Book Review - Hitler's Army by Omer Bartov

 Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich by Omer Bartov

New York: Oxford University Press, 1991                        ISBN 0195068793

This book was written at a hinge-point in our modern history: published in 1991 when the certainties of Cold-War Europe were disappearing and a new united Germany was allowed to come to be. This change in the political scene led to a wellspring of historical effort and post-revisionism about Germany's recent history. It had suited Cold-War confrontation to paint the horrors of the Third Reich as the result of an appalling dictatorship imposed on an unwilling populace - the Germans were all "victims" of the Nazis. This view posited that the soldiers that served in Hitler's army were not Nazis or Nazi sympathisers, did not willingly partake in the horrors of the regime, and were in many respects dupes of the hierarchy, such was the revisionist history of the mid Cold-War era.

In Hitler's Army Bartov sets out to question this idea, positing that - especially on the Eastern Front - the Wehrmacht was indeed more than willing to engage in criminal acts, spurred by an internalization by the troops of the tropes of Nazi propaganda and ideology.

Bartov's first steps in setting out this argument require him to dispel the idea that the Wehrmacht was merely an army rather than an instrument of Hitler's will. He demolishes the idea that Germany fought for so long because a) they were highly mechanized, and b) the army was organized around a "primary group" of soldiers drawn from the same area, and that these two things helped make them better fighters.

Through the use of simple statistics Bartov successfully demolishes both positions. Even in June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia, it was the Soviets who were the more mechanized army. This gap widened dramatically as the Germans failed to replace lost materiel and the Russians (and Americans via Lend-Lease) massively increased their production.

The staggering losses of men during the war in Russia (losses which rapidly rose from the very beginning of Operation Barbarossa) very quickly made the idea of a "primary group" impossible to maintain. In fact even by 1943 many groups were already ad-hoc, with whole regiments disappearing and joining with other remnants into "battle-groups".

So, if the revisionist historians were wrong: that it was not technical prowess and group cohesion that kept the Wehrmacht in the field, what was it that did? This is the major focus of Hitler's Army. Bartov contends that far from being duped by the Nazis, many (most?) soldiers duped themselves, by twisting reality to the point where they almost saw the War backwards. Soldiers saw Russian brutality and squalor at the Front as confirming what their propaganda had told them, without reflecting that what they were seeing was the brutality and squalor inflicted on the Russians by Germany.

They even came to believe in a sense that they were engaged in a preventative war, stopping the invasion of Europe by the Untermensch. The soldiers came to believe that they had a civilizing mission (even while destroying villages, massacring Jews and "Partisans") and so became increasingly frustrated when Russians continued to fight. 

This combined with an almost religious belief in the rightness of Hitler became in the end a fatal self-delusion: for example the thought that Hitler would sacrifice his soldiers pointlessly (in Stalingrad for example) was too absurd to be believed, so it wasn't.

Some of this thinking - this self-delusion - has an internal rationality when looked at from the viewpoint of an individual soldier. No soldier can find it easy to admit that their sacrifice will be in vain, or is in pursuit of an evil cause. Irrational belief in a final victory when all the evidence suggests the opposite must be maintained to avoid despair. These are in some ways natural responses.

As is the attempt after the defeat to try and deflect any responsibility for their actions, or indeed responsibility for believing in the cause. When your victors in pursuit of their own ends allow that deflection to stand, and indeed re-use some of the same men in rebuilding German armed forces, then alternatives to the truth easily become the accepted version of events.

A lot of the above is now well known and accepted by the serious student of Nazism and World War Two, but in 1991 Bartov was one of those scholars (like Goldhagen and Evans) who brought a new unprejudiced light to bear on the evidence. His arguments are mostly sound.

This is one for the serious student of World War Two.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler as Military Commander by John Strawson

 Hitler as Military Commander by John Strawson

London: Sphere Books Limited, 1973 (first published 1971)    ISBN 0722182090

John Strawson was a retired British General by the time he came to write this book, which looks specifically at Hitler's ability as a commander of armed forces, which he was over every battleground during World War Two.

Strawson divides his book into two sections; the period of the War when Hitler was making the geopolitical and military running and other countries were reacting to his moves, and the latter period of the War when he was reduced to himself reacting to the decisions and actions of the Allied powers.

Over the course of his narrative, Strawson makes a case that while Hitler had a strong geopolitical sense, and grasped how modern weaponry and combined-arms operations could change the way war could be fought, he had no real grasp of how individual armies should be manoeuvred and used tactically or even strategically.

It was the Battle of France that, despite the German success, is the first illustration of these fundamental flaws within Hitler. He quickly grasped the way that a combined arms attack could quickly dislocate and destroy the French position and lead to disarray, with a bolder vision than that held by his General Staff. The absolute success of the attack on France fed Hitler's massive ego, and led him to believe that not only was he a better strategist than his Generals, but also superior when it came to tactics.

However, it was precisely at the level of army tactics that Hitler let down his armed forces. As Strawson writes "...in spite of being a gambler [Hitler] was unwilling to stake all on a winning number." As evidence of this view Strawson puts forward several examples, including Hitler's failure at Dunkirk, and his failure to adequately support the Afrika Korps until it was too late to make a decisive difference.

The most interesting part of the book for me was Strawson's writing on the Mediterranean Theatre, explaining that far from being a sideshow, if Hitler had fully understood Grand Strategy he would have grasped that: a) it was important to keep the Allies out of the basin as that secured his Southern flank (the Balkans, Italy, Greece, Türkiye) and b) that by pushing the British out of Egypt (eminently possible if Rommel had been supported in an adequate and timely manner) he could have threatened Ukraine and the Caucuses oil fields far more effectively and changed his Russian campaign.

That he didn't do these things comes down fundamentally to the fact that Hitler lacked the imagination to create dynamic strategy. All he could see is the dreams of his youth, and was unable to change as the situation of the War developed. He was unable to see the openings that his gambles had created, and unable to take advantage of them.

His lack of experience in tactics of deploying armies (as opposed to Companies or Platoons, which he also did) and his refusal to listen to those that did have experience led to the suicidal attacks and last-man defences that did so much to destroy the Wehrmacht as a fighting force as the War progressed.

Strawson's book is well-argued, but written in a somewhat pedestrian manner. There is a lot of explicatory material that - while it might be necessary for those unschooled in this subject - can bog down the reader. Of interest to arm-chair strategists only methinks.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler's Private Library by Timothy W. Ryback

 Hitler's Private Library: the Books that Shaped his Life by Timothy W. Ryback

London: Vintage Books, 2010 (first published 2009)    ISBN 9780099532170

This is a fascinating book, although perhaps the title should be reversed, as this book is more about the books that shaped Hitler's life that were in his library, rather than a full discussion of Hitler's Library. Still, if you are a student of Nazi Germany, it is well worth reading.

Ryback focusses on a few key works, and uses them to dive into Hitler the man, Hitler the thinker, and Hitler the leader. From a book on the architecture of Berlin that he purchased while on the front in France in 1915, to the presentation copies of Mein Kampf that were scattered around his flat in Munich after the war, we get through Ryback's book an insight into how and what Hitler read from his library, which by some estimates contained over 16,000 volumes.

To firstly deal with the library itself. Ryback charts its growth from a couple of bookcases in Hitler's early digs in Munich, to a vast conglomeration that was held in Munich, Berlin and at the Obersalzberg. Many of the volumes were presented to Hitler, as it was well known that he enjoyed getting books as a gift. Ryback has a couple of fascinating stories about how Hitler acquired some of his collection, including an interview with Leni Reifenstahl, during which she describes how she gave Hitler a rare set of volumes of Fichte to smooth over quarrel they had over the Jewish question. Throughout the book, and partially via some appendices from other documents, Ryback describes how we have what we have of Hitler's library (approximately ten percent), through confiscation by the allies or pilfering by individuals.

