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Michael Perkins's Reviews > The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
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update....
"My father, raised in Berlin under the Nazis, saw in European fascism a course that any country could take. He knew that US democracy was not exceptional in its capacity to resist the forces that shattered his family and devastated his youth. My mother, a court stenographer in US criminal courts for 44 years, saw in the anti-Black racism of the American legal system parallels to the vicious antisemitism she experienced in her youth in Poland, attitudes which enabled eastern European complicity with fascism. And my grandmother, Ilse Stanley, wrote a memoir, published in 1957, of her experiences in 1930s Berlin, later appearing on the US television show This is Your Life to discuss it. It is a memoir of the normalization years of German fascism, well before world war and genocide. In it, she recounts experiences with Nazi officers who assured her that in nazism’s vilification of Jews, they certainly did not mean her."
What we are seeing here today....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
=================
In “The Free World,” Louis Menand paraphrased Hannah Arendt to describe the early 20th-century proponents of totalitarianism as “the refuse of every class: disempowered aristocrats, disillusioned intellectuals, gangsters, denizens of the underworld. They were people who believed that the respectable world was a conspiracy to deny them what they were owed; they were the embodiments of the politics of resentment.”
===============
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but human nature remains the same.”
― Ken Burns
=================
Nazi tactics never seem to go away. Just watched "I am not your Negro" based on the testimony of James Baldwin. It was the incitement of hate that got Medgar Evers, MLK, and Malcom X assassinated.
Trump's chant of "send her back" already caused death threats to spike way up for these Congresswomen. Now we have this abomination....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
----------------
So why aren't more GOP speaking out? Interesting you ask. One of the lessons of Nazi Germany is that indifference or cowardice can be as bad as active hostility. "it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless." (James Baldwin)
From other research, in addition to this book....
Nazi support started out with thugs, but eventually spread to most Christians and most non-Jewish academics and intellectuals, along with innumerable other members of German society.
But there was also a Jewish presence in the military....
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-x...
==========
from my research....
"The term "German resistance" should not be understood as meaning that there was a united resistance movement in Germany at any time during the Nazi period.....The German resistance consisted of small and usually isolated groups. They were unable to mobilize political opposition."
in other words, most of the German people of that era were complicit, either actively or passively
=========
In his introduction, Rob Rosenbaum suggests the importance of the release of "Rise and Fall" in 1961. Up until then, he says there was a "willed forgetfulness" about what happened. This is an important point. My father was drafted the day after he finished his medical residency at Boston General and spent four years in France, sometimes under fire. But when he returned home safely, he had no sense of the big picture. For him, Shirer provided that. The author, in his Foreword, describes the treasure trove of archives he was able to consult for his book, but also admits his book is not the final word on the subject because it usually takes "decades" for historians to absorb and write about a subject this complex. But he is also aware about the need to raise consciousness about this history, sooner than later, as well as provide some of the story to people such as my late father.
==========
Rosenbaum also makes a powerful point about Karl Adolf Eichmann based on Shirer's account in his 1961 book, one that contradicts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil."
Rosenbaum writes:
"Shirer, who had been stationed in Berlin during Hitler’s rise, also had a take on Eichmann before he became Eichmann, the icon of evil. Shirer’s book had been completed before Eichmann’s capture. Shirer found the key damning document ��� the testimony of a fellow office who quoted the Chief Operating Officer of the Final Solution, Eichmann, toward the end of the war. Here was Eichmann not experiencing any regret or any of the misattributed “banality.” Instead, with a vengefully triumphant snarl (he knows who’s really won the war), Eichmann declared “he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.”
This, of course, is not the Eichmann of Hannah Arendt described here, who credulously bought into this “poor schlub,” pen pusher of the trial defense — just following orders, moving things along deep within the bureaucracy, “nothing against the Jew” facade. Just doing a job, according to Arendt, equally credulous about her feverishly devoted “ex-Nazi” lover Heidegger, for whom she used her influence to help in his sham postwar “de-Nazification.”
============
“The simple truth is that truth is hard to come by, and that once found may easily be lost again.”
― Karl Popper
============
A brilliant new take on Hitler and the Holocaust. Hitler's aim, the author demonstrates, was to completely eliminate the law (first in Germany, then elsewhere) and defined nation-states, so that all things were permissible, nothing was against the law, including the destruction of the Jews wherever they might reside.
https://www.eurozine.com/taking-bad-i...
