Air University Review, May-June 1980

NAZI Germany:
The New and Not-So-New Literature

IT HAS been evident for several years now that World War II, in the fashion of an aging but appealing actor, is making a successful comeback. The lure of German and Japanese equipment and decorations at military collectors' gatherings and renewed emphasis by the media, as evident in "Holocaust," "MacArthur," and "A Bridge Too Far," have all tended to turn public attention once again to the events and leaders of three and a half decades ago. The publishing community is no less eager to tap that mother lode associated with the return to the high-water mark of the threat of global fascism. Almost every month another volume appears dealing with new information on World War II or an alleged "new treatment" of a time-honored subject of the period. Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret and A. C. Brown's Bodyguard of Lies are two of that genre, but they can now be considered obsolete as they have been followed by a literary deluge of others-some excellent, some atrocious. One of the recurringly binding topics, egregious but compelling, is Nazism, and the subject seems constantly nurtured by new publications. Whether in Germany or not, everybody seems to have views about it, the ability to find a publisher, and an eager public with an insatiable reading appetite.

Among volumes emerging about Hitler and his gang is a group of four, all by reputable authors and put out by good publishing houses. For the sum of $57.90, the interested can acquire a mini-library on the subject of National Socialism. It may not be the best library for the price, but it is illustrative of "What's New in Nazism."

AN acknowledged historian of the top rank in Great Britain, A. J. P. Taylor has written several classics on the evolution of modern Europe. Since the passing of Liddell Hart, Taylor, with David Chandler, must be regarded as a giant among living British historians. But despite twenty-one published books, including two in the prestigious Oxford series, he has ripped his knickers this time. The War Lords* is by all odds a potboiler and a poor one at that. In his preface Taylor is at least honest enough to confess:

This book contains the transcript of six lectures which I delivered on BBC television in August 1976. I gave the lectures . . . without script or illustrations, simply talking to camera and making things up as I went along. I have tidied up the text for publication, removing occasional muddles or false starts. Otherwise the lectures appear exactly as I delivered them.

*A.J. P. Taylor, The War Lords (New York: Atheneum, 1978, $10.00), 189 pages.

Some observations are due regarding these remarks after one has perused the book. The most obvious is that once an author has a reputation for excellence, he can get away with publishing anything--for a while. Second, since these were TV-series lectures, then the British telly audience must be as unsophisticated as its American cousin. Third, the lack of notes and script has trapped other speakers far less accomplished than Taylor, but professional pride should have convinced him to accept the TV fee and forget the book royalties.

Such a condemnation requires some specifics before it can be accepted. The book contains 189 pages. The type is large, and there are one or more illustrations on all but about 35 of the pages. There are no footnotes, no bibliography, and only a two-and a-half page index. The book has six chapters, each dealing with the personality of a war lord or leader of either an Axis or Allied country. The final chapter, "War Lords Anonymous," deals with Japan, where, Taylor asserts, nobody (or conversely, everybody) was in charge. In his Roosevelt chapter, Taylor takes some unwarranted cheap shots at FDR, but since this piece deals with Hitler and his minions, let's examine what the author does in that chapter. He gives us 27 illustrations in 27 pages devoted to Der Führer. If one is interested in biographical information, he cannot find the dates of Hitler's birth or his accession to the chancellorship; if a political researcher, he will not read much about the Nazi movement or the party's manipulation of the populace, industry, or the German military. There is no account or explanation given for the German decision-making process except for some second-guessing of Hitler's motivations. There are entirely too many "I thinks" and "I supposes" for any scholar of that conflict to take Taylor seriously; as he states in his preface, "I . . . was making things up as I went along."

ANOTHER Britisher, however, has rescued his countrymen's reputation for good history. Richard Brett-Smith is a journalist and former soldier who has put together 306 pages of solid material that should appeal to every devotee of German military history. His work, Hitler's Generals,* sets a good balance between nothing and too much. There is something in this for all readers. For the World War II neophyte, it is an excellent introduction to the German war machine that dominated Europe from 1937 until the Russian advance to the west and the Allied landings in June 1944. For the interested U. S. military officer, it is a neat series of case studies in leadership styles and techniques and the interplay of some strong personalities. (One thing German generals were not was "shrinking violets.") For the historian, Brett-Smith offers a new facet to the evolution of the World War II military, although not as comprehensive as other contemporary works on the leaders and the general staff. Finally, Hitler's Generals with its glossary, maps, and index is an excellent reference work for writers and researchers--sort of a "Who-Was-Who" in Nazi militarydom. With his journalistic experience, the author knows how to write for public consumption and can impart much information in a style that is entirely pleasing and factual.

*Richard Brett-Smith, Hitler's Generals (San Rafael, California: Presidio Press, 1976, $12.95), 306 pages.

One of his secrets is organization. Like a wily spice merchant, he has sold us ten little packages (chapters), when perhaps we wanted only one or two. While I was reasonably conversant with the organization and functioning of the German army hierarchy, Brett-Smith's chapter titles led me to reread those sections dealing with what I already knew--or thought I knew. His depth of research added facts that I had not encountered elsewhere. Thus, the chapters about which I confess to very little knowledge were a real bonus.