The larger part of this book is to do with what and how Hitler read (and wrote). Many of the books that Ryback mentions Hitler had marked with underlining, marks in the margins, question marks or exclamation marks. From these it is possible sometimes to surmise Hitler's thinking about certain subjects. In an early chapter, Ryback goes into Hitler's relationship with Dietrich Eckart, a formative experience for the young man, and important in the sense that is seems to be during this time that Hitler formed and firmed most of his political views.

What is clear is that once Hitler formed his views, he mostly read to confirm them. Like many autodidacts, Hitler read voraciously, not really to expand his mind, but to gather material to confirm his pre-existing thoughts and biases. Many of the books gifted to him over the years fed precisely this need, especially those given to him as gifts from his inner circle. It seems he was prone to agree with anything that prophesied that Germany needed a saviour to gain its deserved glory in the parade of nations, for example. He also devoured statistical material, and we have many examples of people being astounded at his recall of obscure facts about military equipment, or statistical information about countries. While this feat might have dazzled some, it is not necessarily a sign of a deep thinker, or indeed of wisdom.

One part of the Hitler library Ryback doesn't really discuss is his large collection of books to do with the occult and astrology. It seems from some reports that this was one of the major parts of his collection - he seems to have had astrological charts drawn up for himself on at least one occasion, and for me it would have been interesting to explore this bizarre side of Hitler's character a little more.

This book is not really about Hitler's Library, it is a book about Hitler illuminated through the texts he chose to read. It's probably not a book to read if you don't know much about Hitler or Germany, as it does assume some prior knowledge. Not bad.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Scenes from the End by Frank E. Manuel

 Scenes from the End: the Last Days of World War II in Europe by Frank E. Manuel

London: Profile Books, 2000                                        ISBN 1861972415

This is a short but interesting book. Frank Manuel was a journalist, and in World War Two became an intelligence officer. Scenes from the End is a reflection on his time in Germany as the war was ending based on notes written at the time, the letters he sent home to his wife, and "[c]onversations reported here [that] have passed through the smoke screen of memory, recollections of the spirit, rather than the precise detail, of events; sometimes they echo the voices of other observers."

And what does Manuel record? The justifications of Germans, the thoughts of those enslaved by the Germans, the feelings of the surviving Jews, and the explanations of German generals, interspersed with his attempts to make sense of what he was hearing and experiencing as an American of Jewish descent. 

There is a tone of contempt for those Germans who claim that they didn't know of Nazi crimes, and for those who engage in retribution against enemies (dobbing in a "Nazi", whether they were one or not), and for those who are feeling sorry for themselves and their country.

There are descriptions of the various nationalities that find themselves in Germany at the end, forced labourers that are suddenly free and who take their vengeance, former concentration camp inmates who tear their former guards apart limb-from-limb, former concentration camp guards or members of the SS who try to melt away, and of German officers who still maintain their valets, cars and copious luggage as they move into captivity. 

There is talk of "Werwolves", who never actually seem to appear, there is a story about a fanatical sergeant's attempt at sabotage, who needs a direct order from Sperrle before talking to Manuel about his mission, which contrasts with the willing cooperation he received from Sperrle and the other Nazi General Staff that he interviewed.

The last part of the book describes Manuel's time in Leipzig, where he is involved in ensuring those German scientists who wish to avoid Russian captivity can move to the American Zone. By this time he is sick of his job, sick of Europe and its entangled histories, and wanting to go home.

Scenes from the End is a well written memoir, and left this reader wanting more.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

 Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning

New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992                                       ISBN 0060190132

"In mid-March 1942 some 75 to 80 percent of all victims of the Holocaust were still alive, while 20 to 25 percent had perished. A mere eleven months later, in mid-February 1943, the percentages were exactly the reverse." With this stark statement Christopher Browning begins his study of one part of that whirlwind of murder, the work of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland between July 1942 and November 1943.

That Browning is able to undertake this study is due to the fact that in the 1960s prosecutors interviewed 210 members of the Battalion in their investigations of war crimes from the period. Delving through the obfuscation and downright lies that are contained in some of the testimony, Browning lists a catalogue of horrors undertaken by this unit, and speculates how the "ordinary men" of Battalion 101 could do such things to their fellow human beings.

Unlike the Einsatzgruppen or the members of the SS assigned to run the death-camps, the Reserve Police received no special training or ideological reinforcement before being assigned to murder Jews. The Battalion was a mixture of career policemen, recruits too old to serve in the regular army, or who had joined the Reserve Police to avoid conscription. By no means were all members card-carrying Nazis, although there was a small core of party members among the group. When they were shipped to Poland, they were under the impression that they were being sent to ensure order in the civilian population behind the front lines.

However, not long after they got to Poland, they were assigned to clear the town of Jozefow of Jews, which meant sending the fit Jews away, and massacring the rest of the population. The Battalion had no idea how to go about such a task, and the resulting slaughter was a horrible mess. An extraordinary detail which the prosecutor's interviews reveal, is that the commander of the Battalion, Major Trapp, allowed members to be excused from the killing if they felt they couldn't participate. That only a few took up this offer is at the core of Browning's history....why so few?

Many others, while not "officially" standing apart from the killing, found other ways to not pull the trigger, by making themselves scarce, or participating in other tasks during that time. Browning's take on the evidence is that there was a very small number of willing killers, a majority that would kill when told to do so, a small number who tried to avoid killing when they could, and the very few who objected from the beginning, and took no part in the killing (although they did participate in other tasks such as clearing ghettos, loading Jews into trains for shipment to the death-camps, and so on).

Browning, in the last chapter of his book, goes into some detail about the theories as to why people such as the members of this battalion did the things that they did. He focuses mainly on the results of the Milgram experiment which showed that people will follow authority and do things that they wouldn't otherwise do if it is normalized in some way. The members of Battalion 101 not only had the formal structure of being ordered to do things, but also the over-arching mentality, ideology and thought-patterns of the Nazi world pushing the idea that exterminating the "Jewish threat" was for the good of their Fatherland. Most importantly, in Browning's view, is the pressure to conform with other members of their unit, which is indeed a powerful force in group dynamics. The final words in the book state the problem succinctly - "Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?"

I am not someone who feels themselves extremely well-informed about the Holocaust, so a source of fascination for me was the apparent disorganized way in which much of the killing took place. From a general understanding of World War Two and Germany, the impression is of the Holocaust as a well-oiled killing machine, trains running to timetables, and bureaucrats ticking Jewish populations off as they were transported to their deaths. The truth, it seems, was sometimes far from that. We have the example of Reserve Police Battalion 101 itself, being thrust into the maelstrom without any preparation, and having to almost make up the procedure of killing as they gained experience. Browning, in the beginning of this work, explains how the work of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia was expanded to include firstly the Jews in Poland and then the rest of Europe, but no extra manpower was assigned to those that Himmler instructed to complete the task. And so not only the Reserve Police, but groups of ethnic Germans, Latvians and others were brought together to assist, as did at times Waffen SS and even Wehrmacht troops.

