The Nazis - A Warning from History

Laurence Rees

London: BBC, 1997 (this edition, 2002); pp. 205

This is the companion book to the acclaimed BBC series (shown in the US on the History Channel, I believe). It is based almost entirely on interviews with survivors, including many "ordinary" Germans (and Nazi collaborators of other nationalities) who can finally come clean about their behavior, now that Europe is whole again and they are almost ready to die. These people participated willingly in what any civilized human being would regard as barbarous behavior and, even worse, feel no contrition whatsoever even now, 50 years later. However, the most profoundly disturbing conclusion of the book is that there was no plan to the Nazi rule: it was chaotic, mostly reacting to events, deprived of vision, and left in the hands of petty bureaucrats. Most horrifyingly, the worst excesses of the regime were improvisations by local zealots seeking Hitler's approval. Far from governing, Hitler only approved, although even this was sufficient. The policy drift, the absence of policy, can be far more dangerous than a determined implementation of a plan.

Everyone knows (and should always remember) the murderous brutality of the Nazi regime. What many do not know, however, is that this was not a regime inflicted on innocent Germans against their will. I am not talking here about the fact that they elected Hitler, which they did, but that they collaborated, aided, and abetted the bizarre monstrosity to which the racial ideology compelled the Nazi party:

"The idea that the Gestapo itself was constantly spying on the population is demonstrably a myth. So how was it possible that so few people exercised such control? The simple answer is because the Gestapo received enormous help from ordinary Germans" (p. 53).

This book is nowhere near as angry or controversial as Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, which claims that the Germans knew what they were doing to the Jews and thought it was the right thing to do. The thesis here is at once much simpler and more sinister: the utterly dysfunctional Nazi party was deprived of leadership, and the lower bureaucratic levels implemented policies that the petty bureaucrats believed to be in the spirit of Hitler's vision. The worst acts were perpetrated by a faceless and nameless machine that was geared toward seeking approval from the main visionary. The competition for this approval among zealous functionaries produced the most bizarre and reprehensible "solutions". There was no consistency in the Nazi plan, in fact, there was no plan whatsoever, the party mostly reacting to changing circumstance and adjusting itself by improvising as it went along.

This "working towards the Führer" resulted in much initiative from below instead of orders from above. The only thing coming from above was approval, and the predictable result was chaos. But what was that vision that everyone was working towards? It was an odd mutation of Social Darwinism or, as Hitler put it, "a life and death struggle... On the opposite side they are weaker men... Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally" (p. 96). And many sure did.

A similar reactive "policy" and abdication of responsibility shows up in the run up to the war. The story Rees tells is very similar to Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, in that it emphasizes opportunism, adventurism, and simple luck more than it does a pre-determined plan of conquest.

The atrocities of the occupation in the East are well-known, and perhaps better documented in Martin Gilbert's massive The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. Still, Rees offers some frightening insights, especially when it comes to the enthusiasm with which the conquered (or liberated, depending on perspective) non-Jewish populations of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states turned against their neighbors. The interview with the Lithuanian butcher Petras Zelionka is chilling for he displays a total lack of remorse. That the Nazi invaders could have been so stupid as to fail to tap this reservoir of goodwill in the local populations suffering under the no less brutal Stalinist rule, is one of those ironies of history, although it is readily explained by the policy drift.

Of course, once the tide turned, it was payback time. Stalin, who had failed to inspire the Russians to resistance with an appeal to communism, now turned to the ancient appeal of the Motherland, and the even more ancient one: Revenge. The Nazis had given them plenty to avenge, and the liberating (or conquering, depending on perspective) Red Army moved unstoppably, as a huge mechanized juggernaut across Europe, scorching everything in its way and inflicting on the Germans what they had done to them, although in much smaller degree. There was no policy drift in the Soviet Union. "Reaping the whirlwind" is an apposite description of the last year of the war.

The book is a warning, and not an untimely one, as the recent atrocities in Yugoslavia prove. It may be that a country will never be so civilized that it would be immune to sinking into brutality. More importantly, a people may never love freedom enough to risk their lives unconditionally to preserve it. When it comes to security, freedom may lose. Once the drift begins, it may never stop and pretty soon you may find yourself marching to the beat of a single drum, happy to participate in the building of the glorious future, reporting those who want no part of it, and closing your eyes when they disappear.

You don't believe me? This is Ashcroft's dream.

April 18, 2003

@book{rees-97,
    author    = {Laurence Rees},
    title     = {The Nazis - A Warning from History},
    year      = {1997},
    publisher = {BBS},
    address   = {London},
    isbn      = {0-563-48814-X}
}