The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

When telling a story, it is generally best to begin at the beginning. And that is exactly what William L. Shirer does, taking us back through Adolf Hitler’s beginnings, family history, and school days. One of the myths I heard about him when I was a kid is that his step-father was Jewish. Not true. There is no indication that his mother remarried after his father died. The only indication of contact with Jewish people was that his half-sister worked at a Jewish owned soup kitchen for a time. I think that it’s likely Hitler was a bit unhinged from the very beginning though, and was always an anti-Semite. One of the ironies that made itself known early on is that his father wanted him to graduate school so Hitler could be a civil servant. Turns out, you don’t even need a high school diploma to become der Führer, and thus the ultimate civil servant. Hitler, as has been told many times, did want to be an artist. And from that respect, he was very much your average teenager: fighting with his parents over what to do with his life. Same story told everywhere around the world. So where the hell did history go so horribly wrong?

This book is broken down in to 6 sections, and I’ll be reading through and reviewing two sections per week during the month of September. It’s 1250 pages in total with the indexes, 1147 pages of pure story, so reading it in one week is not practical. What makes this so fascinating is that Shirer was a journalist, living in Germany during Hitler’s rise in the 1920s-1930’s. So when he says “To some Germans and, no doubt, to most foreigners it appeared that a charlatan had come to power in Berlin. To the majority of Germans Hitler had—or would shortly assume—the aura of a truly charismatic leader.” (p. 6), I believe him. He was there. He was a witness to history as it happened, and can report on the unrehearsed reactions of the people. Now, does this mean ALL Germany was behind Hitler? No. It does not even mean the majority. It means the majority that Shirer interacted with responded enthusiastically to Hitler. But my question is this: of those reacting enthusiastically, how many were simply scared not to?

Think about it. How many people here in the United States don’t agree with a position, but decline to state their own for fear of cancel culture reprisal? For fear that Antifa, (and THAT’s an ironic fucking name, for so very many reasons), will dox you, or physically attack you, like Andy Ngo? If your tactics are fascists….you’re probably a fascist…even if you IDENTIFY as Anti-Fascist. Ok, off the soap box and back to the book.

Hitler was a lazy kid. When his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Yet he never got a job to help out. Consider today how many teenagers do exactly that to help the family out because it’s the only way the family survives. I don’t think Hitler EVER had a job. He was basically a homeless vagabond in Vienna for a time, before moving to Germany, where eventually, the Austrian government located him and accused him of fleeing Austria to avoid the required military service. Now, I don’t believe Hitler was a coward in the sense that he didn’t want to see battle. He just didn’t want to fight for Austria, having become enamored of Germany and considering himself German in all respects…even though he wasn’t. I guess you could say he was the first trans-national. Congratulations! You’ve dumbed your way in to a commonality with Hitler. Don’t worry, vegans, teetotalers, and rabid anti-smokers are right there with you. But then again, so are rabid readers: “In Mein Kampf Hitler discourses at length on the art of reading.” (p. 20).

Hitler did eventually join the army in Germany and fought for Germany during World War I, earning two iron crosses, one second class and one first class. So no, I don’t think he was a coward. Power hungry, yes. Sadist, absolutely. Deranged beyond belief…well, History tells that tale. But not a coward. Shirer did not think he was a coward either. He believed “This was not because he was a coward but because he loathed the idea of serving in the ranks with Jews, Slavs and other minority races of the empire.” (p. 27)

After WWI, Hitler was looking for an ideology. He found it in the tiny little six members strong German Workers’ Party. Hitler became their seventh member. And he began organizing. They slowly gathered steam and members, members who would financially support Hitler basically for the rest of his life, as Hitler never took money from the party as payment for any of his services. He still refused to find a job, thinking that manual labor was beneath him (does that sound familiar, antifa? Maybe if you had a job, you’d be too busy to be an asshat). On April 1, 1920, the party renamed itself the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazi’s for short. And this made me wonder: can socialists also be fascists? I read an article on Mises.org awhile back about how the Nazi’s were, yes, socialists. And all my little left leaning friends got extremely butthurt when I reposted the article to my Facebook page. How DARE they and by extension I, compare that fascist piece of garbage to their beloved socialist ideals. The Nazi’s were OBVIOUSLY capitalists.

So, I want to end this post with a few basic terminologies.

Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

Socialism: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

Fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Now, the mises.org article I linked to above already does an outstanding job explaining why the Nazis were, yes, socialists. But can socialists also be fascists? I think the answer is a resounding yes. And I don’t think that because of the above given definitions. I think that from reading The Gulag Archipelago. Multiple times throughout that work, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reiterates that part of the ideology of The Party was that Russians should marry Russians. In fact, if you were Russian and married someone who was NOT Russian, that was it’s very own form of political dissidence and could get you thrown in the Gulag as a 58 (political prisoner). Hell, if you went on a date with a non-Russian, you were considered a 58 and would be rounded up and jailed. And ALL of the 58s in the Gulags were there for some sort of anti-Soviet sentiment.

So while the left likes to pretend that racism is a strictly right of center problem, just a minimal amount of reading shows that of the three ideologies shown here, the only one that does not support racism, is capitalism. Because you can’t make money if you’re snubbing your client base.

Not ALL the way confused. The chapter explaining the backdrop of German politics which explains Hitler’s rise was pretty straight forward.

When World War I ended, Germany was basically told by the allies you are no longer a monarchy. You will be anything but a monarchy. For a country that had been a monarchy for over 1,000 years, this led to a great deal of confusion. Basically, the primary political party in Germany at the time was the Social Democrats. The leaders of the party, Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann, met in Berlin on November 9. Just down the street, the leaders of the Spartacists, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were also meeting. The Spartacists were getting ready to install a soviet style republic in Germany. Now, Ebert was hoping to find some way to preserve the monarchy. Scheidemann, realizing that Germany stood at a delicate tipping point, opened the window and announced to the milling crowds “Hey, congratulations! We’re a Republic!

Basically, he beat the Spartacists to the punch, and the Weimar Republic was born. Now, Shirer explains that the constitution the German’s came up with was basically perfect. But clearly, something went awry, as some loophole existed allowing Hitler to rise up and take control. Its that paradox of tolerance again.

Actually, that’s not fair. We have a paradox of tolerance here in America. We are so tolerant, that the idiots are shouting down the rational people. What they had in Germany was no desire to be a Republic. They liked their monarchy. They liked having a strong leader at the top. When America fought for independence, they were more or less ready for the concept, which is why there was a war for it. Germany had independence thrust on it by outsiders, then told to go ahead and pay that enormous tab we ran up forcing freedom on you. That tab, to the tune of $5billion in gold, was unreachable to a country that had been stripped of everything.

So there was basically a power vacuum left in the dissolution of the monarchy. There were like 28 political parties, which is great as far as not letting government fuck things up even more, but not so great in this post-war turbulence where leadership was needed. Because as we all know, nature hates a vacuum. And into this vacuum, Hitler’s star started rising.

His first move was a bit of a blunder. November 8, 1923, Hitler tried to take over the government in Munich. Gustav von Kahr, the State Commissioner in Bavaria, General Otto von Lossow, who was the commander of the Reichswar in Bavaria, and Colonel Hans von Seisser, the head of the state police in Bavaria, were all at the beer hall, which Hitler knew when he marched into the beer hall with his storm troopers and announced the city had fallen to the Nazis and that the Army and police were marching under the swastika banner. This was, of course, a lie. The city and state had done no such thing. Hitler’s motivation was a unified Germany, and he knew that Karh, Lossow, and Seisser were looking to break Bavaria away from greater Germany and create their own Bavarian state. So Hitler, trying to forestall this breakaway, attempted instead a coup d’état. He took Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser to a back room and tried to force them to cooperate at the point of a gun. When they refused, he went out to the beer hall and told another lie: He claimed they had willingly joined his movement, and Bavaria was now united under the Nazi party. Everyone cheered.