Ordinary Men is a fascinating and horrible journey into the heart of one of the most terrifying events in human history. What makes it terrifying is that Browning shows clearly that such horrors can be committed by people just like you and I. For an insight into the inner workings of the Holocaust, I can highly recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Poland 1939 by Roger Moorhouse

 Poland 1939: the Outbreak of World War II by Roger Moorhouse

New York: Basic Books, 2020 (originally published as First to fight: The Polish War 1939 in 2019)

ISBN 9780465095384

We all know that World War II started when Germany invaded Poland on the first of September 1939. We also know that Poland was overrun in a matter of a month, and we may have heard stories of Polish cavalry charging at Panzers with horse and lance. Beyond that, what is known in the West of the Polish campaign? Moorhouse argues in the preface to this book that the attack on Poland that precipitated a World War needs to be given more than the couple of paragraphs and the well-worn clichés that many English-language histories of World War II give it. It's hard to argue against that.

In this well-written book, Moorhouse covers not only the fighting in detail, but also the machinations of the Nazi attack, the Russian intervention, and the atrocities committed mostly by the Germans (but also Soviets and civilians). The plight of the civilians is not overlooked by this book, but is more an underlying theme rather than a specific highlight.

While the German campaign against Poland was successfully completed in only 35 days, that doesn't mean that the Poles did not fight, and fight hard, or that the Germans didn't have setbacks and failures. As is usually the case in warfare, the protagonist with the greatest economic heft wins in any protracted campaign. Moorhouse states a "rather telling statistic...is that the entire Polish defense budget for the five years to 1939 amounted to only 10 percent of the Luftwaffe's budget for 1939 alone." That is probably all that needs to be said about the equipment disparity between Poland and Germany.

Another truism is that warfare is an extension of politics. No political or diplomatic manoeuvres by Poland would have forestalled Hitler's invasion, but politics did cruel Poland's chances of victory over and above their economic (in)capabilities. The pact with Britain and France was meant to be a deterrent: Britain and France thought that the threat of their intervention would be enough to stop Hitler, and never developed any serious plans to attack Germany if an invasion of Poland took place. Poland on the other hand thought that they needed to show Britain and France that they were serious and so placed most of their armies on the borders with Germany and Slovakia. This made political sense, but it didn't make military sense especially knowing that if war came they would need to hold on for as long as possible to allow their allies time to assist. Setting up at the borders meant that Poland's armies were on ideal campaigning territory, ideally suited for quick moving mechanized troops to drive through any holes in the front and encircle their enemies. Poland's army was not highly mechanized, so this was no advantage to them. Add to that the obsessive secrecy of the Polish armed forces, not sharing plans and not even allowing neighbouring armies to communicate with each other directly, and defeat was almost assured.

Moorhouse covers the military aspect well. Despite being out-gunned, the Polish forces gave the Wehrmacht some severe checks during the campaign. When they were able to be entrenched well with artillery, or when they had the element of surprise, the Polish army could inflict localized defeats on the Germans (and, later on, the Soviets). The cavalry too could be effective in dispersing infantry and allowing freedom of movement for Polish troops, until German or Soviet armour could arrive on the scene. Moorhouse points out that the famous image we have in our heads of Lancers charging tanks was a fiction created by an Italian correspondent, but they did on several occasions charge groups of infantry with success.

The military story is one of soldiers grimly holding on until their ammunition and food ran low, or of fighting retreats to try and join comrades, and at the end a fight to reach the borders. There were some occasions when the troops were routed, mostly it seems due to the bombing from the Luftwaffe rather than infantry attack. The Luftwaffe was also responsible for destroying many Polish cities and towns, in particular Warsaw, which was bombed incessantly throughout the campaign for terror more than for military reasons. 

The Nazi ideology of racial superiority was well-entrenched within the German military, and this meant from the first that atrocities were committed on both Polish military and civilian victims. Mass shootings were common, the shooting of hostages was policy, and when the SS and Einsatzgruppen arrived in numbers, Jews and Polish "intelligentsia" were in mortal danger.

While the Nazis were imposing their racial war on Poland, the Soviets, once they arrived to "liberate" the "suppressed" Ukrainians and Byelorussians (Stalin's cover for his land-grab) began their class war. Quite often in the early days of their occupation of Eastern Poland, just having soft hands was enough to see a person sent to a prison camp, or worse. While the Katyn massacres are outside the scope of this book, Moorhouse lets the reader know where most of the Polish officers captured by the Soviets ended up and sets the scene for the about-to-unfold tragedy that was Poland's fate until (and after) 1945.

In his conclusion, Moorhouse notes that the invasion of Poland by Germany and the USSR was far from a minor event in human terms - 60,000 Polish troops, 20,000 German and perhaps 18,000 Soviets died in those 35 days, and about 100,000 Polish civilians, which includes 16,000 "falling victim to extrajudicial killing by German military and security forces during the period of the military campaign." That's about five and a half thousand deaths per day during the fighting.

Moorhouse in this history doesn't really go into the question of whether this tragedy was avoidable (probably not in my opinion), but does give the reader a good insight into both the immediate background to, and the progress of, this tragic month of history. If you want to flesh out those few paragraphs in any omnibus history of World War II that you might have read, I can recommend this book (apparatus is a mixed bag - good bibliography and notes, OK index, poor maps).

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Bormann: the Man who Manipulated Hitler by Jochen von Lang

 Bormann: the Man who Manipulated Hitler by Jochen von Lang with the assistance of Claus Sibyll (Translated from the German by Christa Armstrong and Peter White)

London: Book Club Associates, 1979 (published in German under the title Der Sekretar in 1977)

"Give them a uniform and they think they're Hitler!" How many times I've heard that when people rail against the petty bureaucracies of modern life. After reading this well-researched piece of journalism and history, you will understand that the quote should be slightly changed to read Bormann in place of Hitler, for it was Martin Bormann, with his lack of vision, but lust for power and control, who was the master of using bureaucracy to make hell of the lives of not only ordinary people, but even the paladins of the Nazi Government and Military.

Von Lang begins his book by explaining that, to the vast majority of German people, Bormann was unknown, even after the War. He stayed in the shadows away from publicity (von Lang notes several instances where his name was mis-spelled on the rare occasions he did make it into the papers). However, through his tenacity and willingness to take on any job no matter how mundane, he gained the trust of Hitler and became indispensable to him. He used this closeness to the Fuhrer to enlarge his sphere of influence, eventually becoming a gatekeeper, and so in many ways he controlled the Third Reich by controlling access to its head.

In reading von Lang's book, it seems that Bormann's greatest ability was the ability to work. He had no grand visions of his own: he ensured that Hitler's rantings were written down, and he saw his role as turning these rambling thought bubbles into concrete orders and programs. His role as the Secretary to the Fuhrer meant that he could state that anything he proposed came from the Fuhrer, and by restricting access to Hitler frustrated those who might want to push their own programs. Those who disagreed with Bormann, or who wanted him moved on, sometimes grouped together to try and push him out or reduce his influence, but invariably they failed. Bormann had ensured that a wide range of people within the party owed allegiance to him, and so often knew of intrigues before they came to fruition, and the complete trust that Hitler had in him meant that it was usually impossible to cast any doubts on his performance.

It's well-known that Hitler disliked giving power to any one individual or group, which caused many problems in running Nazi Germany as it seemed that everyone had a finger in every pie. Bormann used this tendency to his advantage, supporting one group, then another, to ensure that decision-making was impossible unless he facilitated it. Many Nazi potentates held their noses while dealing with Bormann, but deal with him they had to.

