The History Book Club discussion
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
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THE CAUSES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
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Every book I have read about Hitler speaks of his charisma and how he could hold a crowd hostage, no matter how insane his ranting were. I don't think it comes across in film even if you speak German.....it is one of those "you had to be there" moments to appreciate his power.
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Dennis.....our guidelines do not allow for self-promotion. I have deleted your post.
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
by
Nicholson BakerSynopsis:
Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in America today, has created a compelling work of nonfiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II.
Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources -- including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries -- the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.
Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.
After WWI, the UK was taking no chances as they saw Japan beginning to cast her eyes on China.Royal Navy Strategy in the Far East; Preparing for War Against Japan
by Andrew Field (no photo)Synopsis:
Between the ending of the Great War and the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Royal Navy remained the largest in the world. But with the League of Nations seeming to offer a solution to all future conflicts, a country weary of war and without an obvious enemy there seemed no need for a large battlefleet. The strategic focus shifted eastwards, to Japan, with its growing battlefleet as the new threat to the British Empire and to the Royal Navy's supremacy.
From 1924 a strategic plan, War Memorandum (Eastern), was written and refined. The plan called for the Royal Navy, still the largest in the world, even after the Washington Naval Treaties, to move eastwards to a defended base at Singapore, cut off Japan and force her battlefleet into a decisive fleet battle.
As a strategy War Memorandum (Eastern) had many flaws. Its real importance lay in the fact that it provided a justification for the Royal Navy to maintain its leading position in the world and to be in the forefront of the development of new tactical thinking. Through planning for a war with Japan the Royal Navy was able to test its readiness for a future war. Many of the lessons learnt during this period were ultimately put to good use against a different foe in 1939.
Hindsight is certainly 20/20 but this book makes some good arguments.The Munich Agreement of 1938: The History of the Peace Pact That Failed to Prevent World War II
by Charles River Editors(no photo)Synopsis:
"My good friends," the mustached, bony man with thick eyebrows and large, strong teeth somewhat reminiscent of those of a horse, shouted to the crowds from the second-floor window of his house at 10 Downing Street, "this is the second time in our history, that there has come back to Downing Street from Germany peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time."
The man addressing the crowd, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, had just returned from the heart of Nazi Germany following negotiations with Adolf Hitler, and the crowd gathered outside the English leader's house on September 30, 1938 greeted these ringing words with grateful cheers. The piece of paper Chamberlain flourished exultantly seemed to offer permanent amity and goodwill between democratic Britain and totalitarian Germany. In it, Britain agreed to allow Hitler's Third Reich to absorb the Sudeten regions of Czechoslovakia without interference from either England or France, and since high percentages of ethnic Germans – often more than 50% locally – inhabited these regions, Hitler's demand for this territory seemed somewhat reasonable to Chamberlain and his supporters. With Germany resurgent and rearmed after the disasters inflicted on it by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I, the pact – known as the Munich Agreement – held out hope of a quick end to German ambitions and the return of stable, normal international relations across Europe.
Of course, the Munich agreement is now notorious because its promise proved barren within a very short period of time. Chamberlain's actions either failed to avert or actually hastened the very cataclysm he wished to avoid at all costs. The "Munich Agreement" of 1938 effectively signed away Czechoslovakia's independence to Hitler's hungry new Third Reich, and within two years, most of the world found itself plunged into a conflict which made a charnelhouse of Europe and left somewhere between 60-80 million people dead globally.
Many people hailed Chamberlain's "success" at defusing Nazi aggression by handing over Czechoslovakia tamely to Hitler's control, but others remained dubious. Édouard Daladier, the French prime minister, "later told Amery that he turned up his coat collar to protect his face from rotten eggs when he arrived in Paris." (Gilbert, 1963, 179-180). A Foreign Office man, Orme Sargent, was disgusted, and he later said bitterly, "For all the fun and cheers, you might think they were celebrating a major victory over an enemy instead of merely the betrayal of a minor ally." (Gilbert, 1963, 180). Winston Churchill, the deal’s most famous critic, bitterly remarked, “England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame, and will get war.”