Now, as the party started to break up, the Nazi’s started to corral city leaders with the intention of solidifying their takeover. But, news reached the beer hall that the Army and city police were fighting back against the intended takeover. In the confusion, Lossow, Seisser, and Kahr were able to slip away. Ultimately, Hitler was captured and tried for treason, receiving the very light sentence of 5 years in prison, eligible for parole after 6 months. During this time, he began writing Mein Kampf.

Now, here is where I start to get confused. The next chapter is about the mind of Hitler and sort of the deep roots of the third Reich. One of Hitler’s biggest influences was Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Now in this section, was this paragraph:

“Chamberlain found the key to history, indeed the basis of civilization, to be race. To explain the nineteenth century, that is, the contemporary world, one had to consider fist what it had been bequeathed from ancient times. Three things, said Chamberlain: Greek philosophy and art, Roman law, and the personality of Christ. There were also three legatees: the Jews and the Germans, the “two-pure races,” and the half-breed Latins of the Mediterranean—“A chaos of peoples,” he called them” p. 106.

Now, there’s a bit to unpack here, and I’m still trying to figure this out. First, it is interesting that Ben Shapiro reached the same conclusions re: Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christianity. That, incidentally, is where the similarity ends. Shapiro focuses on the good of those three things and how we can all come together. Chamberlain says the Jews and Germans were the two pure races? So…how did the Germans come to so despise the Jews if they were both pure? I actually pulled out The Right Side of History and Shapiro succinctly explains it, where Shirer’s chapter just left me confused. Basically, because the Jews and Germans were the two pure races, the Germans had to defeat the Jews to be the last man standing and thus the master race. Thanks Ben!

I think my second question is if Greek philosophy and Roman law were so important…why are the Latins the half-breeds? Also, Jesus was not Jewish? I am so confused by the mental gymnastics that go in to justifying hatred and racism.

So, how does this apply today? Are there parallels between the Beer Hall Putsch and the catastrophe that is 21st century America? Yes. I look at CHAZ/CHOP from last year. A small militant group took over a part of Seattle and insisted they were now in charge. A small militant group took over a beer hall and insisted they were now in charge. Like the Beer Hall Putsch, it ended with arrests. So remember kids…if you support militant movements, you might be the Nazi’s of the 21st century. Swastika optional.

So now, it starts getting good. Or bad. Bad. It’s TERRIBLE that Hitler rose to power and destroyed so many millions. What I mean by good, is the book kind of starts to read like a political thriller. It truly was a challenge for Hitler to reach to point of power that he did. I know a lot of modern day political commentators throw out a Hitler analogy like one day he blinked and was Chancellor of Germany. That is not at all what happened.

When Hitler was released from jail after the Beer Hall Putsch, the economy was in recovery. The runaway inflation that had been destroying the country was under control. American investors had been loaning money to Germany, and has a result the deutschemark (DM) had stabilized. The Republic had been borrowing money to make it’s reparations payments, unemployment was down, the social services offered were world class. Everything that Hitler had banked on to make the Nazi’s so appealing was now, essentially, fixed. The Nazi party was basically a joke in Germany, and if it was referenced at all, it was to laugh at Hitler and the failed putsch.

Hitler, however, was not just a compelling speaker. He was an organizer. And he was pretty sure the good times wouldn’t last. So he began planning. His intent was to form a state within a state. So he started building the Nazi party membership. And H-O-L-Y-C-O-W was he efficient at building up the party. He divided the political organization of the party into two groups. P.O. I was set to attack and undermine the government. P.O.II was set to establish this state within a state.

POI handled foreign affairs, labor unions,  and the press office, not including propaganda which was it’s very own section. POII handled agriculture, justice, national economy, interior, and labor. What this particular division of labor meant, is if someone called the Nazis with a question of how they would handle crime, they would be routed to the correct point of contact in the justice department to answer their questions. This made for a very efficient dissemination of information.

Security was handled externally by the Sturmabteilung, S.A. for short, aka: The brown shirts or storm troopers. The S.A. were basically the bully boys of the Nazi party, set out to create chaos and break up political meetings of the parties that disagreed with the Nazis.  Sort of like the Anti-fa idiots of the 21st century. No…EXACTLY like the anti-fa idiots of the 21st century. Internal security was handled by the Schutzstaffel, aka: the black shirts, aka the SS. The SS are not mentioned too much during this bit. I’m pretty sure they play a much larger role later. Between 1925 and 1931, Hitler was building all this up.

On October 29, 1929, the stock market crash occurred in America. Remember that bit about American investors loaning money to Germany? It took awhile for the crash to be felt in Germany, but by 1931, the Great Depression had a firm grip on Deutschland. The Reichstag was basically at a standstill from all the parties, none of which could reach a majority coalition to achieve anything. Basically, the country was run by Presidential decree…sort of like our idiot presidents running the country through executive order when congress won’t give them their way.

Through some heavy political maneuvering, President Hindenburg was convinced to run for another 7 year term…at 85 years old. He did…and he won. But the President had to be held by someone who won a clear majority. Hitler, having used a quick legal maneuver to obtain German citizenship through the Nazi party, ran against Hindenburg, as did the Nationalists, who put forth as a candidate Theodor Duesterberg, and the Communists put up Ernst Thaelmann. Hindenburg won with 49.6% of the votes to Hitler’s 30.1%, Thaelmann took 13.2% and Duesterberg 6.8%. As no one had a clear majority, the election had to be held again. The second time through, Hindenburg won with 53%. Hitler remained in second with 36.8%. Duesterberg had dropped out, and Thaelmann ended with 10.2%. All of this, was because certain political figures, NOT Hitler, wanted the Republic to fall, and a restoration of the Monarchy, similar to how Britain’s Monarchy was run.

See! Lots of twists and turns. Hitler keeps trying, throughout 31-32, to be named chancellor, and fails every time. And each time he fails, his political capital gets weaker, as generally he would push for the position, around an election time. Only, while the Nazi’s gained a HUGE amount of seats in the 1931 election, ending up with 230 seats in the Reichstag, this was STILL not a majority showing, only constituting about 37% of the votes. And from there, the numbers go down, and he actually ended up losing seats in every district.

By January, 1933, Hitler realized that absolute power, while still attainable, was not attainable RIGHT THIS SECOND. So he formed a coalition government with Franz von Papen. The Nazis only had 3 of the 11 seats on the coalition. But it was Hitler’s way in. And he took it. And was sworn in as part of the coalition government on January 30, 1933.

antifaauthoritarianismNaziHistoryworld war IIHitlerfascism sucks

January 30, 1933, Hitler is sworn in as chancellor of Germany with a coalition cabinet and no clear majority in the Reichstag. Less than a month later, the Reichstag burned. There is no doubt that the Nazi’s were responsible. They blamed the Communists. They used the fire to wrest absolute control from President Hindenburg and the Reichstag. One poor soul was even executed by decapitation for the fire. But it was the Nazi’s who burned the building down. Because manufacturing crises is how authoritarians take control. Just ask Australia.

The day after the fire, February 28, 1933, Hitler convinced Hindenburg to sign a decree suspending civil liberties:

“Restriction on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press: on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” (p. 194)

Now, I know this book is about the rise of authoritarianism in Germany. But that quote is almost exactly what the PATRIOT ACT does here in the United States. Technically, we still have personal liberty. Oh, except the right to travel these days without paperwork showing we’ve been vaccinated. We have the right of free expression of opinion…unless the big tech companies, who are censoring us on behalf of the government in the name of “fact checking” says that what we’re saying is untrue… Question: Anyone notice the only thing being fact checked are ideas that run counter to leftist ideology? In what world is one side ALWAYS correct, while the other side is ALWAYS wrong? The truth is inevitably somewhere in the middle. Unless you’re on social media. Then the truth is whatever they say it is.

