Tag Archives: history

COLLAPSE OF THE READER – Review

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THE COLLAPSE OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, William L. Shirer

The Collapse refers to World War Two. The Germans attacked in the West on May 10, 1940. The British finished evacuating Dunkirk by June 2, 1940. During the last third of June 1940 Hitler took his morning tour of Paris.

This is not Shirer’s best book. It is very journalistic. I cannot recommend it. Shirer attempts to tell the structural weaknesses of the Third Republic from its inception in 1871, 69 years before World War Two. And Shirer along with the reader becomes bogged down in sundry and many details, some of which could support stories and characters for an excellent miniseries: Investment and fraud schemes play out over a decade or decades. Witnesses and participants are murdered, one being tied to a railroad track. In all this Shirer’s point is the Third Republic never had a reliable Constitution and accepted legislative procedures in place to give the French people confidence in their government.

In 1936 as the Nazis carefully moved into the Rhineland, remilitarizing it and removing a 30-50 mile buffer between France and Germany, the French were indecisive. France hoped that the British would give them backbone. However, Hitler has moved on a Saturday because the Germans know that members of the British government depart for their country houses on weekends. The British are concerned…

“Eden made it clear to the French Ambassador in London that nothing could be decided in London until the following Monday, when the Prime Minister and his colleagues would be back. That would give the Germans forty-eight hours to consolidate their hold on the Rhineland without interference. Nowhere in his own account nor in the dispatches of the French Ambassador describing the meeting does the British Foreign Secretary seem to have given thought to the consequences of such procrastination. His only thought was to discourage the French from doing anything over the weekend.” (p. 263)

It behooves any country in a dangerous world to have men and women (policymakers) who are up to speed and ready to act at anytime. If someone with authority must be in the office over the weekend – not fly fishing, watching sports, bicycling, golfing – then be there, listen, consider and exercise authority.

The remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 was Hitler’s first step. Historians and later politicians generally acknowledge had the French Army marched into the Rhineland in response, the German army would have retreated. In fact the consensus among historians is that Hitler would have been finished in Germany, and there would have been NO World War Two.These historians and politicians know what the British and French politicians should have known in March 1936: The Rhineland escapade was a desperate gamble that the West ignored. Immediate decisions and action were necessary, but were put off. The chance for effective, decisive action did not arise without greater costs.

Undoubtedly, Shirer recounts in painful detail each and every poor ignorant decision made by the French, the British and others. I can no longer read of that incompetence and ignorance found in other books (French, English speaking authors). I know it happened.

ENOUGH ALREADY

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Review of THE IMITATION GAME

No one should hurry out to see The Imitation Game, the new British production about the World War Two program surrounding intelligence involving the Enigma machine.

Previous British movies and TV productions have centered on the Enigma machine: Enigma (2001) and Bletchley Park (2011). There is a little known British movie: Men are trained and become transvestites to be dropped into Germany and to get employed in the factory making Enigma Machines, steal the machine… The last movie is cute and complete shameful.

The Enigma machine provided the British and Americans with intelligence, Ultra, knowledge of German military maneuvers and planning. Before June 21, 1941 the British told the Russians invasion is upon you. The Russians ignored it. Montgomery and his planners ignored Enigmas intercepts before invading Belgium and the southern Netherlands in September 1944. It is a reason that military operation failed.

Enigmas is credited with winning the Battle of the Atlantic, safeguarding convoys. That is wrong. The reason the British needed intelligence was their own codes were being read, almost in real time, by the Germans. The intelligence advantage of Enigma was mostly a wash. What won the Battle of the Atlantic was equipment and men. Much of the equipment and weapons, radar/sonar were of British origin advanced further by the Americans. The primary equipment was ships, American produced destroyers and especially escort carriers. The British had the best submarine hunter, Johnnie Walker whom they did not promote. The Americans were very aggressive. That’s why a full U-boat is on exhibit in a museum in Chicago.

Before World War Two the Americans had decrypted the Japanese diplomatic code in real time. Those intercepts were called Magic. The Americans were working on decrypting the Japanese Navel Codes, one intercept leading to the first complete allied victory of the war: Midway. The Americans started from scratch.

With Enigma the British started at the 50 yard line in the 100 yard dash. Poland and the Polish people. In mid-August 1939 Polish intelligence invited French and British intelligence over to the office and said, “Look what we have.” During the previous decade the Poles had workers in the Enigma factory; they had a machine in Warsaw; they had analyzed it operations and its potentialities. The British and French both said, We want it. The Poles shared, and when they were losing and were conquered in the next six weeks, the Poles erased all trace of their enigma intelligence operation: equipment, papers, people. Some Poles ended up in France and later England.

