Hitler

With the 20th Century now over, it's possible to evaluate who were the men who dominated the century...and the list is short.

The Kaiser, William II, Austro-Hungarian & German emperor, who many historians believe to have instigated, or been used to instigate, World War 1
Stalin believed to have caused directly or indirectly, the deaths of 10-40 million Russians, primarily through genocide & enforced famine
Mao Tse Tung, Chinese Marxist leader who is believed to have killed tens of millions of Chinese, again primarily through genocide & enforced famine &
Adolf Hitler

In my eyes, though, it's Hitler who stands head and shoulders above all the others. The Kaiser was playing chess and lost. Stalin & Mao were maniacs but content to unleash genocide upon their own populations, particularly certain ethnic groups. Hitler, though, had grander ambitions. He would have conquered and enslaved the world, not just metaphorically, literally:

their professional classes were to be murdered
they were to live in hovels, while German "settlers" were to live in luxurious replicated German suburbs
their children were to be denied any education above basic primary

This isn't hearsay, this is well-archived fact and had been first implemented in the Ukraine soon after the Germany invasion in 1941. Except for the harsh winter of 1941 for which the Germans weren't adequately prepared and the Russians surprising scorched earth policy in retreat, Hitler's cruel vision may have become History for much of the world.

So who was he?

This poorly educated corporal, who built the Nazi party up from nothing in 1919 to be Chancellor of Germany by 1933, then Fuhrer in 1934 and then systematically:

immediately instigated the dismantling and destruction of all political opposition (and, indeed, any dangerous allies)
initiated harrassment, degradation and eventually genocide of 6 million European jews
arrogantly broke The Treaty of Versailles in 1935, re-arming Germany, quickly making it the most powerfully armed nation in Europe, while assuring the world that it was only for defence
instigated an initially low-key but nevertheless, methodical plan to replace the Christian church with a Germanic Nazi religion via coercion, propoganda (he and Goebbels invented modern propoganda) & massive brainwashing via the Hitler Youth

Hitler & The Hitler Youth

Triumph Of The Will

Hitler's rapid ascendancy was no accident. Every step was planned long before-hand, and merely put into place with breath-taking speed once he ascended to power. Most importantly, he was smart enough to understand that he had to win the German public over to extend beyoond the honeymoon period. He did this by initiating a massive public spending spree on:

bridges
dams
highways &
railroads

...paid for temporarily by manipulation of the German Mark. What makes this building program all the more audacious is that foreign governments like Britain & France must have realised that this course of action was putting Germany on a quick road to bankruptcy, unless Hitler:

was going to start a war and steal the gold to pay for it...or just
nullify the debt

With that in mind...and especially since Hitler had gone into great detail in Mein Kampf (see below) about what his intentions were...I've had to look at The Second World War in a different light...and here are several books that I'd like to bring to your attention:

Books:

Mein Kampf

If anyone wants to understand Hitler, there is no better place to start than Mein Kampf, the almost unreadable memoirs of a then unremarkable politician...but if read without bias, it contains a very detailed blueprint for why Germany would need to start The Second World War.

Mein Kampf isn't an easy read. There are long, long passages/chapters of sustained vitriol, going on at length about:

his understanding of propoganda and how the Allies had utilised it better than the Germans in World War 1
Jews, the international banks (run by jews) & Marxism (created by a jew and part of the jewish conspiracy)
the importance of not diluting the ancient bloodlines (jewish blood is the worst)
syphilis (spread by jews)

To be honest, I only lasted a couple of hundred pages, Mein Kampf really is turgid...but those were enough to give me a clear, harrowing insight into Hitler's mind. Dismissed as nonsense and ignored by the West at the time, this book is, above all, a tragic testament to the failure of governments to protect the people of the world from madmen.

Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth

Albert Speer: Hitler's architect, the man who was going to design the buildings of The Thousand Year Reich. It's accepted that if Hitler had anyone who could be considered a friend, it was Albert Speer, Hitler's second in command from 1942-1945.

Albert Speer's story is a fascinating one. It's the story of a well-meaning man, a handsome, charming, debonair man, who was no brute but just by being in the right place at the right time, was ensnared by History and Vanity and paid the price.

Gitta Sereny's biography, Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth, is a fair and reasoned look at Speer's life but it definitely has an agenda. Speer claimed during the Nuremburg War Criminal trials that he had no idea about the Holocaust...and Sereny goes to great lengths to prove that he must have.

In order to do that, she provides a thorough study and analysis of:

the rise of the Third Reich
Speer's part in it
why he must have been aware of the Holocaust

...while Speer parries (almost) every thrust she makes.

What emerges...is not so much the truth...as the story of a survivor...a fairly decent man who turned a blind eye to what he discovered...and then convinced himself that he hadn't seen it.

It's also three strange love stories:

one between Speer and Hitler &
the other, between Speer's secretary of many years, Anne Marie Kempf. Though they never had an affair, she emerges as the one person in his life who really loved him, very different from his polite but increasingly bitter wife
the third is the genuine affection between Speer and author Sereny. Occasionally one feels that her prose wants to defend him against her own probing. It's a most unusual situation that's delightfully human it and adds to rather than detracts from her scholarly pursuit of him

Sereny's book is a genuinely disturbing one. Like her, I find I like Speer, a lot, irrespective of his terrible place in History...and that is dangerous...but delightful.

Spandau: The Secret Diaries

Convicted at the Nuremburg trials and sentenced to 20 years in Spandau, The Secret Diaries is a truly fascinating insight into a man who seems scarily astute, almost contemporary in his thinking.

During his imprisonment, Speer managed to have smuggled out thousands of letters, many dealing with his Nazi past, his friendship with Hitler and the intrigues of Hitler's court, which, when whittled down, became the basis for his best-seller, Inside The Third Reich (I hope to review that soon).

The Secret Diaries are much of the rest:

fragmented memories of his Nazi past
his shock at finding out in full at Nuremburg, what he had been part of, in particular, The Final Solution
his disturbing ambivalence about Hitler at different times, impartial, scathing and compassionate observations of his fellow prisoners
his struggle with the de-humanizing effects of prison life

The Secret Diaries is an unusual book, as harrowing as any great dramatic work I've ever read...and is strongly recommended.

The Book Of Alfred Kantor

The Holocaust is too terrible for me to contemplate, I have only one book, a collection of simple water colors painted by a concentration camp survivor, Alfred Kantor, recollecting his experiences.

The Spear Of Destiny

Like Albert Goldman's thoroughly panned The Lives Of John Lennon, Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear Of Destiny purports to be fact...but is so unbelievable that it's better being treated as a work of fiction than anything else. In fact, as fiction, it's obviously the inspiration for George Lucas' Raider Of The Lost Ark.

However ludicrous the words, there's also an archetypal common sense behind its analysis of Hitler's demonic posession (whether figurative or actual), one that has helped me greatly in finding answers about The Third Reich.

DVDs:

Triumph Of The Will

Triumph Of The Will is the film that sold Nazism to the greater German public after the Nazis had scraped into power. Made by Leni Riefenstahl, a former actress turned film-maker, she is one of the few high-profile women in the Nazi story.

A purported documentary of the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi party rally, what was to become an annual event, this film is technically a work of genuis, years ahead of its time. Watching it you'll see many filming techniques that have only entered modern film-making since MTV.

Subject-wise, it's now appalling and a little dull...but to those interested, this is the first great work of modern propoganda, Triumph Of The Will tugged at the heart-strings of a down-trodden people...and made them feel that they could conquer the world. This is emotional film-making at its finest, and quite astonishing that it was made so long ago.