For example, "The Luftwaffe Generals," a chapter of 45 pages, focuses on that corpulent but intelligent Reichsmarschall Göring whose career, if not his life, is inextricably linked with the rise and fall of the first modern air force, the Luftwaffe. The German air arm saw its glory days in Poland and France but could not break Britain's back nor nurture Hitler's Wehrmacht squatting in the ice at the gates of Stalin grad. Brett-Smith aptly draws the portrait of Göring as a loyal, energetic leader who took on all comers to ensure that his service accrued all the distinction and slices of the budget to which it was entitled. This contrasts to the conventional Göring, the technically inept, whose concentration on the good life resulted in Germany's loss of lead in aerial supremacy by 1943. Göring's rise through the ranks of Nazism, to include battling "commies" and other opponents with his fists in the twenties, guaranteed him a respectable place in the hierarchy when power came Hitler's way. Despite the claims of some pundits that the Luftwaffe's failures in Russia and post-D-Day France cost him Hitler's blessing, the fact remains that only he and Himmler were summoned to the Fuhrer's bedside in July 1944 after the futile assassination attempt. One of Göring 's principal talents, characteristic of great men, was his ability to pick capable subordinates and fend off dangerous enemies.

The Luftmarschall was good at both. He stopped one of Himmler's more ambitious schemes, the creation of a separate Schutzstaffel (SS) Air Force responsive to himself. He did not trifle with other Führer favorites, Bormann, Raeder, Ribbentrop, or anyone else who got in the way. He may have been portrayed by Allied propagandists as a portly buffoon, but it was a foolhardy soul who joked openly about his appearance or mannerisms in wartime Germany. He picked a legion of capable commanders and staff officers: Erhard Milch, another World War I ace who cut his aviation teeth between the wars in the Upper echelons of Lufthansa and who was one of the few German leaders whose talents were so great that his parentage (a Jewish mother) was overlooked, Adolf Galland, Günther Ruedel, and Hugo Sperrle. Author Brett-Smith gives each far more than a thumbnail sketch.

Another interesting chapter ties in closely with volumes to be discussed later. A separate treatment is provided on that monument to the indignity of mankind, the Waffen SS. The writer provides all the reader needs to know about the inexplicable hold of Himmler on German power and his ability to create a state within a state. Few institutions in history have acquired a corner on terror as that of the Gestapo and the SS between 1934 and the end.

From the ranks of the SS rose such eminences as Paul Häusser, who at age 64 was the only one of Himmler's men commanding a full field army. Brett-Smith relates an interesting anecdote about Haüsser: he was one of the few Nazis to purposely disobey Hitler's Russian no-retreat order and survive; he was transferred to exercise his talents in the invasion of Norway and promoted. Others include bully-boy "Sepp" Dietrich, another street fighter described by the lie-boss Goebbels as "the Blücher of the National Socialist movement"; Felix Steiner; "Butcher" Eicke (released from a mental asylum by Himmler); "Panzer" Meyer, and the rest of the first flight in Murderers' Row.

If one were to furnish a capsule opinion of Hitler’s Generals, it is best described as a good overview of Upper level German command during the war. A few like Kesselring, Manstein, and Goring get in-depth treatment; the others a bit less. There are eight fair maps and a photo or drawing of most of the subjects.

DOVETAILING neatly with the tome on high command is a new edition of Peter Hoffmann's excellent The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945* first published in 1970. The new work, containing some fresh material by the author is undoubtedly the best treatment ever written of the nation-wide plot to stop the Fuhrer before Germany was overrun by her enemies and plowed under as some of the more zealous Allied leaders had pledged to do. Hoffmann is not only a professional historian but an excellent storyteller as well. Mystery writer Rex Stout said that every author ". . . must keep you going. He must turn the pages for you." Hoffmann more than satisfies this criterion. Despite his obligation to good scholarship, Hoffmann is also able to turn what could be takes the reader back to 1933, when the incipient shadows of resistance to Hitler and Nazism began to lengthen. Hoffmann then leads one through another decade of plotting and marshaling of an ever-growing ring of anti-Nazi antagonists in the military, civil bureaucracy, and academia, and this makes for slower reading; he takes perhaps too many pains to introduce his plotters (and they were legion) and how they acquired their negative attitudes toward the regime. One wonders how Hitler did as well as he did by 1941 with so many fervent enemies in his ranks, but the explanation lies, of course, in Himmler and his operatives, whose efforts to keep the lid on the assassinator population explosion were more than minimally successful. Interestingly, in the thirties when such things were possible, a number of notable German "antis" approached foreign leaders in France, Britain, and the United States for outside sanctions against Hitler, to diminish his internal support. The appeals fell on deaf ears.

*Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1977, $19.95), 847 pages.

