This is the middle volume of a Nazi trilogy. Part 1 is the way to power, part 3 is the war. The middle part covers the years 1933 to 1939. Evans has decided to arrange the vast material by subject matter rather than chronologically. This proves to be a wise choice. We have the option to choose individual chapters like independent shorter books. The book is highly recommended to anybody who has an interest in the subject. It serves as a myth buster in several interesting ways. My review will give a short summary of key points of the chapters.
Chapter 1 is about fear and terror. Unruly internal competition is killed off early; opposition parties are banned, their leaders and activists arrested and many killed; growth of SS, Gestapo, special courts for `crimes against the people'; denunciation as tool of control; block wardens; concentration camps; manipulation of plebiscites by intimidation and falsification. Never believe anybody who claims that Hitler unified the German people!
Chapter 2 on propaganda addresses that question. Goebbels' aim was winning the mind of 100% of the people, not just the 37% who had voted for the Nazis at their peak. All media are brought under full control. Art is dealt with on a broad scale. Apart from the conflicts with artists, there was the internal struggle among the Nazis. We catch ourselves taking sides with Goebbels, who was willing to support some modernists. The boss himself was a pure square in art matters.
Chapter 3 deals with education and religion. Very interesting: the narration on religious groups and the Nazis' attempts to replace allegiance to churches with something else. Simplified views of Nazism like to claim that it was atheist. In fact, the Nazis tried to unify German churches, which were split on a roughly 2:1 relation between Protestants and Catholics. Their power base was among Protestants. They tried to take over this church and then lure the Catholics into the fold. This failed, mainly due to resistance from inside the church. The Catholic Church first helped the Nazis to power (by the Center Party's refusal to resist), but then put up many small non-cooperation hurdles. In the end, the Nazis tried to develop their own neo-pagan style, which never fully succeeded. Sad truth: the only religious group that wholeheartedly resisted Nazism on all levels was Jehova's Witnesses.
In the field of education, the 30s saw a steep decline in academic standards and also in student numbers. The drop in birth rates during WW1 plus the party's anti-intellectualism, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism combined towards creating a bleak outlook for Germany's academic future. Applied research was treated differently and especially militarily relevant subjects were lavishly funded, but outside universities.
Chapter 4 on the economy shows how the myth of the end to unemployment was based on a combination of partly successful Keynesianism with fortunate trends of the time, plus statistical manipulations, and not to forget: the re-militarization of Germany, including conscription. All state interference was related to re-armament. The economy was initially left to run as a `free market', but markets were manipulated and directed. Re-militarization was the overriding concern. By 1936 it became clear that the speed of the development was behind schedule, so the economy was more radically transformed into a war economy. Technocrats like `economy czar' Schacht were sidelined.
Chapter 5 deals with various fields of social engineering. A backbone of support for the regime was the so-called Mittelstand. That means, in a narrower sense, all independent small businesses, including land-owning farmers. In a larger sense it would include professionals, civil servants, and white collar workers. Enthusiasm and illusions were grand among these people. Reality clashed with the overriding re-armament policy, which damaged many small businesses.
The living standards of the working classes had not improved over the pre-depression level by 39. Consolation prizes were given via the Strength through Joy program, which was widely recognized for what it was: eyewash, substitute for real improvements. At the same time the corruption level of the Nazi run labor organization was spectacular. Only Third World dictators can be that shameless.
Chapter 6 is about `racial hygiene'. Germany's laws favoring compulsory sterilization for carriers of inherited illnesses, and for other undesirables, were by no means unique in the international scenario. From here it would progress towards euthanasia in later years. Minorities were systematically harassed: Gypsies, homosexuals, mixed descendants of various combinations (like offspring of black French soldiers after the Rhineland occupation, or kids of German colonialists with African women), and then mainly Jews. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 introduced drastic interferences in personal lives by excluding Jews from social activities. After the 1936 Olympics, anti-Jewish violence grew towards the peak of Reichskristallnacht in 38, the `night of broken glass'. `Drive Jews out of Europe within 10 years' was the declared vision, before the goal shifted to annihilation.
Chapter 7 describes war preparations. War had been Hitler's declared goal always, and all declarations to the contrary were just obfuscation, as was the peace agreement with Poland, the naval pact with Britain, the Hitler-Stalin-Pact. Step by step the thugs went forward: quitting the League of Nations, a triumph at the Saar plebiscite, diplomatic support for Italy's Ethiopia expansion, occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland, material support to Franco's insurrection in Spain, invasion and annexation of Austria, the invasion and annexation of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, the annexation of the Lithuanian region of Memel. Britain and France watched. Then came the invasion of Poland... (to be continued).
Superb organization of the huge subject make the book a brilliantly brief overview, despite it's over 700 pages. What is missing? I would have wished for a special chapter on the military and its reconstruction. There are aspects that are totally neglected, like the cooperation with the Chinese Nationalists.
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Top reviews from other countries
Pallav Swaroop Bhatnagar
It was the world not Hitler.
Reviewed in India on May 6, 2016
D. Schotman
Impressive in scope, deep in detail and clear about many chaotic events
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2013