Back to Germany.

As soon as he had the power to legally do so, Hitler shut down the communist party. He shut down anyone who was even a little critical of the Nazi party. Soon, radios only broadcast Nazi ideology. How soon? Well, Hitler received the authority on February 28, 1933. By July 14, 1933, the Nazi Party was the sole remaining political party in Germany. Four months, two weeks, and two days. That’s all it took for the Nazi Party to wrest complete control of the government away from the people.

This is partly why the left and the right here get so up in arms around election time. Each genuinely sees the other as the source of all evil, and anyone who votes for them, votes for evil. This divide has been widely fostered by the political parties themselves, and by the media, because if it bleeds, it leads. And so bad news and division are inevitably the leading stories of the day. Neither side will ever admit the truth: they are both JUST AWFUL! Both sides are determined to keep power in the government at the expense of We the People.

Following Hitler’s success in government take-over, one of his lieutenant’s, Ernst Roehm, who was the leader of the Sturmabteilung (brown shirts), thought a second revolution was needed, to bring the armed forces under his direct command. Hitler disagreed. He still needed the cooperation of the armed forces, and while Roehm’s brown shirts were 2.5 million strong at this point, they were basically bully boys. They did not have the armament of the standing army. Roehm tried to force the issue, and this led to the first purging of the Nazi ranks in Germany. Throughout 1933 and 1934, Roehm continued to push for this combining of the military. On June 30, 1934, Hitler made his move. He rounded up the brown shirt leaders and had them executed. The round up was not always smooth, and at least one person was killed in a case of mistaken identity, Dr. Willi Schmid, having the same name as one of the brown shirt leaders. When the dust settled, at least 150 were dead, and 2.5million needed leadership, some of whom now felt betrayed by Hitler, needed leadership. This extrajudicial action was unprecedented in German history. And the army backed Hitler, saying the brown shirts executed were definitely plotting against Hitler, and therefore plotting against Germany. This agreement now made it very difficult for the army to distance itself when later atrocities were committed. Now…extrajudicial. That term should sound familiar. The Russians also used extra-judicial persons to exact their sentencing to the Gulag. What does that mean? Well, in Nazi Germany, there were 42 executive agencies who ran the country, leaving Hitler to be the front piece, so he didn’t have to, you know, DO HIS JOB. He left the running of the country to these 42 agencies. Don’t go thinking America is any better. We have 456 executive agencies. That’s right…while we’re all fighting over who is president, a bunch of unelected bureaucrats are actually the ones telling you what you can and can’t do.

Now, from 1933 to 1937, Germany underwent a Nazification. Every aspect of life was taken over by the Nazis. Let’s see if we can spot some parallels between 20th century Nazi Germany, and 21st Century America.

The Christian Churches were shut down. Not like the Jews, who were persecuted right out of existence. But they were not allowed to worship as they pleased. They could only worship how they were told, and they were told to worship Hitler, with ministers being ordered to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler. Not QUITE on par with the 21st Century. I don’t believe there is a war on Christmas…but I do find it odd that the Chaplain at Harvard is an Atheist.

Culture was attacked. The only culture allowed, was culture that was approved by the Nazi’s. Books were burned for not meeting Nazi qualifications. Fine arts, music, theater, literature, the press, radio, and films. Glad to say, actual book burning does not seem to be a thing in 21st Century America. However, the left has done something far more insidious. They demand that book sellers don’t sell books they disagree with. And sellers are caving. They demand publishers stop publishing books that don’t meet their narrative.  They bully and harass authors into pulling their books off voluntarily. ALL of this is censorship of the worst sort. The left will make a bullshit argument about “it’s not censorship if it’s not the government doing it,” or “free speech does not mean consequences from what you say.” These “arguments” are weak minded, and bullying tactics designed to shut down conversations. ANY censorship, from ANYONE, is dangerous. You don’t shut down dangerous ideas by forcing them into the darkness. In the darkness, they rot and fester. You shut them down by shining light on them, by openly engaging in debate. The problem is, the left can’t debate ideas that have actual merit. So, they shut them down. Culture under the Nazis was an abysmal affair, where you consumed nothing but Nazi propaganda. Sort of like today, where the only culture we are allowed is leftist culture. Because everything else is shut down as cancel culture tries to sweep dissenting voices under the rug.

Press, radio, and films. Mostly, the parallels are staggering. Mainstream media, both left and right, do their damnedest to vilify the other. Radio shows are the same. Films are overwhelmingly leftist propaganda. Because the left owns Hollywood.

Education. Now this was truly frightening, as Jordon Peterson linked to an Economist article yesterday about people not being allowed into a science program unless their DIE statement (diversity, inclusion, equity) was strong enough. EXACTLY like the Nazi’s not letting people into higher education unless their political ideology was pure enough. You could not teach in a German school unless you had fully embraced Nazi ideology. Educational quality plummeted. Much like America’s in the 21st century, where we are no longer considered first in anything. Teachers are so busy trying to indoctrinate and terrify our students to their way of thinking, that they forget to do their job and actually TEACH. American schools: where you go to be taught what to think, not how to think.

Happily, I could find no parallels between labor in Nazi Germany and labor in 21st Century America. In Nazi Germany, you were guaranteed work. The boss could not fire you without permission from the Government. There are a frightening number of people who think that is an excellent idea. The flip side to this is that you could not quit your job without permission from the Government. You went to the Government office. They told you where you would be working. And that was your job. For the rest of your life. Whether you liked the work or not. Yes, you were guaranteed a paycheck. But it wasn’t very good and was the exact same as everyone else’s who worked with you on the factory floor. It did not matter if you were the absolute best factory lineman that company had. You earned the exact same amount as the absolute worst factory lineman that company had. And there were no merit increases for your excellence. The only way to earn more, was to work faster, and longer hours. This, incidentally, is not capitalism. This is socialism. Government mandated jobs. At Government mandated wages. There was, however, quite a bit of crony corporatism, as only the corporations that paid Hitler’s required fees were allowed to operate. At one point, if your business had less than $40,000 in capitalization, the government simply dissolved it, and sent you to work in someone else’s factory. And new business was prohibited from opening with less than $200,000 in capitalization. All of this is normal under both socialism and fascism. Not so much under capitalism.

The final point addressed under Life in the Third Reich was Justice and Government. Trials were almost always held in camera (in chambers) meaning they were not open to the public. And the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Very much like what we saw in The Gulag Archipelago. And the concentration camps? They existed from the moment Hitler was sworn in as chancellor. Originally used to hold political dissidents (58s in Russia), their function spread over time to become the horror show for which World War II would become the nightmare of millions. Consider again a similarity to the PATRIOT Act…have we ever SEEN a public trial for terrorism? I’m not trying to justify the horrifying acts of 9/11; I’m condemning our nations response to it. Remember earlier when I said you don’t quash bad ideas by shoving them under the rug, you dispel them by shining the light of truth on them? We have NEVER shone the light of truth on terrorism. But I think Afghanistan stands as condemnation enough. And that will be a future book I read. I already own it. I’m just trying to work it into rotation.

I think what stands out as particularly fascinating about Hitler’s rise to power is that he did it within the boundaries of the law as it existed in the Weimar Republic. Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler determined that he would take over Germany, using Germany’s own existing legal mandates and constitution. And he did. This is why center/right of center, fight so hard to keep their right to bear arms. Because when the first amendment falls, the second will be there to restore it.