At any rate, at about page 278 Hoffmann turns from research for its own sake to thriller writing and gives us a volume every bit as suspenseful as Psycho or The Lady in the Lake. Without abandoning footnotes or other intellectual impedimenta, the author launches into a day-by-day and, later, hour-by-hour recapitulation of the plan to murder Hitler and his principal deputies and to seize the edges of the carpet leading to the seats of power. He tells the story so well that the American reader 35 years after the event cannot help identifying with the crippled Stauffenberg, ill-chosen with mangled hands to trigger the explosive device; Field Marshal Witzleben, selected by fate to return briefly and tragically to a stage on which he once strode with martial vigor; former Economics Minister Schacht, once the darling of the Nazi industrialists--in 1944 a prisoner awaiting execution by the regime he had given a decade to; and the others, virtually thousands. From the military, we watch the machinations of a number of senior and prestigious officers as well as lieutenants and captains, captured by the rhetoric and promises of their superiors. Rommel, Kluge, Fellgiebel, Stülpnagel, and Halder--many characterized also in Hitler's Generals--are among the plotters.

One waits for the blow to fall and, though informed to the contrary, wishfully hopes that Stauffenberg and company will be successful. They are not. And what is the most evident reason for failure? Clausewitz's compelling admonition about friction in war, that no matter how long and thoroughly one plans an event, he must be prepared for the unexpected. In this case, as Stauffenberg prepares his bomb, a German NCO hovers nearby compelling him to rush and to decide to use only half of the explosive charge in his possession. More thorough preparation, experts claim, would assuredly have resulted in Hitler's death and success of the subsequent coup, code-named Valkyrie.

Hoffmann has omitted nothing, answers all the questions, and discusses the what-ifs. It is long, it is slow at first, but it is top-notch treatment of the subject matter. If one were to build a library containing only twenty volumes on World War II, The History of the German Resistance should be in the set.

ANOTHER good European historian, Robert E. Herzstein, has written a fine volume on a different dimension of the National Socialist movement.* Herzstein analyzes the party and wartime Germany by examining the propaganda machine. He gives us a trilogy within one cover: a biographical treatment of the Prince of Tales, Dr. Joseph Goebbels; the role of propaganda to inspire the masses of Germany to greater efforts; and, finally, an abbreviated history of the Nazi party. The book will probably be around for a while, for it delves deeply into the Nazi (read Goebbels's) style at adapting the media, particularly the motion picture, to subjective purposes. It should appeal not only to World War II buffs but also to devotees of old movies.

*Robert E. Herzstein, The War That Hitler Won: The Most Infamous Propaganda Campaign in History (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1977, $15.00), 491 pages.

The author characterizes Goebbels as something of a naïve Heidelberg-educated, self-styled intellectual in the midst of a group of bums, ex-soldiers, and criminals, who constituted the party leadership in the thirties. Far more capable mentally than most of his co-ministers, Goebbels still had to acquire the tools of the mass-propaganda business from Hitler although Goebbels himself had the basics. He was a born hater who could rant by the hour against Jews and hard drinkers but divided his own time between work and skirt-chasing, a pastime that drew down on him the criticism of his more "upstanding" associates, Himmler and Göring.

Goebbels made enemies as well as broadcasts and motion pictures. He was never able to get his foot into Hitler's door because the Führer kept his own press secretary out of the clutches of the little propaganda minister. Martin Bormann also kept Goebbels at arm's length, and it was not till near the end that the minister realized that Bormann was not just the office flunky.

Herzstein implies that the German internal indoctrination effort was overkill and that the herren in the street wanted to hear more about Stalin grad and less about Jew-baiting. The author provides anecdotes to show that to the wartime German civilian, Goebbels's portrayal of everything as deadly serious was not entirely true. A sample of gallows humor making the rounds of the beer halls and even the Propaganda Ministry about 1943 shows Germany twenty years after the war. Goebbels is peddling newspapers on the street; across from him Goring is doing a brisk trade in selling used medals. A stranger walks up and inquires into the nature of their business. They respond and ask his name. He replies: "Don't you recognize me? I'm Lord Hess."

And so it went until the end in April 1945. Hitler and Goebbels trying to shore up their eroding sandcastle with balsa-wood props, perhaps the only two of the gang who saw delusion as reality even in the last hours. The war they won was won at least a decade earlier.

THE IMPRESSION left by these Germany-oriented books is that of a nightmare returned. Nazism was for real, and its demise was just thirty-five years ago. Most members of today's Air Force were not yet born when the German generals stalked with impunity across Europe, or Goebbels was screaming anti-Balkan tirades at "standing-room-only" rallies, or Hitler was guillotining and garroting his own citizens for treason after a contrived trial of thirty-minutes duration. These books not only provide a historical record of Nazidom, they also stand as testimonial to total war.

Colonel James B. Agnew, USA (Ret) (M.P.A., Princeton University) was Director, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, when he retired from active duty after a 25-year military career. He is the author of The Eggnog Riot: Christmas Mutiny at West Point. Colonel Agnew is a previous contributor to the Review.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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