by Ian Kershaw
Hitler, by the time the first volume drew to a close with the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, enjoyed the support of the overwhelming mass of the German people – even most of those who had not voted for him before he became Chancellor. From the depths of national degradation, most Germans were more than content to share the new-found national pride. The sense that Germany was well on its way to becoming the dominant power in Europe was widespread. Hitler’s own profound sense of personal degradation, felt in his Vienna years, had long since been supplanted by a gathering sense of political mission – that of Germany’s redeemer from chaos and champion against the dark and menacing forces challenging the nation’s very existence. By 1936, his narcissistic self-glorification had swollen immeasurably under the impact of the near-deification projected upon him by his followers. By this time, he thought himself infallible; his self-image had reached the stage of outright hubris.
The German people had shaped this personal hubris of the leader. They were about to enter into its full expression: the greatest gamble in the nation’s history – to acquire complete dominance of the European continent. They would have to live with the consequences. The size of the gamble itself implied an implicit willingness to court self-destruction, to invite the nemesis which was seen by a prescient few as likely to follow hubris on such a scale.
In Greek mythology, Nemesis is the goddess of retribution, who exacts the punishment of the gods for the human folly of overweening arrogance, or hubris. The English saying ‘pride comes before a fall’ reflects the commonplace occurrence. History has no shortage of examples among the high and mighty, though ‘nemesis’ tends to be a more political than moral judgement. The meteoric rise of rulers, politicians, or domineering court favourites has so often been followed by an arrogance of power leading to an equally swift fall from grace. Usually, it afflicts an individual who, like a shooting star, flashes into prominence then fades rapidly into insignificance leaving the firmament essentially unchanged.
Very occasionally in history, the hubris of the individual reflects more profound forces in society and invites more far-reaching retribution. Napoleon, arising from humble origins amid revolutionary upheavals, taking power over the French state, placing the imperial crown upon his own head, conquering much of Europe, and ending in defeat and exile with his empire displaced, dismantled, and discredited, provides a telling example. But Napoleon did not destroy France. And important strands of his legacy remained intact. A national administrative structure, educational system, and legal code form three significant positive remnants. Not least, no moral opprobrium is attached to Napoleon. He can be, and often is, looked upon with pride and admiration by modern-day Frenchmen.
Hitler’s legacy was of a totally different order. Uniquely in modern times – perhaps Attila the Hun and Ghengis Khan offer faint parallels in the distant past – this legacy was one of utter destruction. Not in architectural remains, in artistic creation, in political structures, or economic models, least of all in moral stature was there anything from Hitler’s Reich to commend to future generations. Big improvements in motorization, aviation, and technology generally did, of course, take place – in part forced through the war. But these were occurring in all capitalist countries, most evidently in the USA, and would undoubtedly have taken place in Germany, too, without a Hitler. Most significantly, unlike Napoleon, Hitler left behind him an immense moral trauma, such that it is impossible even decades after his death (other than for a residue of fringe support) to look back upon the German dictator and his regime with approval or admiration – in fact with anything other than detestation and condemnation.
Even in the cases of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or Franco the level of condemnation is not so unanimous or so morally freighted. Hitler, when he realized the war was irrevocably lost, looked to his place in history, at the highest seat in the pantheon of Germanic heroes. Instead, he stands uniquely as the quintessential hate-figure of the twentieth century. His place in history has certainly been secured – though in a way he had not anticipated: as the embodiment of modern political evil. However, evil is a theological or philosophical, rather than a historical, concept. To call Hitler evil may well be both true and morally satisfying. But it explains nothing. And unanimity in condemnation is even potentially an outright barrier to understanding and explanation. As I hope the following chapters make abundantly plain, I personally find Hitler a detestable figure and despise all that his regime stood for. But that condemnation scarcely helps me to understand why millions of German citizens who were mostly ordinary human beings, hardly innately evil, in general interested in the welfare and daily cares of themselves and their families, like ordinary people everywhere, and by no means wholly brainwashed or hypnotized by spellbinding propaganda or terrorized into submission by ruthless repression, would find so much of what Hitler stood for attractive – or would be prepared to fight to the bitter end in a terrible war against the mighty coalition of the world’s most powerful nations arrayed against them. My task in this volume, as in the first part of this study, has been, therefore, not to engage in moral disquisitions on the problem of evil in a historical personality, but to try to explain the grip Hitler had on the society which eventually paid such a high price for its support.
For, ultimately, Hitler’s nemesis as retribution for unparalleled hubris would prove to be not just a personal retribution, but the nemesis of the Germany which had created him. His own country would be left in ruins – much of Europe with it – and divided. What was formerly central Germany – ‘Mitteldeutschland’ – would experience for forty years the imposed values of the Soviet victor, while the western parts would eventually revive and thrive under a ‘pax americana’. A new Austria, having experienced Anschluß under Hitler, would prove in its reconstituted independence to have lost once and for all any ambitions to be a part of Germany. The eastern provinces of the Reich would have gone forever – and along with them dreams of eastern conquest. The expulsion of the German ethnic minorities from those provinces would remove – if at a predictably harsh price – the irredentism which had plagued the inter-war years. The big landed estates in those provinces, basis of the influence of the Junker aristocracy, would also be swept away. The Wehrmacht, the final representation of German military might, would be discredited and disbanded. With it would go the state of Prussia, bulwark of the economic and political power of the Reich since Bismarck’s day. Big industry, it is true, would survive sufficiently intact to rebuild with renewed strength and vigour – though it would now be increasingly integrated into a west-European and Americanized set of economic structures.
