Is it perhaps a symptom of Europe's currently troubled times that a eurocrat is drawn to books reminding him of just how bad things once got on our continent? Possibly. Maybe also it is that I am a sucker for these magisterial works of narrative history that I was drawn, having read a few reviews, to Ian Kershaw's latest hefty tome on the Third Reich.
Actually, I don't think so, but don't worry, after this I'll be on something else for a while.
Kershaw's book is an attempt to answer a question which has long troubled both historians and many others: why did Nazi Germany hold out to the absolute bitter end? Why was there no internal dissent, no-one inside the regime seriously trying to salvage something from a lost war? Why did the people not rebel? Why did the machine of state, the bureaucracy, the regular army, the structures of power and authority, function right up until the last moment when they were utterly crushed? Why, on the other hand, was there no Nazi insurgency under subsequent occupation? To find the answers, Kershaw opts for the narrative approach, relating in huge detail the final months of the Third Reich, starting with the failure of the Stauffenberg assassination attempt on Hitler.
As in the case of the other books mentioned above, the sheer scholarship behind this is impressive. About a quarter of the book's length is endnotes, a source of reassurance as to reliability, as well as of the slightly guilty relief that comes with finishing the book considerably short of its dauntingly distant end. (C'mon, you know it's true..!) The overall effect of reading this book is to be overwhelmed by the sheer completeness of the downfall of Nazi Germany, the epic suffering of its people, and the even worse suffering of those long identified as its internal enemies: Jews, forced labourers, POWs from "inferior" races, and so on. There is some admiration for the sheer bloody-minded stoicism of a people holding out long after utter defeat has become inevitable, for the resistance put up by a depleted and already beaten army against a crushingly superior opponent, as well as horror at the murderous fanaticism of those who decided that, if they were going down, they would take as many as they could down with them, especially those with enough of a rebellious spark of humanity left to attempt to avoid needless death and destruction in the dying weeks of the war, or those simply designated as inferior.
Does Kershaw answer his question? In reality, he finds many interlocking explanations, which include, but only tangentially, the traditional argument made by ex-regime members that the Allies' insistence on "unconditional surrender" ruled out any other option for the Germans but to fight to the last. This, in Kershaw's view, may have affected attitudes to some extent, but is ultimately more of a rationalization than a reason. Sheer terror of the Soviets, generated in part by propaganda, in part by observation of the fate of occupied areas, and in part by a strong sense that the Germans' earlier treatment of its occupied territory was coming home to roost, was undoubtedly also a major factor. (It was quite logical that resistance, though fierce for much longer than the military situation justified, ultimately crumbled more quickly in the West than in the East.) However, such explanations are insufficient for Kershaw, who in effect tries to psychoanalyze the Nazi regime in search of answers.
His conclusion is, in the end, that the Nazi regime, centered on the "charismatic" authority of Hitler, was almost entirely successful in making rebellion, dissent or disobedience literally unthinkable for the vast majority of the machine (certainly after the purges following on the failed assassination attempt) and for the population at large. Simply, people, high and low, generally saw no other alternative but to carry on the fight indefinitely. By the same token, however, the continuation of the Nazi system itself became unthinkable without the crucial figure of the Führer at its centre. Never in modern history, avers Kershaw, has there been a regime so utterly centred on a single individual as the explicit source of all power (not even a politburo to provide a fig leaf) and a focus for its ideology. Essentially, what Kershaw is saying is that the reasons for the suicidal, to-the-last resistance of 1945 Germany lie in the unique quality of the regime, a regime able to convince both its elite and the wider people that they had simply burned their boats with the rest of the world. Naturally, the conclusions of the book are more nuanced, more complex, more thoroughly explored, but this is, at least, the core message I retained.
I'll be honest, as pure narrative, for me The End was not quite as gripping a read as some others I cite, maybe because the narrative is one of slow, inevitable collapse and an implacable rise in brutality as the end nears. The dramatis personae with whom Kershaw most engages are more the Nazi elite around Hitler (including unambiguously, note, the protesteth-too-much "professional" leadership of the armed forces), rather than the cast of millions of ordinary people overwhelmed by events. The precise mechanism through which the detailed narration of the grinding defeat of Germany answers the central question of the book is not always clear, at least not to this reader.
This is all really to quibble though. This book is what it says it is on the packet : a huge, scholarly, serious and enlightened work of history by one of the world's leading experts on the subject. If this is a subject which interests you, even if you are vaguely embarrassed by the fact, then this is on your compulsory reading list.
Why did he fight so long?
No comments:
Post a Comment