Munich is widely reviled today and is held up as the epitome of appeasement, but historians still debate its effects on the Second World War, as well as Neville Chamberlain's character and motivations. Some believe the attempted appeasement of Nazi Germany hastened, or even caused, the mayhem occupying the next seven years. Others believe that the pact merely failed to alter war's inevitable arrival in either direction. Historians and authors alternately interpret Chamberlain as a bumbling, arrogant fool, a strong-willed statesman who simply miscalculated the nature of Hitler and Nazi Germany, or even a man with dictatorial ambitions surreptitiously inserting himself into the Fuhrer's orbit and prevented from further damaging democracy only by his fall and death from bowel cancer.
To understand the beginnings of WWII, we need to know about the man who was most responsible for it.The Making of Adolf Hitler
by Eugene Davidson(no photo)Synopsis:
The harsh Armistice terms of 1918, the short-lived Weimar Republic, Hindenburg's senile vacillations & behind-the-scene power plays form the backbone of this excellent study covering German history during the 1st three-&-a-half decades of the century.
Davidson invests the by now more or less familiar story of the Nazis' successful application of rant & violence to German politics with new interest by the technique of taking a few incidents & explaining them in detail, while taking the general flow of history as read.
World War II: Roots and Causes
by Keith Eubank (no photo)Synopsis:
Topics of focus include the problem of historical context, the tension between traditional and revisionist viewpoints, the question of Allied appeasement, the failure of intelligence-gathering, the Soviet role, and the place of the Holocaust in accounts of the causes of World War II.
The man who lit the fuse of WWII and how he got to be the leader of Germany.Hitler and the Rise of the Nazi Party
by Frank McDonough (no photo)Synopsis:
Hitler was without doubt the the most destructively influential figure of the twentieth century. Frank McDonough provides a detailed analysis of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The book begins with an overview of the personality and early life of Adolf Hitler and proceeds to examine the early years of the Nazi Party and the major factors which led to the growth of support for the Nazis, including the organisation and propoganda of the Nazi Party and the growth of electoral support. The book concludes by examining the reasons why Hitler was appointed German Chancellor in January 1943.
I think you mean January 30, 1933, not 1943?
That date was in the GR blurb for the book, so I didn't notice it. It should indeed be 1933....thanks for catching that error, Betsy.
It's always struck me as rather ironic that Hitler came to power on Roosevelt's birthday. ;-) At least, Roosevelt knew it was just a matter of time for Hitler when FDR tragically died.
How true. Compare the charisma of those two men....it is an interesting paradox. It has been said that the appeal of Hitler did not translate well onto film which must be true since he mostly appeared to be ranting rather than speaking. I suppose he was one of those "you had to be there" kind of people to appreciate his power.
I suspect it also might be that so many of his followers wanted to believe he was telling the truth. People hear what they want to hear.
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World War II: Why They Fought
by Robert B. Westbrook (no photo)Synopsis:
Why We Fought is a timely and provocative analysis that examines why Americans really chose to sacrifice and commit themselves to World War II. Unlike other depictions of the patriotic “greatest generation,” Westbrook argues that, strictly speaking, Americans in World War II were not instructed to fight, work, or die for their country—above all, they were moved by private obligations. Finding political theory in places such as pin-ups of Betty Grable, he contends that more often than not Americans were urged to wage war as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, lovers, sons, daughters, and consumers, not as citizens. The thinness of their own citizenship contrasted sharply with the thicker political culture of the Japanese, which was regarded with condescending contempt and even occasionally wistful respect.
Why We Fought is a profound and skillful assessment of America's complex political beliefs and the peculiarities of its patriotism. While examining the history of American beliefs about war and citizenship, Westbrook casts a larger light on what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, and to willingly go to war.
It is a generally accepted theory that the treaty ending WWI had significance on WWII and gave rise to the expression "stab in the back". This book looks at the Treaty of Versailles from the distance of 75 years......you decide.The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years
by Manfred F. Boemeke (no photo)Synopsis:
This book on the Treaty of Versailles constitutes a new synthesis of peace conference scholarship. It illuminates events from the armistice in 1918 to the signing of the treaty in 1919, and scrutinizes the motives, actions, and constraints that informed decision making by the French, American, and English politicians who bore the principal responsibility for drafting the peace settlement. It also addresses German reactions to the draft treaty and the final agreement. A detailed examination of the proceedings from the point of view of the main protagonists forms the core of the investigation.