Bormann was not a good speaker, he was not a charismatic man, and he didn't come from a good family. Many Nazis in the early days looked down on him, which came back to haunt them when he gained power: he often used it to diminish or destroy those that had snubbed him in the early days - this even extended to his own Father-in-law. Unlike a lot of other top Nazis, he didn't crave medals, or even wealth (although he did amass real estate). What he craved was to be indispensable to his Fuhrer, and to be the one wielding the power that emanated from him. As Germany foundered, the Party became more important than the Government, or even the Military. His power increased with that of the Party which led to the "grotesque irony of Bormann the bureaucrat... that, as his sphere of authority expanded, the actual physical area where that authority counted shrank. The more completely he got his hands on Hitler's domain, the smaller the domain became. Shortly before his death, he had thirty-six hours of glory as absolute regent and supreme commander of the Nazis, but his rule extended over not much more than one square kilometer of Berlin real estate."

Von Lang came to this story through his journalism, when Bormann's and Stumpfegger's bodies were found in Berlin in 1972. The story of proving they were Bormann's, and reconstructing his last day form the last chapter of this book, but they were the first foray of von Lang into this story. There had been much speculation as to what happened to Bormann before and after the bodies were found: that he had made it to South America, that he ran a "Fourth Reich" organisation, and so on. Von Lang provides conclusive evidence in this book that he died in Berlin, with final proof via genetic testing coming in the 1990s.

If you want a comprehensive account of the life of one of the more shadowy leaders in the Nazi world, I can recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Dead Man in the Bunker by Martin Pollack

 The Dead Man in the Bunker: Discovering my Father by Martin Pollack, translated by William Hobson

London: Faber and Faber, 2007                                           ISBN 9780571228010

What a fascinating book, on so many levels. Martin Pollack has written an account of trying to track down the story of his father, an Austrian SS man who was murdered trying to cross the Brenner Pass in 1947. He takes us on a journey into the borderlands of the German people, the beginnings of the German nationalism that fed the growth of Nazism, and the forgetting that occurred after the War.

Pollack begins the story by finding the spot in a bunker on the Pass where his father's body was found. He then winds back through history, to the late Nineteenth Century when his family lived in Styria, on the "border" between Slovene and German people. Pollacks father's family, the Bast family were upstanding Germans, members of German nationalist groups, anti-Semitic, and early converts to Nazism. Pollack well describes the increasing tension on the "German language border" which only increased after World War I, when new borders exacerbated the tension. The Basts soon joined the Nazi party, which was a provocative and illegal act in Austria at that time. Gerhard, Pollack's father, risked prison as he rose further in the Party, and joined the SS. After the Anschluss, Gerhard's father rose in the Nazi bureaucracy as his son rose higher in the SS. 

 Pollack takes us further into the history of his family - he explains that Bast was not married to his mother, and in fact his mother was married to another man and had two children already. His mother divorced and married Bast in April 1945. When the war ended Bast was on the run, and so Pollack's mother re-married her first husband...and yet his mother sent him on holidays to the Bast grandparents. A very tangled story, but one he could never really talk about at the time to any of his family.

Getting information about what his father did in the War is also tangled. As Pollack explains, records for German forces, the SS in particular, are patchy owing to how many were destroyed at the end of the War, and the difficulty in tracking one person through a multitude of files in a multitude of cities and countries.

And so this book is just as much about what is not known, as it is about the facts. Pollack, naturally wants to believe that his father was - as his grandmother tells him - a good man, but he knows that would be too good to be true. He was right. 

Gerhard Bast had many phases to his SS career... one of which was commanding Sonderkommando 7a toward the end of the war, where he was definitely involved in the execution of innocents. There is no doubt that Bast was a committed Nazi. There is no doubt in Pollack's mind that his grandparents, Bast's parents remained Nazis even after the War, as did his mother and step-father...their views of the world, of Jews in particular, did not change. Pollack is unflinching in the way he describes how his views clashed with those of his family, and it is painful to read how the trauma of the experience of war, what his family suffered and the suffering it caused, throws ripples through history forever.

The Dead Man in the Bunker is one man's attempt to understand those ripples and what his family history means for him. A forceful, moving and painful book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Campaign in Russia by Leon Degrelle

 Campaign in Russia: the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front by Leon Degrelle

Torrance, California: Institute for Historical Review, 1985 (originally published in French as Front de l'est 1941-1945)                                                                       ISBN 0939484188

A fascinating and interesting insight into one of the lesser-known facets of World War II. Thousands of non-Germans fought in the German Army. In the case of Leon Degrelle, one of the founders of the Rexist movement in Belgium, he was instrumental in forming the Walloon Legion of French-speaking Belgians, that became part of the Waffen SS and spent much of the war fighting in Russia.

Degrelle was an interesting character. The introduction to this book gives some background to the man, even if it is coloured by the obvious ideological bent of this whole publication. He was very active in Belgian politics, and formed the Rexist movement out his initial involvement with Catholic politics in Belgium. Initially the Rexist party was a nationalist movment, but gradually moved to the right and became influenced by fascism. While initially supporting Belgium's neutrality, once Germay had invaded Rexists generally supported the occupation. Degrelle had the idea of forming a battalion of Rexist volunteers for the German army, with the thought that if Belgians fought well during the War, they could carve out a better accommodation with Germany in the peace that would follow. Degrelle backed the wrong side...

...however, he, and most of the troops under his command, backed it to the hilt. Campaign in Russia is a catalogue of Degrelle's time in the SS, from where he rose from Corporal, through to General of the Walloon Legion (called so even though it never grew much beyond Brigade strength). Like most personal descriptions of fighting in Russia, it lays bare the lack of preparedness of the Germans, their struggles even while "winning", the horrifying privations that the troops suffered because of the weather, and the horror of the final collapse in 1945.

Where Degrelle's memoir differs from others that I have read is in the macabre descriptions of death, the dead, and the wounded. One description struck me as particularly callous and vicious: "I had picked up an Estonian officer. I would have liked to use him to command his compatriots scattered among my troops, but he was consumed by panicky fear. He turned green hearing the bullets whistle past, and lay down flat against my boots, as stiff as a board. One bullet, instead of hitting me in the foot, struck him full in the face, went through him from one end to the other, and came out between his buttocks. He twisted about like a worm, spat, cried, defecated. It was too late. He had digested the bullet too quickly. Ten minutes later he was dead." As you can see, he almost seems to revel in describing the carnage, to the extent that I am left wondering whether he suffered some sort of PTSD: given the amount of fighting and death he saw, it's almost certain that he did suffer mentally from his actions. He himself was wounded several times, and was no doubt a brave soldier.

While the introduction would have us believe that he thought the Russians just as brave as the Germans, - and he does mention that several times during the text - there is no doubt that Degrelle was a committed anti-communist and Nazi. He never fails to make racial slurs about the Russian soldiers he encounters, to emphasise their stupidity, and to glorify the Germans, the Nazi State, and Adolf Hitler himself. In fact he met Hitler on more than one occasion (Degrelle was the only non-German to receive the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves) and comes away convinced of the man's genius, even though intellectually he knows the War will be lost.

The Wallonian troops, if Degrelle is to be believed, were often used a shock troops, which Degrelle put down to their ideological ardour. They were certainly sent to undertake impossible tasks again and again, with ever decreasing levels of support from air, artillery and tanks. Degrelle continues to praise the "calmness" of the German General Staff, even when they were transmitting impossible orders to hold on to him and his units.

In fact Degrelle's lack of insight is a theme that runs through this book. He lambasts the Soviets for their poor equipment but continually describes the lack of such equipment for his troops. He lampoons the Russian command for their crude tactics, and yet is continually describing lunacy coming from his own superiors. He reviles the brutality of the Russians, and yet calmly describes the execution of German deserters in the last days of the War.