Why the question mark? It seems any takeover would be hostile with Hitler at the helm. Here’s the thing though. While the annexing of various regions and countries was absolutely hostile, Hitler did each one with a metaphorical wink and a nod. And the other European countries were like…Ok. Do what you gotta do, we just don’t want another protracted war.

His first steps were to try and annex Austria. And it did not go as smoothly as planned. Members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), dressed as Austrian Army, broke into Chancellor Dollfuss’s office, and shot him in the throat. Hitler basically said he would be doing this. In Mein Kampf, he had said that reuniting Austria and Germany was paramount. But this initial takeover attempt failed in the moment, due to the quick thinking of Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, who stepped in and took over the Austrian Chancellorship, and contacted Mussolini to advise him of the Nazi’s doings. Since Mussolini had already laid claim to Austria for Italy, he was not at all amused by Hitler’s land grab. Hitler immediately backed down and basically blamed persons unknown for the assassination of Dollfuss.

Meanwhile, back in Germany, Hitler’s rearmament kept on going. Versailles demanded that the standing army be reduced to 100,000. Hitler ordered the army to triple itself. Planes, destroyers, tanks, submarines…all were being secretly built in Germany. Now, because no secret is eternally safe from prying eyes, the European powers did eventually figure out that something was going on. And Britain approached Germany and said…Whatcha got going on there buddy? And Hitler was like…nothing. Just building some boats. But we PROMISE…PINKY SWEAR…we will keep our naval capacity at only 35% of yours. And because Britain never learns from history, they said, ok, that sounds reasonable. The history referenced here is not WWI. It’s the War of 1812, when America kicked the snot out of Britain’s navy with only 1/10th the naval capacity. Sometimes…. size really doesn’t matter, only skill. And historically, Germany was part of the Hanseatic League. They were very skilled with ships.

But while Germany is building up her navy, the British, French, and Italians all said Nope…you can’t have Austria. And Hitler said cool cool cool…we got no worries there. That was an internal assassination and takeover attempt, not my Nazi’s. In the meantime, the Saar, which had been ceded to France during the Treaty of Versailles, unanimously voted to rejoin Germany. I think, near as I could tell from the book, this was not coerced. They saw Germany booming and thought “We could use some of that here.” And Hitler swore up and down that if France would let the Saar go peacefully, that would be the end of it. He’d be happy, and he’d leave the rest of the demilitarized zone alone.

Then on March 7, 1936, German troops marched into the demilitarized zone at the Rhineland. Sort of like that Family Guy clip at Oktoberfest, when the German sausage seller just annexes the Polish sausage seller’s booth. And France…well they missed their opportunity. If France had rolled in tanks in opposition immediately…a decade of bloodshed might have been averted. Instead, France agreed that if Hitler would go no further, he could have Rhineland. And it KILLS me. Everyone’s acting like Hitler was this liar par excellence, like no one could see what he was doing. When he said all along what his intentions were. He literally spelled it out, in black and white. In Mein Kampf. One can hardly blame Hitler if you’re not going to take him at his word. Especially when his actions most definitely back up those words.

The rest of the world was watching. And with Frances refusal to step up, realized that when war came, France would not be fighting. At least, not effectively. Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia suddenly saw what was coming loud and clear. And it wasn’t France riding to the rescue. They were on their own where Germany was concerned.

On January 30, 1937, Hitler formally withdrew Germany from the Treaty of Versailles. He was no longer hiding Germany’s build up. He wasn’t boldly advertising it, but it wasn’t a secret anymore either. Slowly, European alliances that had been sustaining peace since WWI started to fall apart, as countries started withdrawing from the Locarno Pact.

Interestingly, the only ones who seemed to know from the very beginning that the coming war would be fought on two fronts, was Germany. They had two plans drawn up:

I.  War on two fronts with the main struggle in the West (Strategic Concentration “Rot.”)

II.  War on two fronts with the main struggle in the Southeast (Strategic Concentration “Grün.”) (p. 303)

Apparently, they did not plan for a war where both fronts would attack full force so that the strategic concentration would have to be split. To be fair though, none of the other countries to date had given Hitler any indication that they would ever oppose his takeover plans.

Before Hitler could implement either strategy though, he had a little more housecleaning to do. Hitler’s top military council disagreed with his plans to go to war. And so, they had to go. First off was Minister of Economics, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. He advised the country could not afford this without becoming bankrupt. To counteract Schacht’s naysaying, Hitler placed Hermann Göring above Schacht, making Göring the Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, which was intended to make Germany entirely self-sufficient in four years. Schacht did not think this could be done and thought Göring was an economic illiterate (he really was, but he was also a yes man to Hitler, and so one of Hitler’s favorites.) Schacht asked to be allowed to resign from his position, which he was eventually allowed to do.

Next down was Field Marshall Werner von Blomberg. Von Blomberg, being a long-time widower, wanted to remarry. So, he sought permission from first Göring and then Hitler to marry his stenographer Fräulein Erna Gruhn. Hitler and Göring were witnesses at their wedding. But while they were on their honeymoon, it was revealed that Gruhn had been a one-time prostitute. Obviously, this is bad for morality, to have one of the leaders of the army marry a hooker. Hitler accused Blomberg of trying to deceive Hitler and sully his good name, basically. Blomberg immediately offered to step down as Field Marshall; but in reply was told that he should do that AND divorce his new bride, which he refused to do, this being an actual, honest to God, love match in the time of Nazi’s. Blomberg was dismissed in disgrace.

Next to fall was General Freiherr Werner von Fritsch. This one was pure manufactured skullduggery. Fritsch was absolutely clean, and absolutely loyal. He just didn’t think the country could handle another world war a scant 20 years after the first one ended. The country had barely had time to replenish its population. And since they couldn’t find anything to hold over Fritsch, they found a duplication. The SS located one Hans Schmidt, who testified that Fritsch had been paying blackmail to Schmidt for years after Schmidt found Fritsch engaging in homosexual acts in Berlin. Now, Schmidt WAS being paid blackmail for exactly that reason…by a Rittmeister von Frisch. That one letter off was enough for the SS to strongarm Schmidt in to changing his story as to who he was blackmailing. And Fritsch was also forced out, based on this lie.

Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath was a bit easier to force out, since he suffered several heart attacks when Hitler announced his plans for war, he was forced to medical retirement.  There were a few other diplomats from the foreign office that were forced out in favor of more pliable ambassadors, but with these four, Hitler had managed to expunge the Nazi party of the remaining old guard from WWI and the Kaisers, and concentrate all military, economic, and foreign powers into his own hands. Hitler now held all the reigns on the runaway carriage that was Nazi Germany.

And with that, he steered Germany towards Austria, which he desperately wanted to own, ever since he had been rejected as an art student in Vienna.

Now that his house was clean, Hitler made another run at Austria. Now, his original plan was to have his ambassador to Austria assassinated, then he’d come barreling in all angry and declare Austria a subservient state. Yep…German ambassadors were wholly expendable in Hitler’s world.

Von Papen (remember him?) was the marked ambassador…but he managed to not be assassinated. Instead, he was fired and replaced with Joachim von Ribbentrop. Given that his assassination had been revoked, von Papen was in a very good mood when he introduced Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg to Ribbentrop. Schuschnigg, however, was less pleased with the meeting, given that Ribbentrop presented him with a document from Hitler that basically demanded Austria cease to exist as a nation and just give itself to Germany.