To understand the rise of the Nazi party and the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, it is important to see exactly how that happened. Von Hindenburg, hero of WWI, was the man who, in his dotage, set Hitler on the path to power. Hindenburg: Power, Myth and the Rise of the Nazis
by Anna von der Goltz (no photo)Synopsis:
Hindenburg reveals how a previously little-known general, whose career to normal retirement age had provided no real foretaste of his heroic status, became a national icon and living myth in Germany after the First World War, capturing the imagination of millions. In a period characterized by rupture and fragmentation, the legend surrounding Paul von Hindenburg brought together a broad coalition of Germans and became one of the most potent forces in Weimar politics.
Charting the origins of the myth, from Hindenburg's decisive victory at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 to his death in Nazi Germany and beyond, Anna Menge explains why the presence of Hindenburg's name on the ballot mesmerized an overwhelming number of voters in the presidential elections of 1925. His myth-an ever-evolving phenomenon-increasingly transcended the dividing lines of interwar politics, which helped him secure re-election by left-wing and moderate voters. Indeed, the only two times in German history that the people could elect their head of state directly and secretly, they chose this national icon. Hindenburg even managed to defeat Adolf Hitler in 1932, making him the Nazi leader's final arbiter; it was he who made the final and fateful decision to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933.
After WWI, the "stab-in-the-back" movement arose from the Treaty of Versailles. This book explains that school of thought and how it led to WWII.The Stab-in-the-Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic
by George S. Vascik (no photo)Synopsis:
This unique sourcebook explores the Stab-in-the-Back myth that developed in Germany in the wake of World War One, analyzing its role in the end of the Weimar Republic and its impact on the Nazi regime that followed.
A critical development in modern German and even European history that has received relatively little coverage until now, the Stab-in-the-Back Myth was an attempt by the German military, nationalists and anti-Semites to explain how the German war effort collapsed in November 1918 along with the German Empire. It purported that the German army did not lose the First World War but were betrayed by the civilians on the home front and the democratic politicians who had surrendered. The myth was one of the foundation myths of National Socialism, at times influencing Nazi behaviour in the 1930s and later their conduct in the Second World War.
The Stab-in-the-Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic draws on German government records, foreign and domestic newspaper accounts, diplomatic reports, diary entries and letters to provide different national and political perspectives on the issue. The sourcebook also includes chapter summaries, study questions, and further reading lists, in addition to numerous visual sources and a range of maps, charts, tables and graphs. This is a vital text for all students looking at the history of the Weimar Republic, the legacy of the First World War and Germany in the 20th century.
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(no image) World History -- Causes and Effects of 20th Century Wars (Etext), for the Ib Diploma (Access Code Card) by Keely Rogers (no photo)
Synopsis:
Four new and revised titles providing comprehensive coverage of the most popular history topics for the 2015 Group 3 curriculum. Each title provides coverage of the appropriate topics, equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed to answer essay questions on Paper One and Two. Each textbook is supported by an eText, giving four years access to online materials such as worksheets, quizzes and enlarged source material to develop examination skills and extend studying.
Free, interactive and downloadable resources to accompany our History titles can be found in the 'Download Resources' in the left hand navigation.
Cold War: Superpower tensions and rivalries
Causes and Effects of 20th Century Wars
Authoritarian States
The Move to Global War
Each textbook provides:
A clear overview and analysis of key events.
Practice in analysing source material, including photographs, cartoons, letters, speeches and other documents.
Support throughout for new curriculum features, including key concepts and international mindedness.
Approaches to learning highlighted in each activity throughout the book.
Focus on the examination requirements, with 'hints for success' throughout, as well as quizzes on the eText.
Theory of Knowledge section, matching the latest syllabus, and questions throughout to help with wider research and discussion.
