Ian Kershaw: Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

For, ultimately, Hitler’s nemesis as retribution for unparalleled hubris would prove to be not just a personal retribution, but the nemesis of the Germany which had created him. His own country would be left in ruins — much of Europe with it — and divided. What was formerly central Germany — ‘Mitteldeutschland’ — would experience for forty years the imposed values of the Soviet victor, while the western parts would eventually revive and thrive under a ‘pax americana’. A new Austria, having experienced Anschluß under Hitler, would prove in its reconstituted independence to have lost once and for all any ambitions to be a part of Germany. The eastern provinces of the Reich would have gone forever — and along with them dreams of eastern conquest. The expulsion of the German ethnic minorities from those provinces would remove — if at a predictably harsh price — the irredentism which had plagued the inter-war years. The big landed estates in those provinces, basis of the influence of the Junker aristocracy, would also be swept away. The Wehrmacht, the final representation of German military might, would be discredited and disbanded. With it would go the state of Prussia, bulwark of the economic and political power of the Reich since Bismarck’s day. Big industry, it is true, would survive sufficiently intact to rebuild with renewed strength and vigour — though it would now be increasingly integrated into a west-European and Americanized set of economic structures.

All this was to be the outcome of what the second part of this study attempts to grasp: how Hitler could exercise the absolute power which he had been permitted to acquire; how the most mighty in the land became bound still further to a highly personalized form of rule acclaimed by millions and exceptional in a modern state, until they were unable to extricate themselves from the will of one man who was taking them unerringly down the road to destruction; and how the citizens of this modern state became complicitous in genocidal war of a character hitherto unknown to mankind, resulting in state-sponsored mass murder on a scale never previously witnessed, continent-wide devastation, and the final ruination of their own country.

It is an awesome story of national as well as individual self-destruction, of the way a people and their representatives engineered their own catastrophe — as part of a calamitous destruction of European civilization. Though the outcome is known, how it came about perhaps deserves consideration once more. If this book contributes a little to deepen understanding, I will be well satisfied.

Ian Kershaw

Manchester/Sheffield, April 2000

It is with the greatest of pleasure that I use this opportunity to add to the expressions of thanks which I made on concluding the first volume of this study. All the debts of gratitude — institutional, intellectual, and personal — owed two years ago apply now in equal, or even greater, measure. I hope those mentioned there will accept on this occasion my renewed, most sincere thanks even if I do not list them all once more by name. In some cases, however, my gratitude has to be explicitly reinforced. And in other instances new debts have been incurred.

For help with archival material specifically related to this volume, I am most grateful to the Directors, archivists, and staff of: the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; the Berlin Document Center; the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte (Stuttgart); Birmingham University Library; the Borthwick Institute (York); the Bundesarchiv, Berlin (formerly Koblenz); the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, Potsdam (formerly Freiburg i.B.); the Gumberg Library, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh; the former Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus, Zentrales Parteiarchiv, East Berlin (GDR); the Library of Congress, Washington DC; the National Archives, Washington DC; Princeton University Library; the Public Record Office, London; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; the ‘Special Archiv’, Moscow; the Wiener Library, London; the former Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam (GDR); and, not least, to Frau Regnauer, Director of the Amtsgericht Laufen, who went beyond the call of duty in giving me access to post-war testimony of some of the key witnesses to the events in the bunker in 1945.

Above all, as with the previous volume, I have been able to depend upon the indispensable expert assistance from the renowned Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. I would like once more to voice my warmest thanks to the Director, Professor Dr Horst Möller, to all colleagues and friends at the Institut, and, quite especially, to the library and archive staff who performed wonders in attending to my frequent and extensive requests. Singling out individuals is invidious, but I must nevertheless mention that Hermann Weiß, as with the first volume, gave most generously of his time and archival expertise. And with her unrivalled knowledge of the Goebbels diaries, Elke Fröhlich was of great help, not least in dealing with a query regarding one important but difficult point of transcription of Goebbels’s awful handwriting.

Numerous friends and colleagues have supplied me at one time or another with valuable archival material or allowed me to see so far unpublished work they had written, as well as sharing views on evidence, scholarly literature, and points of interpretation. For their kindness and assistance in this regard, I am extremely grateful to: David Bankier, Omer Bartov, Yehuda Bauer, Richard Bessel, John Breuilly, Christopher Browning, Michael Burleigh, Chris Clarke, François Delpla, Richard Evans, Kent Fedorowich, Iring Fetscher, Conan Fischer, Gerald Fleming, Norbert Frei, Mary Fulbrook, Dick Geary, Hermann Graml, Otto Gritschneder, Lothar Gruchmann, Ulrich Herbert, Edouard Husson, Anton Joachimsthaler, Michael Kater, Otto Dov Kulka, Moshe Lewin, Peter Longerich, Dan Michmann, Stig Hornsriøh-Møller, Martin Moll, Bob Moore, Stanislaw Nawrocki, Richard Overy, Alastair Parker, Karol Marian Pospieszalski, Fritz Redlich, Steven Sage, Stephen Salter, Karl Schleunes, Robert Service, Peter Stachura, Paul Stauffer, Jill Stephenson, Bernd Wegner, David Welch, Michael Wildt, Peter Witte, Hans Woller, and Jonathan Wright.

A special word of thanks is owing to Meir Michaelis for his repeated generosity in providing me with archival material drawn from his own researches. Gitta Sereny, likewise, not only offered friendly support, but also gave me access to valuable papers in her possession, related to her fine study of Albert Speer. A good friend, Laurence Rees, an exceptionally gifted producer from the BBC with whom I have had the pleasure and privilege of cooperating on the making of two television series connected with Nazism, and also Detlef Siebert and Tilman Remme, the able and knowledgeable heads of the research teams on the programmes, have helped greatly, both with probing inquiries and with material derived from the films they helped create. Two outstanding German historians of the Third Reich, whose own interpretations of Hitler differ sharply, have been of singular importance to this study. Eberhard Jäckel has given great support as well as expert advice throughout, and Hans Mommsen, friend of many years, has been unstinting in his help, generosity, and encouragement. Both have also made unpublished work available to me. Finally, I am most grateful to two British experts on Nazi Germany, Ted Harrison and Jeremy Noakes, for reading and commenting on the completed typescript (though, naturally, any errors remaining are my own responsibility). The particular inspiration I derived from Jeremy’s work I was keen to acknowledge in the first volume, and am equally keen to underline on this occasion.

In a different way, I would like to express my thanks to David Smith, Director of the Borthwick Institute in York (where papers on Lord Halifax’s meeting with Hitler sitting alongside archival deposits from medieval Yorkshire correspond to my intellectual schizophrenia as a historian of Nazi Germany who still dabbles in the history of monasticism in Yorkshire during the Middle Ages). Through the generous offer of his time and expertise, it has proved possible to see through the press our edition of the thirteenth-and fourteenth-century account-book of Bolton Priory without interrupting the work needed to complete this volume. Without David’s help and input, this would not have been feasible.