All this was to be the outcome of what the second part of this study attempts to grasp: how Hitler could exercise the absolute power which he had been permitted to acquire; how the most mighty in the land became bound still further to a highly personalized form of rule acclaimed by millions and exceptional in a modern state, until they were unable to extricate themselves from the will of one man who was taking them unerringly down the road to destruction; and how the citizens of this modern state became complicitous in genocidal war of a character hitherto unknown to mankind, resulting in state-sponsored mass murder on a scale never previously witnessed, continent-wide devastation, and the final ruination of their own country.
It is an awesome story of national as well as individual self-destruction, of the way a people and their representatives engineered their own catastrophe – as part of a calamitous destruction of European civilization. Though the outcome is known, how it came about perhaps deserves consideration once more. If this book contributes a little to deepen understanding, I will be well satisfied.
Ian Kershaw
Manchester/Sheffield, April 2000
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is with the greatest of pleasure that I use this opportunity to add to the expressions of thanks which I made on concluding the first volume of this study. All the debts of gratitude – institutional, intellectual, and persona
l – owed two years ago apply now in equal, or even greater, measure. I hope those mentioned there will accept on this occasion my renewed, most sincere thanks even if I do not list them all once more by name. In some cases, however, my gratitude has to be explicitly reinforced. And in other instances new debts have been incurred.
For help with archival material specifically related to this volume, I am most grateful to the Directors, archivists, and staff of: the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; the Berlin Document Center; the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart); Birmingham University Library; the Borthwick Institute (York); the Bundesarchiv, Berlin (formerly Koblenz); the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, Potsdam (formerly Freiburg i.B.); the Gumberg Library, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh; the former Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, Zentrales Parteiarchiv, East Berlin (GDR); the Library of Congress, Washington DC; the National Archives, Washington DC; Princeton University Library; the Public Record Office, London; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; the ‘Special Archiv’, Moscow; the Wiener Library, London; the former Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam (GDR); and, not least, to Frau Regnauer, Director of the Amtsgericht Laufen, who went beyond the call of duty in giving me access to post-war testimony of some of the key witnesses to the events in the bunker in 1945.
Above all, as with the previous volume, I have been able to depend upon the indispensable expert assistance from the renowned Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. I would like once more to voice my warmest thanks to the Director, Professor Dr Horst Möller, to all colleagues and friends at the Institut, and, quite especially, to the library and archive staff who performed wonders in attending to my frequent and extensive requests. Singling out individuals is invidious, but I must nevertheless mention that Hermann Weiß, as with the first volume, gave most generously of his time and archival expertise. And with her unrivalled knowledge of the Goebbels diaries, Elke Fröhlich was of great help, not least in dealing with a query regarding one important but difficult point of transcription of Goebbels’s awful handwriting.
Numerous friends and colleagues have supplied me at one time or another with valuable archival material or allowed me to see so far unpublished work they had written, as well as sharing views on evidence, scholarly literature, and points of interpretation. For their kindness and assistance in this regard, I am extremely grateful to: David Bankier, Omer Bartov, Yehuda Bauer, Richard Bessel, John Breuilly, Christopher Browning, Michael Burleigh, Chris Clarke, François Delpla, Richard Evans, Kent Fedorowich, Iring Fetscher, Conan Fischer, Gerald Fleming, Norbert Frei, Mary Fulbrook, Dick Geary, Hermann Graml, Otto Gritschneder, Lothar Gruchmann, Ulrich Herbert, Edouard Husson, Anton Joachimsthaler, Michael Kater, Otto Dov Kulka, Moshe Lewin, Peter Longerich, Dan Michmann, Stig Hornsriøh-Møller, Martin Moll, Bob Moore, Stanislaw Nawrocki, Richard Overy, Alastair Parker, Karol Marian Pospieszalski, Fritz Redlich, Steven Sage, Stephen Salter, Karl Schleunes, Robert Service, Peter Stachura, Paul Stauffer, Jill Stephenson, Bernd Wegner, David Welch, Michael Wildt, Peter Witte, Hans Woller, and Jonathan Wright.