Excellent review on new Hitler biography....
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
"My father, raised in Berlin under the Nazis, saw in European fascism a course that any country could take. He knew that US democracy was not exceptional in its capacity to resist the forces that shattered his family and devastated his youth. My mother, a court stenographer in US criminal courts for 44 years, saw in the anti-Black racism of the American legal system parallels to the vicious antisemitism she experienced in her youth in Poland, attitudes which enabled eastern European complicity with fascism. And my grandmother, Ilse Stanley, wrote a memoir, published in 1957, of her experiences in 1930s Berlin, later appearing on the US television show This is Your Life to discuss it. It is a memoir of the normalization years of German fascism, well before world war and genocide. In it, she recounts experiences with Nazi officers who assured her that in nazism’s vilification of Jews, they certainly did not mean her."
What we are seeing here today....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
=================
In “The Free World,” Louis Menand paraphrased Hannah Arendt to describe the early 20th-century proponents of totalitarianism as “the refuse of every class: disempowered aristocrats, disillusioned intellectuals, gangsters, denizens of the underworld. They were people who believed that the respectable world was a conspiracy to deny them what they were owed; they were the embodiments of the politics of resentment.”
===============
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but human nature remains the same.”
― Ken Burns
=================
Nazi tactics never seem to go away. Just watched "I am not your Negro" based on the testimony of James Baldwin. It was the incitement of hate that got Medgar Evers, MLK, and Malcom X assassinated.
Trump's chant of "send her back" already caused death threats to spike way up for these Congresswomen. Now we have this abomination....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
----------------
So why aren't more GOP speaking out? Interesting you ask. One of the lessons of Nazi Germany is that indifference or cowardice can be as bad as active hostility. "it is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless." (James Baldwin)
From other research, in addition to this book....
Nazi support started out with thugs, but eventually spread to most Christians and most non-Jewish academics and intellectuals, along with innumerable other members of German society.
But there was also a Jewish presence in the military....
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-x...
==========
from my research....
"The term "German resistance" should not be understood as meaning that there was a united resistance movement in Germany at any time during the Nazi period.....The German resistance consisted of small and usually isolated groups. They were unable to mobilize political opposition."
in other words, most of the German people of that era were complicit, either actively or passively
=========
In his introduction, Rob Rosenbaum suggests the importance of the release of "Rise and Fall" in 1961. Up until then, he says there was a "willed forgetfulness" about what happened. This is an important point. My father was drafted the day after he finished his medical residency at Boston General and spent four years in France, sometimes under fire. But when he returned home safely, he had no sense of the big picture. For him, Shirer provided that. The author, in his Foreword, describes the treasure trove of archives he was able to consult for his book, but also admits his book is not the final word on the subject because it usually takes "decades" for historians to absorb and write about a subject this complex. But he is also aware about the need to raise consciousness about this history, sooner than later, as well as provide some of the story to people such as my late father.
==========
Rosenbaum also makes a powerful point about Karl Adolf Eichmann based on Shirer's account in his 1961 book, one that contradicts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil."
Rosenbaum writes:
"Shirer, who had been stationed in Berlin during Hitler’s rise, also had a take on Eichmann before he became Eichmann, the icon of evil. Shirer’s book had been completed before Eichmann’s capture. Shirer found the key damning document ��� the testimony of a fellow office who quoted the Chief Operating Officer of the Final Solution, Eichmann, toward the end of the war. Here was Eichmann not experiencing any regret or any of the misattributed “banality.” Instead, with a vengefully triumphant snarl (he knows who’s really won the war), Eichmann declared “he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.”
This, of course, is not the Eichmann of Hannah Arendt described here, who credulously bought into this “poor schlub,” pen pusher of the trial defense — just following orders, moving things along deep within the bureaucracy, “nothing against the Jew” facade. Just doing a job, according to Arendt, equally credulous about her feverishly devoted “ex-Nazi” lover Heidegger, for whom she used her influence to help in his sham postwar “de-Nazification.”
============
“The simple truth is that truth is hard to come by, and that once found may easily be lost again.”
