"Imagining Hitler"
Hitchens’ review of Ian
Kershaw’s Hitler 1889-1936. Kershaw (and Hitchens) make the point that
Hitler was not a creation of “Satan” but grown and nurtured by the political
and financial powers of the time. Chamberlin saw Hitler and his appetite for
expansion of Germany’s borders as both a way to mollify Hitler (and keep him
away from Britain) and help fight the issue of Communism in the east. The
political, financial and military powers within Germany thought they were
“hiring” a puppet president that they could manipulate to their own
conservative goals…which were, of course, way short of Hitler’s.
Hitchens sums up the thesis best in his final paragraph: “He
was a homicidal maniac in a hurry, and terribly afraid that he might not make
it. Yet respectable circles in Germany, and in Britain and France (and, as we
have recently learned from the files of Ford and General Motors, in these
United States), decided that he was, on balance, a case of ‘the lesser evil.’
Indeed, that was the only use of the word ‘evil’ that they ever permitted
themselves.”
Very funny quote: “P. G. Wodehouse introduced one of his
Mulliner stories, published in 1937, with a heated pub discussion about ‘the
situation in Germany.’ Hitler must soon decide one way or another, says a
thoughtful customer. There’s no dodging the issue. ‘He’ll have to let it grow
or shave it off.’ ”
New learning: “When he [Hitler] got power himself— Führer
being the first actual job he had ever held— he at once shut down the unions
and then viciously pillaged the galleries of a once civilized nation to hang
most of the best modern paintings in Germany in a wildly philistine 1937
exhibition— in Munich— entitled ‘Degenerate Art.’ ”
New word: Dolchstoss = “the stab in the back’ (German, used
to refer to the German surrender at the end of WW I).
German political cartoon with the words "Deutsche, denKt daran!" or "Germany, remember!"
