Since the end of the Second World War the Third Reich and the characters of its leaders have been dissected, dismembered, analysed, scrutinised, evaluated, judged and generally examined producing a plethora of books, some academic and scholarly, some populist, some conspiratorial and many utter rubbish, to the extent that there cannot be anything left to say about Hitler and his regime. And then along comes a book that shows that there is, and when that study is from the pen of the erstwhile Regius Professor of History at Cambridge it must carry considerable weight.
The author examines a wide spectrum of the government and people of the Third Reich and asks how did they get to the position that they did get to, and what were their motives for behaving as they did? The major players are included – Hitler, Himmler, Goring, Goebbels and Rohm are all there. While in the chapter analysing Hitler there is little that is actually new, there is a useful critique of the more important existing biographies. There are many interesting minutia: Himmler is depicted in the company of an Italian journalist in a sauna in Finland in 1942, where despite being the most feared man in Germany he cut a ridiculous, even pathetic, figure. Goebbels is described as being saved from missing an appointment by being swept up by an SS man in a moving train, and many will not have known of Rohm’s reorganisation of the Bolivian army.
It is in the less well known functionaries of National Socialism that much of the interest in this book lies. A chapter is devoted to Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the Reich Women Leader, thrice married and with eleven children and stepchildren, she had little influence in government policy despite her grandiose official title, while the diaries of the housewife Luise Solmitz charter her progression from worship of Hitler, who could do no wrong, to a gradual disillusionment and eventual hatred of the man and all he stood for.
Professor Evans makes clear that in his view the postwar image propagated by the West German government, and by the Allies anxious to secure West German participation in the defence of Europe against the USSR, is untrue. The Wehrmacht did not have ‘clean hands’ and the German population were not co-victims of Nazi aggression. While only a minority of Germans were participants in atrocities including mass murder, the bulk of the population knew very well what was going on and by inaction allowed it to happen. Conversely however, he tells us that despite portrayals in the media, the leaders of the Third Reich were not psychopaths, nor were they deranged, perverted or insane, rather they were perfectly normal by the standards of the day, being overwhelming middle class and with the cultural and recreational interests of most Germans. For most of them the shocking defeat of Germany in the First World War was the catalyst for extreme nationalism and an attraction to the man who, they thought, could restore Germany to her rightful place in the world. He points out that there is no evidence that Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp, ever had lampshades made out of human skin, nor had she ordered the killing of prisoners. Irma Grese, a guard at Belsen, is described as a rather immature, simple young woman who had little idea of why she was demonized.
While not all will agree with some of Evans’ assertions, this is a meticulously researched volume, and a worthy addition to the study of the rise and practice of National Socialism in Germany.
Gordon Corrigan is a historian and the author of Blood, Sweat and Arrogance: The Myths of Churchill’s War.