― Karl Popper
============
A brilliant new take on Hitler and the Holocaust. Hitler's aim, the author demonstrates, was to completely eliminate the law (first in Germany, then elsewhere) and defined nation-states, so that all things were permissible, nothing was against the law, including the destruction of the Jews wherever they might reside.
https://www.eurozine.com/taking-bad-i...
Excellent review on new Hitler biography....
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Quotes Michael Liked
“It is difficult to understand the behavior of most German Protestants in the first Nazi years unless one is aware of two things: their history and the influence of Martin Luther.* The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews and when they were sent away he advised that they be deprived of “all their cash and jewels and silver and gold” and, furthermore, “that their synagogues or schools be set on fire, that their houses be broken up and destroyed… and they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies… in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us”—advice that was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler.”
― The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
― The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
Reading Progress
July 22, 2019
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Started Reading
July 22, 2019
– Shelved
August 2, 2019
–
Finished Reading
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Aug 03, 2021 08:55AM
Excellent review- by chance my dad just asked where his copy was (I have it), he read in 1963. I need to take it down and plunge in.
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Great review and of course a great book. I like your thoughts on Arendt.
I'm still halfway through this book. I remember I left off at the sentence "World War II had begun"; I have to get back to it, because it really is incredible. And it adds another dimension to it to remember the impact it had on your dad's generation, Michael. I have to say that I was a little skeptical of Rosenbaum's intro, though. I wonder if he isn't misreading Arendt, somewhat, or at the least simplifying her ideas. When she alluded to Eichmann "just doing a job/following orders", I don't believe she meant to excuse him- but rather to suggest that he seemed ordinary and unremarkable, and that within the context of his society, he was doing what many of us do; therefore, it is possible that we too may find ourselves working towards evil ends, even without necessarily being conscious of or enthusiastic about the outcome we're working towards. I take that not as an exoneration of Eichmann, but as a warning to the rest of us.
"a little skeptical of Rosenbaum's intro"That's entirely possible. I admit I haven't researched it.
I'd recommend reading her coverage of the Eichmann trial, if you're interested. You might end up disagreeing with her, but her argument definitely isn't as simplistic as Rosenbaum makes it sound. Matt's got a good review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
thanksI just connected to Matt this week. He's solid.
Michael wrote: "thanksI just connected to Matt this week. He's solid."
Very much so.
Excellent review by Matt. But still left feeling that who and what Eichmann was is still unresolved. I've always loved the Solzhenitsyn quote:
“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts."
This means any of us can cross that line under certain circumstances, including Eichmann.
What I remember Arendt emphasizing was not so much his banality but his conventionality, his conformity, his inability to define "success" as anything other than what "proper society" told him it was. Apparently he really cared about his reputation and being thought of highly by educated, "respectable" people. And then I think Arendt pointed out that these qualities are not restricted to Nazis. In a normal society those qualities might appear sort of benign and to some people even laudable, because today we don't live in the Fourth Reich. But about tomorrow, who can say? So we should be careful and self-reflective. That was basically what I took from Arendt.I think you're right about Eichmann himself- unresolved and maybe irresolvable.
And good quote from Solzhenitsyn. I think he's probably right about that- even if it goes against conventional social media wisdom these days, where we tend to define people as unitarily good or bad. But I don't think human beings are that simple.
Another favorite Solzhenitsyn quote of late...“The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.”
Another favorite. Christopher Hitchens on Orwell....
"Orwell was one of those upon whom nothing was lost. (This included, as Orwell himself said: “the power of facing unpleasant facts”). By declining to lie, even as far as possible to himself, and by his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, he showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage."
Great review, I want to read this one very soon. As Ian Buruma put it, Nazism and its offshoots can spring up anywhere: it is not a specifically German phenomenon and can very much happen anywhere, America very much included. I agree with your assessment of Arendt and Heidegger. There is no excusing what he did and any notions of his having been "De-Nazified" by anyone strikes me as sheer naivety. He never acknowledged how deeply wrong he was, not in any serious way and seemed, at most, peeved when people brought it up.
He has no excuse, he saw colleagues of his being fired and then disappearing; and he was intelligent enough to connect the dots and know precisely what had happened. He just did not care.
His embrace of Nazism went above and beyond just trying to survive, it was hysterical, pathetic and profoundly disappointing.
Excellent review, Michael. I would also recommend Shirer's Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941, a much more modest book but one that offers a clear-eyed first hand account of the period leading up to the war.