Perhaps his biggest self-delusion was the one that led him to form the Walloon Legion itself - that 8,000 or so Belgian troops fighting for Germany would somehow mean that Hitler would give their country some sort of self-determination. He must have been very blind to all that the Nazis did everywhere in Europe to continue to believe that. He makes much of fighting for European civilization against the communist Slav, and yet who was it that began the conflagration; who was it that invaded Russia? He has nothing to say about the treatment of the Jews or the Russian population more generally, and I suppose it may have been that he did not know too much, given where he was posted and the times he was posted there, although he does write, when searching a Russian that he had killed "He had on his person a last will in which he had sworn that, as a Jew, he was resolved to do everything to avenge the Jews." Which does at least imply that he knew something of their fate. More self-delusion in the sentence he wrote following the one just quoted - "Men's fanaticism has no limits." That actually took my breath away.

The Wallonians had a small part to play in the Ardennes offensive (Battle of the Bulge), as they were coming in behind the attacking troops to take control of Belgian territory, but when that assault failed they were sent back to the East to face their final martyrdom. Degrelle describes the final carnage and confusion well, including his own flight to Oslo and eventually to Spain, where he lived in exile until his death in 1994. His Legionnaires went on to various fates, but most ended up back in Belgium to ponder what they had done.

Campaign in Russia is a racy description of the life of one unit on the Eastern Front in World War II. It is also an interesting psychological study into how someone can fall in with evil from what they consider high ideals, and how the brutality of war leaves a stain on everyone involved.

A few words now about the physical book itself. The copy I read is a handsome hardback volume, with a nice black-and-white dustjacket. It's printed, for an American book, on lower quality paper (although still better than the trash used by most Australian publishers), has only one black-and-white photograph (of Degrelle), and has no maps and virtually no other apparatus, apart from some laughable "notes", and a Glossary of terms. There are noticeable printing errors, spelling mistakes and mis-translations throughout the book. The Introduction, by Ted O'Keefe, which is basically a short hagiographic piece on Degrelle, rang alarm bells for me immediately. Who was Ted O'Keefe, what was the Institute for Historical Review, and why would they publish this particular work?

A little bit of fishing around on the Internet confirmed that the Institute is in fact some sort of anti-Semitic group that operates in California, so basically a bunch of nut-jobs. I picked this book up second-hand because I hadn't seen it before, so I know it's relatively scarce. While reading it it's impossible not to notice that it is a pro-Nazi work, so it's not surprising that Nazi sympathisers published it - a quick trip to their website store shows exactly what type of operation it is - and where you can find an "updated" edition of the work under review, which I note has an index - I wonder if there are any maps? Both are sorely lacking in the edition which I have read.

If you are a serious student of World War II, and in particular the Eastern Front, this book would be worth hunting out. If you can stand the pro-Nazi flavour, there is much good writing on what the life of the soldiery was like during nearly four years of hell.

Recommended, with reservations.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw

 Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000             ISBN 0393049949

Well I have climbed the Everest that is Ian Kershaw's two volume biography of Hitler (you can see my review of volume one here), and like the mountain, the journey is a hard slog, you learn much along the way, and the view from the summit is breathtaking, except in this case it is a vista of destruction, barbarism, and the ruin of the Twentieth Century.

In this volume Kershaw moves beyond the early years and begins at the highpoint for Hitler. It might seem strange to state that the highpoint of Hitler's life and political success was prior to the Anschluss and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and before the conquest of Poland, France and much of the USSR. Yet Kershaw convincingly argues that beyond the re-taking of the Rhineland, Hitler was gambling with Germany's fate and began walking the path that led to war, his own downfall and that of Germany as well.

Of course war was always Hitler's aim. His obsession with living space for the Germanic "race" was posited on invading his Eastern neighbors and enslaving or eliminating the people there. This was the irreducible logic of Nazi government in the 1930s: it was not a government for the masses, it was not a government for the rich, it was not a government for those of faith, it was a government that needed violent conflict and expansion to justify itself and keep the ship from sinking under the weight of expectation.

Kershaw, in my opinion, gets very close to explaining why the whole country went with Hitler on this journey into the abyss. His closest cronies would always follow him, as their views were at least as radical as his, and often more so. Many others saw their enemies (Bolsheviks, Poles to name a few), being crushed and rejoiced, and others enjoyed Germany's resurgence. The humiliation of World War One - which was the cornerstone on which Hitler built his political career - was a national trauma, and his struggle to rid Germany of this stain drew many people to his movement. As the war progressed and Germany began to lose, Hitler's appeal began to shrink, which led to the growth of terror-tactics to keep the populace in line and the army fighting in the last disastrous months of the war.

The military hierarchy too were complicit in keeping Hitler in power. They were perhaps the only counterpoint in German society that could have removed Hitler, but they were actually fellow-travellers, if not in every way, certainly to the extent of subduing Poland and attacking Russia. Even the opposition groups that tried to assassinate him agreed with Hitler's war against the Poles. While they may not all have agreed with the Holocaust and while most definitely did not agree with Hitler's tactical ideas (especially when Germany lost the initiative), they were unable to be the rational force for good that Germany needed to be rid of this megalomaniac.

Kershaw explains the growth of Hitler's ego and megalomania very clearly. Hitler's belief that he was sent by providence to lead Germany only became stronger after his first victories, and especially when he had success on the Eastern Front over-riding his more cautious Generals. His personality ran amok with no restraints, which not only led him to interfere in almost every facet of German life and culture, but to increasingly control military efforts as well. That this would be too much for anyone is quite obvious, but under the structure that he had built, there were no checks or balances that could be employed to share decision making. In fact Hitler actively worked against any initiatives to implement other sources of decision making within the Government. As the war moved on, the shambolic structure of Nazi Germany impeded rational decision-making in times of crisis. Hitler's rationality has often been called into question, but for most of the war he worked along the lines that he had set for himself. As the man sent by Providence, only he could ultimately make decisions. As a political genius only he could decide when the time was right for action....and so on. His nature, exacerbated by his obsession with the "stab in the back" of 1918, was to seek retaliation for any wound. So things that seem illogical from a "normal" standpoint fitted into Hitler's thought-world. If the Allies bombed German cities, then he would delay jet fighters until they could bomb English cities in retaliation. If the German people were not "strong" enough to win the war, then he would order the total destruction of the country regardless of any humanitarian motives. In many ways his thought patterns were those of a child - if I can't get what I want, then someone has to suffer!". The Jews of course were the prime example of that philosophy in action.

By the time the war had turned against Germany, there was no reasonable alternative to the Hitler regime: all opposition had been crushed, and everyone in the German hierarchy owed their position to the personal largesse of Hitler himself - no-one had any legitimate source of power except through him. Kershaw maps all this out very well. As Germany lurched from crisis to crisis, Hitler retreated more and more into a fantasy world - refusing to move troops from Norway and Italy at the end because they would be needed for the counter-attack, or to protect sources of minerals....long after they served those or any other strategic needs.

The end, when it came, was a farce for Hitler, and a tragedy for Germany. In the end Hitler's reign was the narcissistic adventure of one man who managed to create his own world, and lived out his dream by destroying European civilization. It's both fascinating and horrible to think about. One can hope that we'll never see his like again. There are those that compare Putin to him, and some of the comparisons are justified, but I for one don't think that any one man can again do what Hitler did. I hope I am right.

For those that seek to understand the Twentieth Century, the rise of the Nazis and World War Two, I cannot recommend these two volumes highly enough. I don't think they will be surpassed.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Soldat by Siegfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw

 Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier 1936-1949 by Siegfried Knappe and Ted Brusaw

New York: Orion Books, 1992                                                ISBN 0517588951

This is a very interesting book. The story of Siegfried Knappe, who finished his war in Hitler's bunker as an officer of the General Staff, is in some ways a typical one of that time and place, but striking and interesting in its own way.