Rewriting the course of History - authors of the latest Pearson Baccalaureate History 2nd Editions for Paper 2 outline the key changes to the latest History course and how the new books provide support for both Diploma teachers and students. Read article...
by Stephan Malinowski (no photo)
Upon blood and soil the Führer is building his Reich. We have understood blood selection for seven centuries and have wisely chosen to build and continue our bloodstream on the basis of age-old race and culture. […] All the great ideals that the Führer has set for the German people stem from ancient Germanic heritage and not least from the deepest treasuries of the German nobility. Thus the German aristocracy is fundamentally akin to National Socialism in nature and origin. At the time of the red governments, the motto was: down with the aristocracy, we all want to be proletarians. Now it is the other way: the common man from the people should rise up, and we all want to meet again on the level of a true aristocracy. […] What the future will bring us, we leave in the hands of God and the enlightenment of the leader. But we know one thing. Our old lineage is not a foreign body in the Third Reich, rotting and decaying, it is a load-bearing block in the building, hardened over centuries. […] Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
Friedrich von Bulöw at a family gathering in 1935
In 1921, an Pan-German baron saw the EDDA project as the deliberate continuation of the […] selective breeding […] that has always been practised by the nobility through the cultivation of pedigree and genealogy […]. The aristocracy’s attitude towards the idea of selection and race breeding is therefore not a new goal for the nobility, but actually a self-evident one.
According to the information passed on to the exiled emperor’s “house minister” by the Reich Defence Minister Werner v. Blomberg, who was present, Hitler had made vague but far-reaching promises: “As the conclusion of his work, [Hitler] sees the monarchy,” it said in the minutes of the meeting. However, only the Hohenzollern monarchy would come into question; a restoration of the thrones in the federal states was to be rejected. However, the time for restoration had not yet come and the monarchy was only conceivable as the result of a victorious war.
In October 1933, retired Lieutenant General August v. Cramon had written a memorandum to the Reich President proposing the reinstatement of Wilhelm II to his royal rights, as a kind of present for his 75th birthday in January 1934. Wisdom and dignity of age would now be added to the “hereditary wisdom of the lineage”. The “Führer concept” must inevitably end “in immortal leadership, the hereditary monarchy” and Hitler would help with this: “Adolf Hitler himself is, as far as is known, a monarchist.”
A grotesque variant of aristocratic attempts to direct the ubiquitous desire for leadership towards themselves is provided by a speech from 1930, in which Wilhelm II lamented the inflation of the leadership concept in Doorn:
To be a Führer! Everyone wants that nowadays. Führer present themselves everywhere. Many people pose as Führer […]. And yet the cry for a Führer is omnipresent!
In a strange mixture of Christian and neo-right-wing motifs, Wilhelm II renewed his claim to leadership. The idea of leadership was first ‘revealed’ by God to the Sumerians. King Hammurabi was given the “leadership profession” by God 5,000 years ago, his own ancestors 500 years ago. “Only to these Führer is the Führer Jesus Christ!” Spatially and mentally far removed from all political realities, the exiled emperor appointed Jesus as the otherworldly “Führer” and himself as the earthly “Führer”. The imperial leader referred to himself in the preceding passage from the Gospel of John, which had given the speech its title: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
By 1930 at the latest, the salon of a new aristocrat became the perhaps most important “social” interface between the old aristocracy and National Socialism: the v. Dirksen house in Berlin-Tiergarten. Viktoria Auguste v. Dirksen, daughter of a noble Danzig family, was the second wife of the envoy Willibald v. Dirksen, who died in 1928, and mother-in-law of the antisemite diplomat Herbert v. Dirksen, who held ambassadorial posts in Moscow, Tokyo and London between 1928 and 1939. The salon in the pompous palace that the family owned in Berlin’s Margaretenstrasse was a meeting place for Potsdam and Berlin court society even before 1918. After the war, a significant proportion of the “old society” gathered in this salon, which always retained a political, fiercely anti-republican orientation. In the late 1920s, the widow, who had already supported Hitler in 1923, opened her house to the leaders of the NSDAP, who successfully wooed prominent representatives from the lower and higher nobility there. “The old lady has taken a special fancy in me and wants me to convert the whole world,” noted Joseph Goebbels in February 1930. These endeavours were not without success. The minutes of a meeting held in November 1931 give an impression of the unification achieved here.