“The ban against the Austrian Nazi Party was to be lifted, all Nazis in jail were to be amnestied and the pro-Nazi Viennese lawyer Dr. Seyss-Inquardt was to be made Minister of the Interior, with authority over the police and security. Another pro-Nazi, Glaise-Horstenau, was to be appointed Minister of War, and the Austrian and Germany armies were to establish closer relations by a number of measures, including the systematic exchange of one hundred officers. Preparations were to be made for the assimilation of the Austrian into the German economic system, and to that effect, pro-Nazi Dr. Fischboeck was to be appointed Minister of Finance.” (p. 328)

Papen had a pretty good working relationship with Schuschnigg and agreed this was a shocking overreach in authority…but still advised Schuschnigg to sign them. Schuschnigg still waffled and ended up in a meeting with Hitler, where Hitler said basically sign, or we’ll invade Austria and take the country by force. Schuschnigg said, hey, I can sign this, but only the president of Austria has the ability to make this happen (Hitler apparently forgot that some countries still had Presidents, not Chancellor Dictators.) Hitler did not like this answer.

Hitler ultimately came to the agreement that Schuschnigg could have three additional days to meet his demands, and basically it was on Schuschnigg to convince President Wilhelm Miklas that this was best for Austria. Miklas, to everyone’s surprise, declined. And bolstered Schuschnigg’s backbone, so that by February 24, 1938, they were in agreement that Austria must remain independent of Germany. Schuschnigg decided to offer a plebiscite to Austria: Should we remain free of Germany, yes or no?

A plebiscite is a direct vote of the public on a single question. This plebiscite, however, would never happen. On March 11, the German army rolled over the border, closing the border, and stopping rail traffic at Salzburg. The police, who had quite a few Nazis amongst them due to Schuschnigg’s early agreement with Hitler, were no longer reliable in keeping the peace in Austria. Schuschnigg thought about asking Mussolini for assistance, since Italy had nominally laid claim to Austria already, but decided ultimately this would be useless. Schuschnigg decided instead to offer his resignation to President Miklas. “President Wilhelm Miklas was not a great man, but he was a stubborn, upright one. He reluctantly accepted Schuschnigg’s resignation, but he refused to make Seyss-Inquardt his successor. “That is quite impossible,” he said. “We will not be coerced.”” (p. 339)

Miklas received word that Mussolini would not be interfering in this matter and ultimately capitulated, appointing Seyss-Inquardt as chancellor and accepting without comment the recommendations for cabinet members. Hitler was over the moon that Mussolini just ceded Austria to him. And thus, without a shot being fired, Austria fell to Germany.

Next, Hitler turned his eyes to the Sudetenland, which had been ceded to Czechoslovakia at the end of WWI. Now, the Czechoslovakian border was heavily fortified. All of Hitler’s generals were pretty sure they could not take Czechoslovakia by force, especially since Czechoslovakia had a treaty with France and Russia for protection, so once Germany began moving on Czechoslovakia, this should have been the beginning or a very short war which Germany would definitely have lost. Several of Germany’s top generals expressed this opinion and were booted from power. Several others began plotting to overthrown Hitler the second he scooted his Nazi butt out on that limb. The plan was to arrest him and try him for war crimes. But then…Chamberlain.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, seeing the mobilization happening in Germany, reached out to Hitler and said…what’s going on here? And Hitler demanded that the Sudeten Germans living under the Czechoslovakian government be returned to Germany, land and all. He demanded that any Czechs living on that land flee back to the Czech side of the border, leaving all their household goods for Germany to plunder (he didn’t SAY that, but that’s what was meant.)

And Chamberlain and French Premier Daladier…agreed. This all started in May of 1938 and by September, it had come to a very tense head, with Hitler making his demands, and the other powers in Europe willing to carve up Czechoslovakia for a little bit of peace. This is the appeasement that is talked about and taught in school. Also, this is why I say England is very bad at history. Never pay the Dane geld…the Danes will just come back for more.

Ultimately, Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini sat down in conference in Munich in September 1938 and agreed that Hitler could carve the chunk he wanted from Czechoslovakia, and no one would stop him. The Czechoslovakian minister was in the next room…not in the room, because Hitler refused to be in the same room as him…. that blatant racism and all. Czechoslovakia’s only hope was that Russia might defend them; however, their pact with France and Russia only required Russia to assist IF France assisted. And with Daladier’s concession to Hitler, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as it was. Not too long after this, Poland and Hungary made similar claims to bits of Czechoslovakia, carving away even more of this once prosperous nation. And on the Eastern Front…Stalin was not at all pleased to have been left out of the conference.

I think this is my favorite part of the chapter…this tiny little paragraph. While trying to get some concessions for Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain and Hitler had this exchange. Let’s see if there are similarities to today:

“”But this is nothing short of an ultimatum!” Chamberlain exclaimed. “Nothing of the sort,” Hitler shot back. When Chamberlain retorted that the German word Diktat applied to it, Hitler answered, “It is not a Diktat at all. Look, the document is headed by the word ‘Memorandum.’”” (p. 394)

We’re not fascists…were ANTI-fascist.  That’s what anti means…. Dumbasses. If you use fascists tactics, I don’t care what you call yourselves, you are fascists. Doesn’t matter if you call it a memo, an ultimatum is an ultimatum.

Anyway, Czechoslovakia was carved into bits, and this bought 11 more months of peace for the world, with Chamberlain and Daladier given the task of explaining to the Czech representatives what they had allowed to happen. Good. They should have that guilt and weight on them. I hope they bore that shame to their graves. The Czech minister, Jan Masaryk, told them “If you have sacrificed by nation to preserve the peace of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls!” (p. 411). He’s a bigger man than I would have been. I’d have condemned them as cowards on the spot.

The generals who had been plotting to overthrow Hitler when he rolled over the border to the Sudetenland decided not to. There was no reason to now. There wasn’t going to be war, thanks to Chamberlain and Daladier. During the Nuremberg trials, then even blamed Chamberlain and Daladier. Said they didn’t know if the attempt would have succeeded, but they’d have at least made it, if concessions hadn’t been made by the British and the French.

In England, Prime Minister Chamberlain lauded himself as the great peacekeeper, and was cheered and hailed as such. The lone voice saying no…you have doomed us all, was Winston Churchill:

“No one stated the consequences of Munich more succinctly than Churchill in his speech to the Commons of October 5: “We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat…We are in the midst of a disaster of the first magnitude. The road down the Danube…the road to the black sea has been opened…All the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube valley, one after another, will be drawn in the vast system of Nazi politics…radiating from Berlin…And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning…” But Churchill was not in the government, and his words went unheeded.” (p. 423)

Shortly after the British and the French bowed out of their treaty ties to Czechoslovakia, The Week of Broken Glass occurred. I think this is generally taught as a night of broken glass, and  arguably, yes, the primary terror occurred in one night. But the fucking over of the Jewish community lasted the full week. Here’s what happened. November 7, 1938, a Jewish refugee in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, shot and killed a German secretary at the German embassy. Grynszpan’s family had been deported from Germany to Poland in boxcars. In retaliation, on November 10, Dr. Goebbels directed the Sicherdienst (S.D.) and the Gestapo, to enact revenge on the Jewish community in Germany. Not just one town. In Germany. The report issued to Goering on November 11 reported:

“The extent of the destruction of Jewish shops and houses cannot yet be verified by figures…815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed only indicate a fraction of the actual damage so far as arson is concerned…119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed…20,000 Jews were arrested. 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36. Those killed and injured are Jews…” (p. 431).

There were multiple instances of rape, for which the offenders were punished by being expelled from the Nazi party and turned over to civil courts. No one was prosecuted for murders. Because rape violated racial purity laws. Murder…well they were only Jews after all, not people. This, incidentally, is why othering your fellow humans for thinking differently then you, worshiping differently, looking differently…are so dangerous. Calling people deplorable or snowflake…this others and dehumanizes them. We are all on the same planet peoples. No one gets out alive. Shouldn’t we all realize our common enemy is not each other? It’s the people in power who set us against each other.

Back to the book. To add insult to serious injury, following the night of broken glass, the Jewish community in total was fined one billion marks for the damages. And how did the Germans collect? Well, the Jewish community had insurance policies. So did the gentiles who owned the buildings some of those shops were housed in. The gentiles were allowed to collect. When the Jewish community tried to collect their insurance policies, the insurance money was seized by the state to pay for the damages. The state then gave some of that money back to the insurance companies to help them stay solvent. Nice touch of crony corporatism, don’t you think?

Anyways, now Czechoslovakia had been carved up like a Thanksgiving Turkey for its rapacious neighbors, Hitler turned his greedy little eyes to Poland and Danzig (Gdansk). Now, for large chunks of Poland’s history, it belonged in parts to both Germany and Russia. Like much of Europe after the Hapsburg dynasty imploded at the end of WWI, Poland became it’s own state with Versailles. Danzig (not the band) was a largely German city located in Poland on the Baltic Sea. Because of it’s strong German ties, Hitler wanted it. Poland did not want to give it up, being that this was their major port city and gave Poland ties to shipping and the rest of the world.

Hitler did, sort of, try diplomacy with Poland. He wasn’t sure England and France would turn a blind eye to his advancing a second time. When they could not reach a diplomatic accord, though, Hitler started setting deadlines and prepping for war. Of course, Hitler’s idea of diplomacy was along the lines of a toddler having a melt down over a candy bar at the grocery store. He tended to bully people in to giving him what he wanted. And besides which, Hitler had already decided to invade Poland on September 1, 1939. The only thing that threw an almost monkey wrench in to his invasion plans was when he heard that Britain and France were trying to get Russia to join them in supporting Poland against German attack. At this point, the entire world was waking up to Hitler’s plans. Even President Roosevelt cautioned Hitler against further threats to Hitler’s neighboring nations, a caution which Hitler took the time to mock publicly over the radio, to the amusement of his Generals and support staff.  Not gonna lie…this part made me extremely uncomfortable. So far, I’ve found far more parallels to leftist behavior than anything right of center here in 21st century America. Until I got to that description, when I could very easily have pictured former President Trump behaving in just such a fashion to a diplomatic post from another nation.

Ultimately, Russia did not form a pact with Britain and France. It formed a non-aggression pact with Germany in which they carved up Poland and Latvia between them. To be fair, Stalin’s reasoning was sound. If Britain and France could by another year of peace with Germany, why couldn’t he? Additionally, when Britain and France approached Poland about allowing Russia to come to their aid militarily, Poland scoffed and said Russian aid would be useless, which attitude certainly contributed to Britain and France’s diplomatic attempts in Russia. Germany and Russia signed their pact on August 23, 1939. On September 1, 1939, German tanks rolled across the border in to Poland.

Poland fell fast. Years ago, I read a fictional book called Mila 18 by Leon Uris, where he described the Polish cavalry charge against the German Tanks. I did not know if that was a fictional elegance or historical fact. It happened. That was real. Horse cavalry against tanks. The Polish Air Force was destroyed by September 3. The cities fell one by one, and on September 17, the Soviet Union came in from the east and completed the demolition of Poland.  The Soviet Union’s stated purpose was to protect the Ukraine from German aggression, and so they rolled into Poland, completing the split that the Soviet Union and Germany had agreed to less than a month before. Hans Frank was put in charge of handling Poland and specifically eliminating her intelligentsia and was all too happy lead the charge in the slaughter of Polish nationals. The Jewish Problem was left in the hands of the Gestapo. In February 1940, German soldiers found a small Polish town by the name of Auschwitz, and it was decided that this would be a good place to build a slave labor/extermination camp for producing needed war time goods and implementing Hitler’s Final Solution. By June 1940, Auschwitz had accepted its first inmates.

In the west…nothing. Britain complained. France kind of shuffled her feet. But nothing. Hitler was sure he could take the rest of Europe just as easily. For his part, Hitler began making noises about wanting peace with England, and if war with England commenced, it was because England was the aggressor. Hitler and his cronies began trying to convince the rest of the world governments that it was England and France who were pushing for war now. The rest of the world was no longer buying the act, and American diplomats, who had been sent to try and broker peace, saw right through Hitler’s bullshit.

Ultimately, several of the neutral nations had to be knocked out of neutrality. Germany’s northern coast has access to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea; however, both were controlled by Denmark and Norway. By this time Finland was fighting, surprisingly effectively, to maintain its independence from the Soviet Union, and England had sought permission from Norway to enter the Baltic Sea and get supplies to Finland. Norway and Denmark kept their neutrality throughout all of this, but both Britain and Germany knew that controlling the Baltic Sea would be key in the supply chain to Germany. Britain tried to go the diplomatic route and get Denmark and Norway to join the allies. Germany took the more direct route, and on April 9, 1940, Denmark and Norway were both invaded.

Denmark fell instantly. They truly had no chance to mount a defense, as they thought they had been secure in their neutrality. The King of Denmark declared that Denmark would do everything possible to preserve peace in their country, and Denmark was accepted as a German protectorate. It took Denmark awhile to come to active resistance, but they did, eventually, start to fight back. In Norway, it was another matter entirely.

Norway was attacked at the exact same time as Denmark. Norway immediately fought back. Understand though, the key difference was land mass. Denmark shares physical borders with Germany, so between the Army on the land and the Navy at sea, it did not take much to take the country completely by surprise. Norway was attacked solely by sea. And her land-based defenses and Navy gave the royal family and sitting cabinet enough time to flea the capital in Oslo, along with the national gold reserves and armaments. Norway never capitulated, and underground resistance began immediately. Mostly thanks to one Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Quisling. No, Quisling was not a freedom fighter. He was a known Nazi and Nazi collaborator. On April 9, right after the king had fled Oslo, Quisling took charge of a radio station and announced that he had been put in charge of the government by Germany. Quisling was so hated by…well ALL of Norway…that the entire nation refused to cooperate. While the king and cabinet went in to exile in England, Norway’s battle began. His name has since become synonymous with traitor, and he was ultimately executed on October 24, 1945.

I actually know a little about Norway’s fight from a trip to Norway I took a few years ago. They did their warrior ancestors very proud in their fight against the Nazi’s. And not mentioned, yet at least, America helped a bit too in a wholly unexpected way. Roosevelt gave the royal family, excluding King Haakon VII who chose to stay in England, sanctuary at the White House for the duration of the war. I only know this because there is a statue commemorating FDR in Norway, which was the least expected thing I could have possibly stumbled across at a war museum in Norway.

With Norway and Denmark in German hands, Hitler was now ready to take on France and Germany.

“Shortly after dawn on the fine spring day of May 10, 1940, the ambassador of Belgium and the minister of the Netherlands in Berlin were summoned to Wilhelmstrasse and informed by Ribbentrop that German troops were entering their countries to safeguard their neutrality against an imminent attack by the Anglo-French armies…” (p. 713). Because clearly, it was the British who were the aggressors here.

Belgium had been one of the signers of the Locarno Pact, from which they withdrew in 1937. The pact, remember, had promised to maintain peace in Europe. Belgium decided they wanted to be neutral and withdrew from it. Their neutrality was now a thing of the past, as Nazi troops overran their country and took control.

In the Netherlands, the plan was to capture the Hague with the Dutch queen Wilhelmina; however, as in Norway, Wilhelmina was able to escape and seek refuge in England. The Netherlands did surrender, and as in Norway, began underground resistance. King Leopold III of Belgium surrendered on May 28, 1940, against the advice of his government. After the war, he was not allowed back in the country until July 20, 1950, when he was called back to his throne. However, there was such a violent reaction to his return, that he abdicated in favor of his son. It’s nice to see going against the government, can have consequences.