A special word of thanks is owing to Meir Michaelis for his repeated generosity in providing me with archival material drawn from his own researches. Gitta Sereny, likewise, not only offered friendly support, but also gave me access to valuable papers in her possession, related to her fine study of Albert Speer. A good friend, Laurence Rees, an exceptionally gifted producer from the BBC with whom I have had the pleasure and privilege of cooperating on the making of two television series connected with Nazism, and also Detlef Siebert and Tilman Remme, the able and knowledgeable heads of the research teams on the programmes, have helped greatly, both with probing inquiries and with material derived from the films they helped create. Two outstanding German historians of the Third Reich, whose own interpretations of Hitler differ sharply, have been of singular importance to this study. Eberhard Jäckel has given great support as well as expert advice throughout, and Hans Mommsen, friend of many years, has been unstinting in his help, generosity, and encouragement. Both have also made unpublished work available to me. Finally, I am most grateful to two British experts on Nazi Germany, Ted Harrison and Jeremy Noakes, for reading and commenting on the completed typescript (though, naturally, any errors remaining are my own responsibility). The particular inspiration I derived from Jeremy’s work I was keen to acknowledge in the first volume, and am equally keen to underline on this occasion.
In a different way, I would like to express my thanks to David Smith, Director of the Borthwick Institute in York (where papers on Lord Halifax’s meeting with Hitler sitting alongside archival deposits from medieval Yorkshire correspond to my intellectual schizophrenia as a historian of Nazi Germany who still dabbles in the history of monasticism in Yorkshire during the Middle Ages). Through the generous offer of his time and expertise, it has proved possible to see through the press our edition of the thirteenth-and fourteenth-century account-book of Bolton Priory without interrupting the work needed to complete this volume. Without David’s help and input, this would not have been feasible.
Given the need to accommodate the writing of this book to my normal duties at the University of Sheffield, I have had to make notable demands on the patience of my editors, both at Penguin and abroad. I have been most fortunate in my editor at Penguin, Simon Winder, who has been an unfailing source of cheerful encouragement and optimism, as well as a perceptive reader and critic. I am extremely grateful to Simon, also for his advice on the photographic material and maps for the book, and to Cecilia Mackay for searching out and assembling the photographs. In this connection, I would also like to thank Joanne King of the BBC, and, for the notable assistance provided by the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart, its Director, Dr Gerhard Hirschfeld (excellent scholar and long-standing friend), and Irina Renz, who supervises its extensive photographic collection. In preparing the lengthy text for the printers, I owe a large debt of gratitude, as with the first volume, to the expert copy-editing of Annie Lee, the superb indexing skills of Diana LeCore, and the great help and support of all the excellent publishing team at Penguin.
Outside Britain, I am hugely indebted to Don Lamm, my editor at Norton in the USA, who never ceased to keep me on my toes with his extensive knowledge, his many insights, and his inexhaustible queries. To Ulrich Volz and Michael Neher at Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, and to my editors at Flammarion, Spektrum, and Ediciones Peninsula, who either did not panic or concealed their panic from me when delivery of a lengthy typescript still needing translation became delayed, I offer my gratitude for their patience and forbearance. And to the translators of the German, French, Dutch, and Spanish editions who worked miracles to enable the simultaneous appearance of the book in those languages, my warm thanks for their efforts are combined with my utmost admiration for their skills.
As with the previous volume, much of the checking of the extensive references provided in the notes had to be undertaken in a highly concentrated spell at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. This time, thanks to Penguin and DVA, I could make use of invaluable assistance from Wenke Meteling (during a break in her own promising historical studies at the University of Tübingen); from my niece Charlotte Woodford (who took time out from her own doctoral research on early-modern German literature at Oxford University, was of great help also in subsequently locating a number of arcane works which I needed, and, not least, compiled so thoroughly and meticulously the List of Works Cited); and from my elder son, David, who, as two years earlier, generously took a week’s holiday from his work in the airline business – somewhat to the amazement of his colleagues – to come to Munich to check references for me. I am deeply grateful to all three of them. Without them, I would have been quite unable to complete the work in time.
As with the preparation of the first volume, the incomparable Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn-Bad Godesberg offered to support the month’s stay in Munich while the references were checked. I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this support, an
d for all the generosity from which I have been privileged to benefit since I first became a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in the mid-1970s.
I would also like to thank most warmly a long-standing friend, Traude Spät, whose great skills as a language-teacher set me on the path many years ago to research on the darkest chapter in the history of her country, and who provided not only hospitality but also continuing encouragement of my work when, during my time in Munich, I was able to stay at her home.
In the flourishing Department of History at the University of Sheffield, I have at times had to rely more than I would have wished on the tolerance as well as good services of my colleagues and the patience of my students. I would like to thank them all most sincerely for their support, encouragement, and forbearance, and some colleagues quite especially for easing my path through taking on and efficiently carrying out sometimes quite onerous Departmental duties.
Most of all I have to thank Beverley Eaton, whose efficient help and encouragement in ten years of working as my secretary and personal assistant have been of immeasurable value in enabling the completion of this book in the face of many other pressing duties. More than anyone she has borne the brunt of the work – in the day-to-day running of a busy Department, in handling an extensive and mounting correspondence, and in coping with a variety of other tasks – which spilled over from my attempts to combine writing a biography of Hitler with being a professor at a university in a British system currently choking under the weight of its own bureaucracy. She has also been a constant source of support during the entire period of the writing of this work.