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"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!"