With the Netherlands and Belgium out of the way, Hitler rolled tanks into France. Now, the Allies knew the attack was coming. They just weren’t sure where Hitler would be concentrating his forces—his operational security was excellent. The German army essentially had a large chunk of the Allies pinned down at Dunkirk and could quite easily have taken out the Allied army and reduced them to a completely ineffective fighting level. When, for reasons that will probably be debated until the end of time, Hitler called a stop to the advance at Dunkirk. This pause in fighting allowed for the single largest evacuation of military personnel in the war. Over 300,000 troops were evacuated from the beachhead at Dunkirk in like 5 days. The reasons put forth in the book is that the tanks were basically supposed to keep them pinned down while the Luftwaffe bombed them from above. This might have worked, if half the German Navy hadn’t been wiped out in the taking of Norway. As it was, though, the English were able to evacuate by sea. This, I think, was easily the first misstep of Hitler’s plan. This hesitation at Dunkirk freed up a lot of fighting men to come back at Germany later in the war.

After Dunkirk, France collapsed, and Hitler turned his eyes to England. Those boats he lost at Norway? He was missing those again, as he had no practical way to get his troops across the English Channel. You can see the cliffs of Dover from France, and it might well have been on the other side of the planet for how accessible it was to Hitler. So, he started bombing London. Only England had this fancy new technology that allowed them to be weirdly prescient about German flight paths. Radar was not understood by Germany. And the English used it to good effect to shoot down German bombers over English soil. Then England did something utterly outrageous: It took the war to Germany and began bombing Berlin. Hitler was furious.

However, this did cause him to think that England, since they couldn’t get actual troops to Berlin, was effectively done for. He ordered the Luftwaffe to keep bombing London and turned his sights on The Soviet Union. Stalin had been making encroachments on land that Hitler wanted, which was not technically against their non-aggression pact. But Hitler wanted it. So, Stalin was in the wrong. Hitler started making plans for an attack on The Soviet Union in May 1941. Here, his op-sec was not as awesome, as less then loyal anti-Nazi’s, who found themselves in positions of trust, got the attack plans to an American embassy personnel, who turned those plans over to J Edgar Hoover. Hoover, realizing the authenticity of the plans, did contact the Soviet Union and warn them about the impending attack. For whatever reason, Stalin chose not to believe them. And when the attack did not materialize in May, as originally scheduled, Stalin thought he was right, that America was trying to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and Germany. But the reason the attack did not occur on time was Yugoslavia.

God bless Yugoslavia…words I bet no-one thought they’d say regarding that tiny nation and World War II. Hitler…wanted Yugoslavia. The King and Prime Minister signed the agreement with Hitler. But that nation said no. As soon as the King returned to Yugoslavia, the nation rebelled and rejected the puppet status they had been assigned by Hitler. And in such forceful and insulting terms that Hitler went into a blind rage and ordered their immediate attack, delaying the attack on Russia by 1 month. Yugoslavia fell. He literally bombed it into non-existence, leveling the capital city with 17,000 dead from the bombings alone. But that one month proved fatal to Germany: they were only 30 miles from Moscow when the Russian winter set in.

Militarily, I don’t think there has been a single invading Army that has EVER survived a Russian winter. Germany was no different. At first, they made incredible advances across the Soviet Union, towns were falling, the Soviet army was falling back…then in September, the autumn rains started, and everything got bogged down in mud. The tanks had to be used to pull the troop transports out of mud that rose to the vehicle axles. In early October, the first snows fell, and everything froze. The troops had NO winter gear, not even gear for a normal German winter, let alone a Soviet winter, where temperatures routinely fall to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. The German army started to fall back. They had no supplies, so they were starving. They had no winter wears, so they were freezing to death. Hitler flipped his shit, basically turned over his entire military command in the Soviet Union, before deciding to just take command himself.

But from here, the German’s knew they were no longer invincible. And once that doubt sets in, once you become aware of your own mortality…you are rather loathed to lose it. In December 1941, Hitler’s ally in the far east, Japan, was to take action that would prove the ultimate downfall of the Axis powers. December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. And America entered the war.

Among the many reasons it is called a world war, is that in addition to Europe, this war was fought in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific islands. The book only peripherally touches on Africa, first to mention Rommel’s stunning victories there, then his equally stunning losses once America joined the effort. It does not mention the war in China at all, focusing exclusively on Germany’s activities during the war, and the various countries responses to Germany.

Part of England’s supply chain that kept her fighting were her colonies in Africa (Egypt) and Southeast Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, India). So, Rommel’s task was to attack and take control of the oil fields and Suez Canal in Egypt, to cut off that supply chain. And he was very good at this job. Until America entered the war and sent Eisenhower over. At which point German’s military in Africa started losing. And while Hitler had pressed Japan to attack Singapore, to distract the British and keep America focused on the Pacific, there were two fundamental problems with this thought.

1. Japan had its own agenda, which did not involve placating Germany.

2. Hitler routinely underestimated America’s military strength

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America entered the war. And while it wasn’t the target Hitler had specified, he was pretty sure that this would still keep America focused on the Pacific. And so, in solidarity with his Japanese allies, he declared war on America. And America went: Challenge accepted. While Germany was by no means able to maintain a war on two fronts, America could…and did.

Since this is the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I don’t believe the Pacific theater is addressed at all in this book, or if it is, it will only be peripherally. It has not been yet. But while Hitler accused America of giving aid to Britain without having declared war, I don’t believe there is any “rule” in war that says you can’t do that. I strongly suspect that Hitler’s major bitch with America, aside from being run by a Jewish cabal of Free masons (yes…really…this is actually reported in the book) is that he could not get to America to place her under a German protectorate, like he had with Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

So, Hitler tried to get Japan to agree to attack Singapore, then come up on the other side of Russia to force the Soviets to fight a two-front war. And instead, Japan got Germany to agree not to declare a truce with any of their mutual enemies, without defining who those enemies were. Hitler read into that what he wanted to, and assumed Japan was getting ready to do what was asked. And Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Hitler thought: Ok, this is cool. We got this. His foreign affairs office had assured him there were enough highly placed isolationists who agreed with the Nazi cause, that this would be no big deal. Instead, this unanticipated act of aggression from a power we had previously had no gripe with united the United States into willingly going to war against all such aggressors.

Meanwhile, over on the Eurasian continent, the Russian winter proceeded to beat the snot out of the invading Germans. And in 1942, Germany continued to try and take the Soviet Union, with nothing but failure and death as the result. Hitler determined that Stalingrad would have to fall. If Germany could take Stalin’s named city, Soviet morale would tumble, and the country would fall. This is not what happened. See the problem with trying to replace one brutal, dictatorial regime, with another, is that the people over whom you are fighting might just decide it’s a matter of better the devil you know, then the devil you don’t. While Stalinist Russia sucked…amply…once the peoples in the already conquered territories realized things would be no better under Germany, and they were screwed anyways, they decided they’d better fight like mad to make sure the Soviet’s won. At least then they might have a CHANCE of avoiding the camps. And with that thought in mind, Stalingrad turned in to an absolute killing field. I think I’ve heard Stalingrad referred to as a sniper’s war, and there are several absolutely incredible books dedicated just to the battle for Stalingrad. If you want a quick, fictional account, that was pretty well researched for being fiction, I recommend The War of the Rats by David L. Robbins. For a non-fiction account, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor.

The Germans at Stalingrad knew they were dying. They knew they could not win this battle. They asked Hitler for permission to retreat and regroup and were ordered to stand to the last man. Which they did…until they were surrounded and taken to the Gulag’s, as 58’s. We all know what that means.

“By that time 91,000 German soldiers, including twenty-four generals, half-starved, frostbitten, many of them wounded, all of them dazed and broken, were hobbling over the ice and snow…toward the dreary, frozen prisoner-of-war camps in Siberia.… they were all that as left of a conquering army that had numbered 285,000 men two months before. The rest had been slaughtered. And of those 91,000 Germans who began the weary march into captivity that winter day, only 5,000 were destined to ever see the Fatherland again.” (p. 932)

The Germans did not treat prisoners of war any better than the Russian’s did.