Knappe came of age in the late 30s in Germany, and his service began in the Labour Corps, before entering the Army in the artillery. We follow his journey through training, the Sudetenland, France and Russia, his journey through officer training, and his personal life - marriage, the death of his brother in Russia, and his travails as a prisoner of the Russians after the war.

Knappe comes across as an intelligent young man, good at his job, and an efficient and effective officer. He (as many others) did not question what his country was doing until it was far too late. He was at General Staff training during the July plot, and saw at first hand the fear of the officers, and the rage and revenge of the Nazis.

In many ways he had a :lucky" war. Being posted to Stalingrad, he never got there as he was unable to get a flight in. Sent to Breslau to organise its defence, he was airlifted out before the final battle. He was either wounded or in training when his regiments suffered their greatest casualties.

He became a staff officer for General Weidling in the final weeks of the war, and regularly visited the Bunker before the end, before spending three years as a prisoner of the Russians, where he was regularly interrogated (his description of how to counter the pressure of the Russian interrogations is interesting and instructive. He was clever enough to realise that he needed to keep his story the same every time, and never admit to stealing Russian items or abusing Russian people. He realised that he didn't actually have to profess Communist sympathies to remain safe).

What can we learn from this book? Well, that the German army was not very mechanised (Knappe spent most of his war riding and using horses to move his guns), that the average soldier did not necessarily see atrocities, and that toward the end of the War the country and the military were a shambles - Knappe knew the War was lost more than a year from the time it did end, but kept fighting.

That the War was a great tragedy is well known, and we on the winning side don't often think of the tragedies that happened in Germany to Germans. In many ways Knappe was lucky, but this book still underlines the truth that war is hell, and there is little noble about being a soldier in World War II. If you are interested in the history of that time, this is worth reading.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

 Hitler 1889-1936 : Hubris by Ian Kershaw

London: Penguin Books, 1999 (First published 1998)   ISBN 0140288988

Anyone who has serious interest in the history of World War Two and Nazi Germany is aware of this biography, and anyone who has a serious interest in the history of World War Two and Nazi Germany should read it. I have finally got around to it, and this review is my half-way point, having finished the first volume.

The problem with all biographies of Hitler - a big problem for those that chose to write one - is that Hitler in his personal life was a cipher. His life was the movement, the struggle, the grasping of power. He seems to have undergone very little personal development beyond his early years: his personal life was in essence non-existent. Which leaves biographers with a big issue - how do you write a life of such a person? Kershaw in this book has gone down the line of a political biography, which grapples with the issue being a biography of Hitler vs. a history of the Nazi movement. At times Hubris does read like a history of Germany and the Nazis rather than the biography of a particular person, but as Hitler said, Providence had given him to Germany, and Germany to him, so perhaps it is all one and the same.

This first volume takes the reader to 1936, the year that Kershaw believes Hitler's trajectory moves from Hubris to Nemesis and the beginning of the descent to the disasters of 1945. Kershaw deals with Hitler's early life by judiciously sifting the available evidence for some sense of the actual. This is not easy, as both the idolators and bitter enemies of the man published and instigated many falsities and rumours about him. What we do know for sure is that Hitler's father was a nasty piece of work, and his mother seems to have worshipped him, as he did her. His early life created a personality that easily succumbed to the extreme narcissism that he exhibited later on, and his early failures he blamed on others. Kershaw, like most other biographers, struggles to pin down just how Hitler came to develop his extreme anti-semitism, but posits - unlike some others - that it didn't develop fully during his time in Vienna, but brewed and developed more after World War One when he tried to fit Germany's defeat and collapse into a world-view that made sense to him.

Kershaw develops the view during this volume that Hitler was mostly an opportunist, who took his chances when events swung his way. Time and time again, when a crisis in the Party - or later on the State - occurred, it found Hitler stricken with indecision, waiting to see how events might unfold, before he then moved, usually decisively and taking the most extreme option. Far from being in control of events as they unfolded, Hitler was often carried along by the extremism of his followers.

The one thing Hitler did have was the power to engage people when he spoke. Kershaw writes well of Hitler's early years in the party, where it was his demagoguery that dragged the Nazis from a fringe of fanatics into a group that was drawing attention firstly in Bavaria, and then across Germany. The machinations of these early years are well-covered, as is the putsch attempt in 1923, which in many ways was the making of Hitler and his movement.

He was also helped by the incompetence of others, not only in Germany but across Europe and the USA. It's important to note, as Kershaw does, that large portions of German society never felt comfortable with the Wiemar Republic or democracy, and the conservative Volkisch sections of society worked assiduously to undermine successive democratic governments, with a view to replacing them with a renewed monarchy, a military-led government or some other technocratic anti-democratic way of ruling. Hitler played to these forces very well, as unlike them, he could garner a mass following of ordinary people through his extraordinary ability to mobilize ordinary Germans with his speeches. While the other conservative forces thought Hitler was a simple-minded demagogue whom they could control, he (and his clever minions Goebbels, Goring and Himmler) quickly outsmarted them once he gained power.

His path to the top was aided by the activities of other countries - the strange mix of brutality (reparations) and appeasement that created the atmosphere for him to whip the people into a frenzy, and which gave him foreign policy wins when he needed them. And he did need wins - reoccupying the Rhineland took the country's mind off their increasing debt and food supply problems, and the issues the Third Reich had with the Protestant Church in Germany.

What Kershaw makes clear is that Hitler was driven by one overarching idea: to make Germany great again in an almost purely military sense. Once he controlled the levers of power he virtually crashed the economy to enable a quick re-armament and re-enlistment to occur. He was obsessed with Germany taking once again its "rightful place" amongst European nations, and increasing its reach into Eastern Europe. This desire was almost purely his own amongst the Nazi hierarchy. Anti-semitism was shared by not only other Nazi leaders, but by a majority of the German population, although not to the same murderous extent. Hitler, up until 1936 played a strategic game against the Jewish population, ratcheting up the pressure when he thought it would benefit, and dialling it down when pressure on him from outside forces became too much. The Jews were fated to suffer most from Hitler's uncontrollable desire to seek scapegoats and revenge for his failures that were to come.

For Hitler was essentially a spoiled child and a thug - when things didn't go his way he had a tantrum, and he took revenge on those whom he thought had wronged him. He would have continued to be a boring conspiracy theorist trapped in homeless shelters and hovels if he had not grasped the opportunities that came his way, and if history had moved in a different direction. Kershaw shows in this volume of his biography that at almost every "sliding doors moment" that occurred in Hitler's life, the doors to more power were the ones that opened for him. That he took advantage of situations as they presented themselves to him we are left in no doubt: Kershaw also shows us that Hitler, the great fabulist, retrospectively re-engineered his own history to convince himself that it was his perserverence, his intelligence and his hard work that led these situations to come about. His increasing narcissism, fuelled by the increasing personality cult surrounding his every move, made him feel like he was some sort of messiah, who's every thought and plan was inspired from above and who could never fail.

Kershaw has with skill woven a complex net of persons, events and history together to create a compelling biography - I look forward to my adventure with volume 2 - Nemesis.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

 

Book Review - Into that Darkness by Gitta Sereny

 Into that Darkness: an Examination of Conscience by Gitta Sereny

New York: Vintage Books, 1983 (Originally published 1974)       ISBN 0394710355

I really don't know why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this book. I have read other books by Sereny, one of which I have reviewed here, and I have always admired her unflinching search for the truth, and her excellent style, given that English is her third or fourth language. Her life's quest was to try and understand the Third Reich, through talking to those that were involved - Franz Stangl being the first, along with others such as Albert Speer.