Among those present were Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Marie Adelheid Princess zur Lippe (NSDAP member since 1 May 1930), Viktor Prinz zu Wied and his wife (party members since 1 January 1932), the DAB leader Walther Eberhard Frhr. v. Medem, the party comrades August Wilhelm Prinz v. Preußen, the banker August Frhr. v. d. Heydt and retired Colonel Leopold v. Kleist as representatives of Wilhelm II. Members of the old aristocracy met with the most prominent Nazi leaders in this salon, which insiders in Berlin society regarded as the “social centre of the National Socialist movement”. Hitler, Göring and Goebbels conversed with the Berlin SA chief Wolf Heinrich Graf v. Helldorf and members of the Hohenzollern dynasty in this salon. Prince “Auwi” presented himself at the Dirksen house in his brown uniform; where he and his son Alexander – also a party comrade – were “introduced to Hitler’s teachings”.
A “mobile” interface was created by the activities of Wilhelm II’s second wife, Princess Hermine v. Reuß, who socialised in the most important circles of the political right during her visits to Germany. She apparently made contact with the NSDAP leadership in 1929, on the fringes of the Nuremberg Party Congress. The date of her first meeting with Hitler is unclear, but a meeting with Hitler in the salon of Baroness Tiele-Winckler in November 1931 is well documented. In the presence of the “Empress”, Göring and the aristocratic chief advisors of Wilhelm II, Hitler held a monologue lasting several hours in which he explained his intention to have “all November criminals […] publicly strangled”. The lecture delighted the hostess and guests alike, and the Kaiser’s wife spoke favourably of the “likeable” Hitler, “also about his good and straight facial expression and his good eyes and their expression without falseness.” Pleased with the outcome of the meeting, Magnus v. Levetzow summarised his impressions of Hitler in a letter to Prince v. Donnersmarck: “He was good on the plate, by golly.”
In addition to the most influential monarchist currents in Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony and Hanover, there was another influential line in the Catholic nobility of south-west and west Germany, which was orientated towards the old imperial idea. In agreement with his Westphalian peers, Abbot Augustinus von Galen, a brother of the later famous bishop, described the monarchy problem in 1926 as a cura posterior and considered the claims of the House of Habsburg to be justified in contrast to those of the Hohenzollerns: ,,As far as the Hohenzollerns were concerned, their emperorship had not the slightest thing to do with that of the old empire […]. The Hohenzollerns were therefore in no way the legal successors of the old emperors and from this point of view, they could therefore absolutely not be considered as favoured candidates for the future crown.” The orientation towards the idea of empire, combined with good relations with the high clergy and an attitude critical of the Hohenzollern and in favour of the Habsburgs, which the Westphalian count represented here, was characteristic of influential members of the south-west German nobility, especially the local mediatized princes.
The supporters of the unrealistic idea of empire in particular were often characterised by a relaxed attitude towards the republic. For the south-west German nobility association, which maintained friendly relations with the Bavarian associations, Attila Graf v. Neipperg explained to a fellow Bavarian that the nobility in the south-west was also monarchist, but unlike in Bavaria, which was loyal to Wittelsbach, their loyalty only partly belonged to the houses of Württemberg and Zähringen, while many West German nobles had not forgotten the “sins” of the princes from the Napoleonic era. The monarchism that Count Neipperg outlined here also resembled a vague basic attitude rather than a practicable programme: “These people are fully Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. And to a certain extent, cum grano salis, I am also with this side. Our stance is that we want to show and prove that the nobility is necessary in the republic, even more necessary than in the monarchy, where everything went its more or less regular course. But officially we are not monarchists.”
Malinowskis dissertation exclusively focusses on the German nobility and therefor doesn't mention that in 1917 part of the former German house of Saxo-Coburg-Gotha renamed into Windsor, the British Royals. Queen Victoria was Wilhelm II. grandmother.
Another aspect that might be worth noting is that supposedly it was to be or become the Third Roman-German Reich (even though Arthur Moeller van den Bruck does not anymore use it in that sense).
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by Stephan Malinowski (no photo)
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Nazis & Nobles: The History of a Misalliance (other topics)Nazis & Nobles: The History of a Misalliance (other topics)
Stab-in-the-Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic, The: A History in Documents and Visual Sources (other topics)
Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (other topics)
The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Stephan Malinowski (other topics)Stephan Malinowski (other topics)
Keely Rogers (other topics)
George S. Vascik (other topics)
Anna von der Goltz (other topics)
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Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
Synopsis
Madman, tyrant, animal - history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a labourer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker's party. In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch" was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler's political and military campaign. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust. "... I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord"