by Ian Kershaw
V
Never in history has such ruination – physical and moral – been associated with the name of one man. That the ruination had far deeper roots and far more profound causes than the aims and actions of this one man has been evident in the preceding chapters. That the previously unprobed depths of inhumanity plumbed by the Nazi regime could draw upon wide-ranging complicity at all levels of society has been equally apparent. But Hitler’s name justifiably stands for all time as that of the chief instigator of the most profound collapse of civilization in modern times. The extreme form of personal rule which an ill-educated beerhall demagogue and racist bigot, a narcissistic, megalomaniac, self-styled national saviour, was allowed to acquire and exercise in a modern, economically advanced, and cultured land known for its philosophers and poets was absolutely decisive in the terrible unfolding of events in those fateful twelve years.
Hitler was the main author of a war leaving over 50 million dead and millions more grieving their lost ones and trying to put their shattered lives together again. Hitler was the chief inspiration of a genocide the like of which the world had never known, rightly to be viewed in coming times as a defining episode of the twentieth century. The Reich whose glory he had sought lay at the end wrecked, its remnants to be divided among the victorious and occupying powers. The arch-enemy, Bolshevism, stood in the Reich capital itself and presided over half of Europe. Even the German people, whose survival he had said was the very reason for his political fight, had proved ultimately dispensable to him.
In the event, the German people he was prepared to see damned alongside him proved capable of surviving even a Hitler. Beyond the repairing of broken lives and broken homes in broken towns and cities, the searing moral imprint of Hitler’s era would remain. Gradually, nevertheless, a new society, resting in time, mercifully, on new values, would emerge from the ruins of the old. For in its maelstrom of destruction Hitler’s rule had also conclusively demonstrated the utter bankruptcy of the hyper-nationalistic and racist world-power ambitions (and the social and political structures that upheld them) that had prevailed in Germany over the previous half a century and twice taken Europe and the wider world into calamitous war.
The old Germany was gone with Hitler. The Germany which had produced Adolf Hitler, had seen its future in his vision, had so readily served him, and had shared in his hubris, had also to share his nemesis.
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INDEX
1st Belorussian Front 888
1st Panzer Army 796
1st Ukrainian Front 888
1st US Army 879, 893
2nd Army 661–2, 665, 818
2nd Belorussian Front 888
2nd Panzer Army 665
3rd Belorussian Front 888
3rd Panzer Army 656, 811
3rd US Army 884, 914
3rd White Russian Front 879
4th Army 662, 811, 890
4th Panzer Army 656, 734, 735, 920
5th Army (Soviet) 641
5th Panzer Army 881, 883
6th Army 672, 723, 729, 733–5, 737–9
6th Panzer Army 881, 883, 888, 889, 913
7th Army 804
7th Army (French) 732
8th Army 411
8th Army (British) 717, 727, 730, 772
8th Army (Italian) 736
9th Army 724, 756, 811, 914–15, 920, 927–8, 930, 934, 935, 939–40, 941, 953
10th Panzer Division 826
11th Army 673, 710, 724
12th Army 608, 927, 930, 931, 934, 946
17th Army 672
18th Army 602
18th Artillery Division 826
18th Infantry Division 429
39th Mountain Corps 724
48th Panzer Corps 733
56th Panzer Corps 934
57th Panzer Corps 735
Aachen 879, 882
<
br /> Abruzzi 774
Abwehr (military intelligence): Canaris heads 418, 520, 825
Department II 433
opposition to H 535–6, 541–2, 544, 820, 821, 825, 846
Abyssinia 338–9, 349, 350–51, 352, 368–9, 370, 402
Adam, Wilhelm 425, 431
ADGB (Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) 288
Adlerhorst (‘Eagle’s Eyrie’; Führer Headquarters) 882, 888, 894
Admiral Scheer (cruiser) 384
Aegean Sea 585, 604–5
Africa 714, 716
Afrika Corps 736, 762
‘Aktion Reinhard’ 688, 775
Alamein, El 727, 730
Alarich, Operation 768
Albrecht, Alwin-Broder 922
Alexandra, Princess 117
Alexandria 718
Algeria 562, 580
Algiers 730
Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (ADGB) 288
Almería 384
Alsace 58, 578, 884
Altenberg, Jacob 34
Altmark incident 552
Alvensleben, Ludolf von 519
Amann, Max: denounces Kurt Lüdecke 114
and H’s refounding of NSDAP 163
and H’s ‘Second Book’ 183
imprisoned 140
in Munich in early 1920s 98
nominates H for promotion in First World War 54
and north German NSDAP 167
and party finances 187
and publication of Mein Kampf 147
and putsch attempt (1923) 131, 132
and Röhm’s murder 311
tours occupied France 561
Amerika (H’s special train) 327, 434, 478, 515–16, 544, 556, 607, 730
Amsterdam 765
Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935) 337–8, 368–9, 486
Angriff, Der (newspaper) 217
Anhalt 227–8
Anschluß 385, 386, 401–16, 420, 518
anti-Bolshevism 72, 73, 77, 92–3, 118, 148, 150–53, 369–70, 403, 566, 598, 602–3, 714
anti-capitalism 82, 92, 150, 189, 200, 223–4
anti-clericalism 161, 382, 661
Anti-Comintern Pact (1936) 369, 370–71
anti-Communism 231, 274, 599
anti-Marxism 118, 150–51, 178–9, 274