Into that Darkness grew from an article about Stangl, which originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph Magazine. Sereny spent over seventy hours interviewing Stangl, with the aim of trying to find out why - not why the Nazis eliminated the Jews, but why a seemingly normal middle-class man who, it seems, was liked by many he met, could continue to choose to work in unspeakable places and be in charge of unspeakable things.

With this goal in mind, Sereny probed Stangl about his work in the Euthanasia Centres, why he thought he'd been chosen for work in the extermination camps, what he did there, what he thought of it, how he interacted with his family during that time, what happened to him after the War. Sereny kept probing, trying to fight her way through the self-justifications that Stangl had wrapped around his life, trying to see if he could admit guilt. That he eventually did is a testament to both Sereny, and in some ways to Stangl, who fought hard against the moral judgement that he surely deserved, and which he finally began to understand.

In the book Sereny works hard to try and prove (or disprove) the many statements that Stangl made about his career, and his activities both in Sobibor and Treblinka. She also closely investigates the circumstances around his escape firstly to Syria and then Brazil, which cast a poor light on the activities on the Catholic Church in Rome. Sereny is scrupulously fair in her judgements, but often the facts speak for themselves.

The main part of this book is a very detailed look at how the death camps worked. Sereny builds this picture up not only through her discussions with Stangl but also with other SS and importantly the few Jewish survivors of the camps. For someone like me that didn't have a clear delineation in my mind between concentration camps and death camps, this history is eye-opening. The numbers are staggering, and sickening. At Treblinka,  nearly a million people were murdered in less than eighteen months. Just as staggering is the fact that, in all the extermination camps, for the whole period of Aktion Reinhardt, there were only 96 SS personnel involved in running the death camps. That so few (assisted by Ukranian guards and Jews forced to work disposing of bodies and sorting through clothes and such) could unleash such horror...

Sereny describes how carefully the gassings were organised. For richer (Western) Jews, who arrived on seemingly normal passenger trains, the (fake) station, and "welcoming" troops who explained carefully that everyone needed to be disinfected before heading out to work meant that these victims moved in an orderly fashion to their deaths. For the poorer (mostly Polish) Jews, who arrived packed into cattle-cars, the guards whipped and beat them to instil terror, forcing them into the gas chambers with the butts of their rifles.

Confronting Stangl with these facts, Sereny watches and listens as he tries to justify why he didn't leave: she (and we) knew that quite a few soldiers did and could leave the extermination camps, but Stangl used as his justification the "fact" that he would have to go back to his normal police job and a boss who hated him, and that he was a soldier following orders. He also claimed that he tried to be as kind as he could to those going to their deaths. Sereny's clear and factual tone lays bare the torturous logic that Stangl had to use to try to forgive himself for the unforgiveable. He couldn't forget either, explaining that on seeing some cattle awaiting slaughter in Brazil, he could no longer eat meat. Sereny's interviews with Stangl's wife show us a man who was slowly falling apart, unable to control his emotions in the years before his arrest and deportation back to Germany.

Sereny has her own ideas why Stangl may have kept going - from the time he was recruited from the police to assist in the Euthanasia program at Hartheim, Stangl was ambitious, enjoying the increasing rank and privileges that came with his increasing responsibility. It was only as the War went on and defeat seemed likely that he suffered stress-based illness, and understood that he was one of the "war-criminals" that would have to face justice. He remarked to Sereny with some cynicism on his posting to battle partisans around Trieste after the dissolution of the camps that he "realized quite well...that we were an embarrassment to the brass:...[s]o we were assigned the most dangerous jobs".

Stangl escaped the prison-camp in which he was placed after the War, and quite openly moved to Damascus and Brazil, where he lived under his own name for nearly twenty years before being "discovered" and sent back to Germany for trial. This section of the book is also fascinating. Once again an author blows apart the credibility of Simon Weisenthal, and once again an author uncovers the uncomfortable history of the Vatican both during and after the War. Sereny, even though acknowledging the difficulties of finding the criminals who were mingling in the millions of displaced persons, shames the Church through rigorous use of documents and interviews. While she may forgive the fact that Stangl slipped through "un-noticed", she can't forget the appalling lack of moral fortitude from the Vatican throughout the War, when it came to telling the world what they knew of the Holocaust.

Eventually, at the end of their time together, Stangl faces the fact that, because he was there, because he facilitated the murder, he shared the guilt, even if he didn't actually murder anyone with his own hands. It is a dramatic moment, heightened by the fact that eighteen hours after he finally admitted that to himself, Stangl died of a heart attack.

As a journey through the most terrifying phase of World War Two, Into that Darkness is in turn fascinating, horrifying and above all, edifying. A must read of Holocaust history.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Soldiers of Destruction by Charles W. Sydnor Jr.

 Soldiers of Destruction: the SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945 by Charles W. Sydnor Jr.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977                  ISBN 0691052557

So, here is the book that I should have read - rather than the sensationalized Curse of the Death's Head - to learn more about the SS Totenkopf Division and it's role in the fighting and killing of Nazi Germany and World War II. Whereas Rupert Butler went for the Hollywood angle of the story, Charles Sydnor has produced a meticulously researched, factual but very readable account, which Butler has obviously used as the basis for his airport non-fiction.

Soldiers of Destruction catalogues the shaky beginnings of the Totenkopf organisation - Theodor Eicke being the driving force behind not only the re-organization of the concentration camp system, but really the progenitor of the military arm of the SS. Sydnor shows us in Eicke a man who was in turn brutal, bullying, racist and yet in some ways very particular and prissy.

Through his vigour and chivvying Eicke managed to set up a national concentration camp system, which eliminated the personal sadism of previous commanders, and imposed not only a set of instructions which institutionalized brutality against those incarcerated, but also engendered within his SS cadres a feeling of being special and superior to those whom they opposed.

With his organizational ability and thrusting personality, Eicke was a natural choice to be the leader to initiate the armed wing of the SS. It also helped that the Totenkopfverbande was really the only source of combat-capable SS troops to create an armed division. Eicke's bullying blustering nature, and his ability to claim to be fulfilling the will of not only Himmler, but Hitler himself, initially didn't get him far in his battle with the German Army to get equipment and arms for his division. The Army did not like competition, did not like the overt ideological nature of the training of the SS troops, and frankly thought that the SS would not be able to fight.

Despite such opposition, Eicke worked hard to get his division up and running - begging, borrowing and stealing equipment - on many occasions incurring the wrath of Himmler, and working his troops very hard to get them up to speed. Eicke was determined that his troops would not only be the most ruthless in their pursuit of victory, but be exemplary National Socialists as well. He regularly cashiered soldiers and officers who transgressed his rules - many to do with drunkenness and sexual crimes, or anything else he thought besmirched the honour of the division. By the time SS Totenkopf arrived in France, the division was itching to get into battle.

That happened soon enough in France, where the division suffered proportionally more casualties than other units, owing to both their vigour in prosecuting battle, and their commanders not yet fully grasping how to use troops in modern war. Once France was defeated, the division not only had more experience, but plenty of  captured equipment. They also had some grudging respect from the Army for their efforts. What we remember today from the Totenkopf's time in France is the Le Paradis massacre.

This was not the last war crime that the Totenkopf - or its members that moved onto other SS organizations - committed.