Book Five of this epic undertaking starts by describing Hitler’s intended New Order. Basically, this is how he planned to run things once he had finished conquering the world. Needless to say, The Jews lose. Big time. “The Jews and the Slavs were Untermenschen—sub-humans.” (p. 937)

The word slave has its root in Slav. The northern tribes of Germania used to sell them to the Romans. Because humanity has always been shitty to each other. Well, Hitler renewed the term, and began using the Jews and Slavs as slave labor in manufacturing war goods. I’d say this was against Geneva conventions, but I think it’s pretty obvious Hitler did not care about the Geneva convention. Anyone who had been captured by the German army was subject to this forced labor. The need for labor actually slowed down the gas chambers and ovens—at one point the German upper echelon complained there were not enough slaves to do their bidding and to maybe work them a bit before killing them off. I do think this letter from Alfred Rosenberg’s ministry in regard to the Slavic people is highly telling:

“The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore, compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives or practice abortion—the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to 100…Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As for the food they won’t get any more than is absolutely necessary. We are the masters. We come first.” (p. 939)

So much of that echoes what we found in The Gulag Archipelago, further highlighting the similarities in horror between the two authoritarian regimes. Moreover, this rule for thee but not for me mentality is echoed today. Only, they are trying to turn the horrors of the Concentration Camps into virtues. No no…we WANT you to be vaccinated. But not us. We don’t need the vaccine. You must wear masks for your own safety, but we don’t have to wear them…unless the useful idiots are watching. You HAVE to have a vaccine passport to do anything. But that’s not at all like the Jews with the Star of David during WWII. They had to wear it to be excluded…we’re trying to include you. Bullshit! This is literally designed specifically to separate us into classes of people. Authoritarians gonna authoritate. Just ask Cartman.

I think the general horrors of what went on in the camps is actually pretty well known. Volumes have been written on the individual camps and the monsters that ran them, the industrialization of murder which occurred under Nazi Germany. These are well known quantities, but yes, they are addressed in the book. He addresses the gas chambers of Auschwitz, the mobile murder vans of the einsatzgruppen, the medical experiments that led to the Nuremburg codes against forced medical experiments… Why do YOU think our regime waited to mandate vaccines until the FDA approved it? If they’re approved, they’re no longer “experimental,” which means we’re all no longer considered unwilling guinea pigs, but willing subjects.

Book five was prone to one of the most frustrating aspects I have found over the entirety of this book: He will name a chapter one thing, then basically never discuss it. The Fall of Mussolini addresses the Italian coup that overthrew the dictator and restored a constitutional monarchy. It addresses how Hitler basically swooped in and rescued Mussolini, installing him as a puppet leader over northern Italy, where Hitler still had troops. Then the rest of the chapter never even mentions Mussolini. Instead, it is spent discussing the Allied advances in the Mediterranean and on the Russian front.

But the last chapter of book five was even more frustrating. It was 71 pages…only like 3 of those pages were dedicated to the Allied invasion of Normandy. Literally the rest of the chapter was about the conspirators in Germany and their final attempt to take down Hitler before the Allies reached Germany. While I do think this is important history, I rather wanted a bit more on the American advances. Or, given that this whole book was more or less told from Germany’s perspective, maybe name your freaking chapters better. <End soapbox>

This chapter WAS interesting, and I do think highly important and relevant. It’s important to know that not all of Germany backed their murderous dictator. Essentially, he covers the Valkyrie plot, which was to kill Hitler with a bomb, then take over Germany and negotiate peace with the Allies. This particular chapter (of history, not the book) was so well known and documented, Hollywood made a Tom Cruise movie about it, with Cruise playing the lead, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. It failed (obviously) from lack of coordination. Basically, once the bomb went off, the co-conspirators in Berlin failed to act quickly enough to secure communications. If they had even managed that, things might have taken a different turn, despite Hitler not even being seriously injured in the explosion. But they did not act. And by the time von Stauffenberg landed in Berlin several hours later, he was already under suspicion. Hitler’s loyal cadre DID act swiftly, and the top five were summarily executed. They did not want a public trial, where the people could see the top brass in such obvious dissent with The Fuehrer.

Incidentally, there was A LOT of top brass involved in this. Half the forcibly retired field staff: Beck, Halder, Olbricht, von Tresckow…and Rommel. Hitler effectively went ballistic when he found out the extent of the betrayal and took it out on their families. Rommel was the one exception. He was quietly advised by the SS that if he would honorably commit suicide, they would give him a state funeral and say it was a result of head trauma sustained during a severe car accident a few months prior, and his family would be left alive. Hitler and the Nazi party did not think the party’s reputation could sustain the hit it would take if a General of Rommel’s heroism was known to have been one of the plotters.

One could argue it was sour grapes over being forcibly retired by Hitler. Except that quite of few of them had been plotting this attempt for 11 years…well before the war started. Basically, they knew from the get-go that Hitler was a monster, they just couldn’t get their shit together well enough to enact an effective assassination. And the world changed forever because of it.

While I have lots of criticism for this book’s cohesion, I very much liked one, almost throwaway, section. The author, throughout the book, tries to make the connection that German’s basically lack the freewill that would have been required to avoid the war, that centuries of falling under the power of church and state made fighting back impossible. I think he fails in this attempt. And he even fumbles in the failing. First, he highlighted in the beginning Hitler’s low election numbers. Hitler seized power, using the legal constitutional framework of Germany. But he was never VOTED in. The Nazis were never popularly supported. But by the time they had seized power, it was too late for the electorate. Finally, in this chapter, he mentions the students in Munich rebelling, citing specifically brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were executed for treason, for speaking out against the Nazi’s.

The Fall of the Third Reich

Almost from the first paratrooper landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the German’s retreated. They had to. From that point forward, the Allied advance was continuous, and merciless, on both fronts. Adhering to the old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American armies began working together to drive German forces back to Germany. And the German army began a fighting retreat, all the way back across Europe, returning bloody and battered to the Fatherland.

Hitler became more and more enraged with every forced retreat, threatening the infantry with treason and death if they retreated, or if they surrendered. Just like the Soviets did on the eastern front with their soldiers. Hitler himself retreated to his bunker in Berlin, determined not to flee the capital city, but to hold there until victory returned to him. Or death.

The last chapter of the book describes basically the last month of the war, and of Hitler’s life. He became increasingly unhinged, prone to furious temper tantrums. And the rats started fleeing the sinking ship. Both Goering and Himmler tried to claim that they were taking over the party, from various zones of safety. Hitler denounced both as traitors, removed them from the party, and ordered them shot on site for their betrayal. Hitler’s long time mistress Eva Braun joined him in the bunker, and they were married two days before committing joint suicide on April 30, 1945, Hitler by a bullet to the brain, Braun by poison capsule. Their bodies were then taken to a pit that had been bombed in to the courtyard, doused in almost 200 gallons of gasoline, and lit on fire. His absolute most loyal follower, Dr. Josef Goebbels, and his wife Magda, after ensuring their 6 children were administered lethal doses of poison, ordered the bunker guards to shoot them in the back of the head and burn their bodies. This was done, but not well. They were shot, but after dumping some gasoline on their bodies, the remaining inhabitants of the bunker tried to flee for their lives. Most were killed or caught. Seven days later, the Reich had completely fallen, and the war in Europe was over.

This was originally posted as three blog posts corresponding with the sections of the book reviewed. The reviews are posted on YouTube, parts 1 &2, Part 3, and Parts 4, 5, & 6. You can catch them all on Rumble, here, here, and here, or on PodBean, here, here, and here.