The Hitler Problem. - Review - book review

National Review, Jan 22, 2001 by Jeffrey Hart

Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis, by Ian Kershaw (Norton, 1,115 pp., $35)

Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography of Hitler, a prodigious work of more than 2,000 pages, comes at an exciting moment in the study of the Nazi regime and its indispensable man. Behind Kershaw lies a half century of scholarship in these matters, and a number of important and detailed controversies. Now Kershaw, who teaches at the University of Sheffield and has mastered the bulk of this material, is in a position to sum it up, express the mainstream professional consensus, and by adjudicating the principal questions produce the best account we are likely to have of the man in his time.

To get closer to Hitler, we need the larger narrative on which everyone agrees. But we also need to settle such questions as whether he was a reactionary or a revolutionary, whether and how his regime affected the social organization of Germany, the special political theory of the Nazi state, when and how he developed his extraordinary appeal as an orator, the quality of his military leadership, whether his ultimate goals were restricted or expansive, and, given the history of Europe in the 20th century, the roots of his special hatred of the Jews and how it evolved.

Kershaw's account of Hitler and his regime tends to contradict the accepted account of totalitarianism as presented by Hannah Arendt and George Orwell, among others. The National Socialist regime Hitler established was sui generis. It emphatically did not resemble Stalinism. The Stalin regime, which provided the model for the concept of totalitarianism, was a bureaucratic dictatorship from the top down. It controlled an often resistant and indeed rebellious population through a well-organized bureaucracy, a ubiquitous secret police, and widespread terror at all levels of society.

The Hitler regime was a populist dictatorship, drawing its strength from a growing and, in time, overwhelming popular majority. This support shivered when the war broke out in September 1939. There was no joy unter den Linden, and Berliners toasted "death, in the New Year." But public opinion did not turn against Hitler until the war turned sour in 1942. Until 1940, Kershaw says without fear of contradiction, Hitler would have won a legitimate election in a landslide. Kershaw goes so far as to say that Hitler "became between 1933 and 1940 arguably the most popular head of state in the world."

In contrast to the Depression-wracked democracies, the German economy boomed, only in part due to warp-speed rearmament. Autobahns, Volkswagens, and strength-through-joy vacations began to be plentiful. The German birthrate also climbed, a sign of confidence in the future. Even in 1943, when many believed the war had been lost, life in Germany remained almost normal for most people. Only with the news of military disasters in Russia and Africa did the bonds between the Fuhrer and his countrymen begin to dissolve.

The political theory of National Socialism was also unique. Hitler viewed the Germans as a "people," or Volk. Hitler knew that his Volk was comprised of disparate components-Bavarians, Thuringians, Prussians, Rhinelanders, Sudetens, Austrians-but they were all parts of the German racial stock. The Volk existed prior to the state, and the volkisch state was its political expression. The Fuhrer was the leader and guardian of the volkisch state and embodied its will. Hence his slogan: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer. This was the Trinity of National Socialism-which, by definition, could never be international socialism. What Hitler sought to create was a Volksgemeinschaft, a term that had been popularized along with its opposite, Gesellschaft, by the sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies. The Gesellschaft was individualistic and based on contract, like a factory. The Gemeinschaft association (or society) was more like an extended family or kinship group. Hitler's Germany was to be a Volksgemeinschaft.

There can be no doubt that this was a potent idea in Germany during the 1930s. Hitler, through growing prosperity at home and successes abroad, through lavish parades and pageants, and the building of cathedrals of light designed by Albert Speer, became the object of a cult of adoration. But he especially achieved this through his voice. I myself think, though Kershaw does not mention this, that his orations were based on movements in the operas of his adored Wagner: He began hesitantly, brokenly, then gradually rose to paroxysms of ecstatic power in a verbal imitation of resurrection. He had the power of expressing the resentments, frustrations, and aspirations of a nation humiliated in 1918.

Yes, a populist dictatorship, willingly submitted to by the vast majority of Germans. Though the social pressure on nonconformists and individualists must have been terrific, most Germans did not experience coercion. The Gestapo (Geheim Staats Polizei) was much smaller than the postwar East German Stasi, its Communist equivalent. The Soviet Union imprisoned a much larger percentage of its own people than did Nazi Germany.