Soon enough the division was on its way to Russia, where it was part of Army Group North's push to Leningrad. While we now think of the German invasion of Russia as a bit of a walk-over up until Winter arrived, Sydnor makes clear that even the early advances came at the cost of huge casualties, especially for Totenkopf, for whom the Russian war was the apogee of their ideological world-view. The Division's high and low point came during the battle of the Demyansk Pocket where they proved that they were one of the best fighting units available to Germany, but where they had their heart torn out by the unremitting Russian assaults. By the time the Pocket was relieved, the Totenkopf had almost ceased to exist as a fighting unit.

They were sent to France to recover and refit, but found themselves instead part of the force who occupied Vichy France, before being sent back to Russia - this time the Ukraine. Here they were used as the "firemen" of the German forces, sent wherever the need was greatest. It was here that they lost their leader, with Eicke shot down and killed just before the Battle of Kursk. While the division made the most headway of any German unit during that battle, Russia defeated the Germans, and the remainder of the War saw Totenkopf continuing to fill holes in the German front, with less and less success, until they ceased to exist around Vienna at the end of the War.

Syndor has used the archives fully and well, which is why we find out much more about the Division before the death of Eicke, and not so much after, owing to the fact that the later records of the Division were destroyed at the end of the War. Syndor doesn't shy away from the criminality behind not only some of the actions undertaken by the Totenkopf, but behind its very basis. He shows through evidence that the idea espoused by some that the Waffen SS was merely another part of the Army and not tainted by all the evil undertaken by the rest of the SS is not near the truth. The Totenkopf Division in particular regularly cycled officers from combat, back to the camps and administration of Einsatzgruppen, and then back to the Division. He shows us that Hitler valued his SS Divisions, eventually giving them preference over his Army divisions when it came to equipment and manpower. He shows us that they were anything but another division in a normal army.

This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand how the Waffen SS was born, how it grew, how it died, and how it was as much part of the SS as the Camp Guards and members of the Einsatzgruppen. A great piece of scholarship.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Curse of the Death's Head by Rupert Butler

 Curse of the Death's Head: the story of the SS Totenkopf Division by Rupert Butler

London: Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1985                  ISBN 0099427605

Well I've been taken on a wild ride with this book - I've been entertained in a somewhat gruesome way, but I'm not sure I'm any the wiser as to the activities of the Totenkopf Division in World War Two. This breathlessly written tome is military history written as airport fiction, with a focus on whatever interesting story might be found within the activities of this division, rather than a considered volume that contains useful reference material.

And that's a bit of a shame really, as it wouldn't have taken much to turn this book into something much weightier, while still being an entertaining read. As it is, this is a mish-mash of a potted biography of the first leader of the Division, Theodor Eicke, a run-through of Himmler's obsessions, a couple of side-tracks into Hitler's bunkers and Skorzeny's kidnapping of Horthy's son and subsequent takeover of Hungarian leadership, before a fairly fragmented description of the end for Totenkopf.

The book is hamstrung by its lack of maps and apparatus, and by the choice of language and tone. Butler lurches between the melodramatic, the "Boy's Own" adventure, and breathless excitement, as he variously describes Eicke's bluster, the invasion of France, and Himmler's obsessions.

As you can guess, I didn't enjoy this book. It was a page turner, but I ended it really none the wiser about much of anything at all.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Mengele: the Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner & John Ware

 Mengele: the Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner & John Ware

London: Queen Anne Press, 1986                    ISBN 0356125785

I had forgotten just how much of a sensation the final resolution of the fate of Josef Mengele caused when his remains were dug up from a grave in Brazil in 1985. This book, released the year after the find, brings it all back, as well as the speculation in the decades before, while telling the full story of the life of Mengele, from his early years, through his time in Auschwitz, and retelling in full his nearly 40 years of being on the run from the justice he deserved.

I won't in this review go over the grisly facts of Mengele's time at Auschwitz, a time which earned him the moniker "Angel of Death", but Posner and Ware write succinctly and well about his gruesome experimental pseudo-science. In fact reading through this section turned my stomach.

The real fascination in this book is the author's description of how Mengele escaped not only captivity after the War, but Europe in the 50s, Argentina and Paraguay in the 60s, and ended up drowning on a beach in Brazil at the end of the 70s. It is a tale of loyalty, lies, grandstanding, and of the networks of Nazis and fellow-travellers which enabled Mengele (and others) to not only get out of Germany, but to stay hidden for so long.

Mengele used the confusion of the end of the War to his advantage, divesting himself of his SS identity, and emerging as a mere medical orderly. He was actually detained by the US on two occasions in 1945, but slipped through the screening, which was very haphazard. He spent several years working as a farmhand in Germany, all the while hoping that he could eventually be re-united with his wife and son. It was the "Doctor's trial" and its follow-on that convinced Mengele that he needed to leave Europe for the safe haven of Argentina. Through close family friends, he managed to get some forged papers, and when he arrived in South America, he was helped by several committed Nazis.

After a few years he felt so comfortable that he in fact began to not only use his real name, but re-applied for identification documents. Helped by infusions of money from his family (he was the son of a wealthy industrialist) he also - after his first wife divorced him - re-married and began living a relatively normal life.

That all changed on the day Mossad abducted Eichmann. He realised that he could never be safe out in the open, and he quickly moved to Paraguay, where he lived on a farm in a remote area. Thanks to his friendship with Hans-Urich Rudel, and Rudel's friendship with many in the Paraguayan Government, Mengele managed to get citizenship of that country, which importantly didn't have an extradition treaty with Germany.

Meanwhile, Mossad had decided to discontinue its hunt for Mengele, with other priorities closer to home becoming more important. West Germany was hopelessly compromised in its search for Mengele. Any action was sabotaged by the fact that many of the officials who should have pushed the case along were ex-Nazis, and so were not interested in bringing Mengele to justice. The unwillingness of the German government in particular to follow Mengele is impossible to justify, and painful to read about. It is in fact chilling to read the responses of the officials who didn't follow the evidence when they state that they were only following orders....sounds disturbingly familiar....

Meanwhile, Mengele himself had moved to Brazil, again living outside the big cities, and sharing a house with the Stammers family. This "partnership" became over time very strained - Mengele's second wife had long before moved back to Germany, and Mengele became increasingly embittered by his situation. In the end he lived by himself in a bungalow in Sao Paulo, a sad and lonely man. One of the last things he did was to host a visit by his son Rolf. This visit ended up being depressing for both men: Rolf could not come to terms with Josef's lack of remorse for what he'd done, and Josef felt that Rolf had been brainwashed by his schooling and that he was not the true son of a Mengele.

It was not long after Rolf's visit that Mengele drowned. While he didn't face the trial and justice that he should have, his life after the War was full of loneliness and fear, with his last years in particular full of disappointment. He deserved it.

Posner and Ware, as well as taking aim at the lack of governmental action to track down Mengele have very little good to say about the "Nazi hunters" such as Weisenthal and the Klarsfelds, who are mostly portrayed as out to promote themselves, and invariably they were two or three steps behind Mengele. Their tales of a wealthy man surrounded by bodyguards were far from the truth. The one thing their regular "scoops" did do though was to keep Mengele scared and on the run.

Mengele: the Complete Story is a well-told tale of the life of a hideous man - a man who's one dream was to be an academician, who sold his soul to the devil when he used his position to test his theories - theories that were based on flawed thinking, and that have since been shown to be completely baseless.

For myself, I finished this book with mixed feelings - I felt angry that Mengele wasn't brought to trial for his crimes, but I felt glad that his life, although longer than many of those he sent to death, was a life filled with fear and sadness.

Posner and Ware have produced a well-researched and well-written book - worth reading if the subject matter is of interest.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell