J. Evans
London: Penguin, 2008 (first published 2007) ISBN 9780141015484
There is no doubt that both the collapse of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe and the passing of the war generation has led to a revolution in the historiography of both the Third Reich and World War Two. One allowed historians access to hitherto hidden archives, and the other has allowed a less personal and more probing look at what went on during the years 1933-1945.
With these advantages, and building on the work of historians before him, Richard Evans has written a detailed, scathing and (as it says on the cover) terrifying account of the Third Reich during the period of the War (1939-1945). This book is the final of a three part account of Nazism written by Evans (the others being The Coming of the Third Reich, and The Third Reich in Power). Along with Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler and Saul Friedlander's history of the Holocaust, Evans' work gives the early twenty-first-century reader a clear and chilling insight into what was perhaps the most murderous regime in history.
What Evans makes clear in this work is that murder - annihilation of entire sections of society, entire classes and indeed entire races - was at the core of everything National Socialism stood for. Their way of "making Germany great again" consisted only of eliminating "enemies". Evans shows us how much time, effort and expense went in to eliminating not only the Jews, but anyone else that the Nazis felt needed to be got rid of.
Hitler, and by extension the cronies he'd gathered around him, had a very narrow idea of what constituted a good German: anyone who didn't fit that idea, and certainly anyone who wasn't German (or "Aryan") was not considered to be human, and so fit for destruction. The warped Social Darwinism of the Nazis drove them to ever more killing, as the stock of "good Germans" was reduced by the war. The executions continued up to (and even beyond) the end of hostilities.
Evans mentions several times throughout the book that the Nazis never garnered more than about 37% of the popular vote in elections, so how did they manage to keep the whole country under control for so long? There was no doubt that Nazi Germany was a police state, which became ever more the case as the war dragged on. Fear was a big factor in the quiescence of the population. The victories early in the war were genuinely popular, and by the time the war turned against Germany, it was clear that a whirlwind of vengeance would descend, and the Nazis played on that fear to keep the country fighting. Much of the population, as Evans suggests, were by this time expending all their energy in trying to get enough food and fuel to live, and so didn't have time to foment rebellion.
Apart from the July plot, there were other small attempts at defiance of the regime, which usually ended in failure, imprisonment or worse. Evans spends some time on the ambivalent attitude of the Church - both Roman Catholic and Protestant - to Hitler and the regime, with their desire to protest compromised by their desire to not lose their position or possession in society. It's fair to state that they don't come through unscathed by shame.
Evans also spends time focusing on the political economy of the War. That Germany was destroyed by the War we know; that it was always going to be the case was probably not in doubt even early on in the conflict. The German economy was simply not big enough to equip an army for the task Hitler set, nor was the German population big enough to replace the horrendous losses entailed in fighting in Russia. Evans shows clearly that, even without US industry, the Allies were producing more weapons and food than Germany. Despite having over 400,000 foreign workers and hundreds of thousands more POW and Concentration Camp inmates working in agriculture and industry (the latter classes often being worked to death), the German economy was simply unable to provide enough material for the Army to prevail. The irony of the racial state of the Third Reich having to rely on the "lower" races (Slavs, Jews) to undertake vital work is not lost on Evans. Any fraternising between these imported workers and native Germans was forbidden, with harsh punishments for those who transgressed.
What comes through very clearly in Evans' work, and indeed through most studies of the government of the Third Reich, was how - apart from the Police apparatus - shambolic the systems and activities of government were. The personalized nature of the Nazi dictatorship meant that all "law" emanated from Hitler, and so when he did not codify activities and behaviour, his disciples made it up, according to what they thought he wanted. Combined with Hitler's inability to delegate power to one person (most areas of the economy had two or three departments attempting to run them), this led to constant bickering and power-grabs by whomever thought they might have the upper hand at the time. This extended into the military sphere as well, with Albert Speer's attempts to streamline military production constantly stymied by personal projects of other Nazi leaders.
At well over seven hundred pages this is not a short book, and given its subject matter not always easy to read, but it is a masterful overview of the final years of Nazi power, which drew the World into a War that ended up destroying not only the Third Reich, but Germany itself. Designed to be read as a stand-alone book or as the final of Evans' trilogy, it's a must-read not only for those who wish to know more about one of the darkest periods in human history, but also for serious students of World War Two.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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