To my knowledge the French have been considerate and gracious not to claim credit in movies or on TV for any Enigma feats. No so the British who won the War by decrypting Enigma intelligence. I’m tired of British hero movies about Enigma. It’s time for the Brits to fess up. The Poles did it.

THE SLEEPWALKERS

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This spectacular diplomatic history by Christopher Clark is about European foreign relations and history before World War One. It is an essential source to understand the years before the War.

It tells how Serbian goofballs and nuts, backed blindly by the Russians and supported by the indifferent French, were able to start the War. The British, flat on their asses, joined the French.

Oddly, the Germans were late to the party. Germany began mobilizing on August 1, 1914 two weeks after the Russians with French encouragement began mobilizing and putting a million soldiers on their Western borders. Historian Clark mentions that the Germans have been blamed for heightening tensions and starting the War. Blame is much better placed on the Russians and French. Clark refers to an excellent history by Fritz Fischer, but Clark does not discuss policy during the War, whereas Fischer does.

The Sleepwalkers is an appropriate title. The diplomats and rulers read, discussed, pushed papers and harrumphed. In Britain the Foreign Minister, Edward Grey (of Earl Grey tea fame), was aloof, spoke only English, disliked foreigners, preferred long country jaunts and liked fly fishing. And in 1914 Grey had the on-coming disability of going blind. Everyone in the government knew it but left him in place.

The Sleepwalkers is well presented and well-written. It raises a question: If the men who decided to go to war in 1914 had read this book before deciding, would they chose War? Clark gives the impression that the men were so impossibly devious and utterly stupid, that despite knowing all the facts the would chose War.

SUBVERSIVE WRITING

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REVIEW OF SUBVERSIVES by Seth Rosenfeld

I’m Michael Ulin Edwards, author of Bitch. (iBookstore). I am completely familiar with events in Berkeley, 1968-1974. I am familiar with earlier events and its literature and many other documents (1962-1967).

Much of Seth Rosenfeld’s book, Subversives, is set in a foundation of quicksand. I will touch on a few prominent disappointments. Reading this book it is obvious that the author did not live during the Sixties; he made no attempt to learn much about the people living in Berkeley during the Sixties; he failed to submerse himself into student life, actives and thoughts of the Sixties. Writing about students and events from 1963-1965 is much different from students and events in 1966-1968, or in 1971. Rosenfeld writes a top-down recounting of events – a writing from the perspective of the documents in his possession. He ignores documents that disagree with his views and fails to balance and weight their relative importance.

In this book every major impression about events after September 1968 is wrong, mistaken or falsified.

I read the text and what supposedly serves as notes. The notes are frequently summaries of documents. There is very rarely a quote in the text and a source, date, page number in the note. This book thereby becomes a perilous piece of history, sociology or journalism.

Rosenfeld misstates the scene. What is the background of students, activities and organizations? In the sources on the Free Speech Movement, people emerged from their corners and began leafleting and proselytizing. The Free Speech Movement [Goldwater Republicans to the far Left] by and through Savio had to beat these people and organizations off to present limited demands. By the late Sixties there were no controls, no discipline and no common goals. Every leader, person and group wanted every other person and group to follow it.

What is both funny and ridiculous is the FBI’s believing it could surveil and influence the groups with informants. A remarkable book was written at the time (1970) by William Divale, I Lived Inside the Campus Revolution. He describes how he was recruited, how he had to form political groups and eventually whom he met. His political indoctrination eventually made him a leftist; he testified in one trial. Divale tells of the disorder within the greater Left and student groups. There were no controls and no leaders. Rosenfeld likes to disparage persons whose experience and writing disproves his theses. He calls Divale “a self-described sex ‘swinger.’”(485) In the Sixties swingers weren’t considered worthy of demerits.

Rosenfeld suggests that one or two informants influenced and pushed people and organizations into wrong, unpopular actions. It ain’t so. Students, especially at Berkeley, were in charge. The Free Speech Movement leaders knew they had rolled the administration on constitutional issues. Given that standing students pushed more toward extreme positions.

Who were the FBI informants? Petty criminals, drug users, sexual perverts, hippies, morons and Democrats. A worry had to be, will my informant disappear to a commune in Marin, or Sonoma, or Mendocino, or Humboldt? What’s the quality of the information he just gave the Bureau? All information produced had to be culled and carefully checked. It was known among University students that people who appeared to live on the streets, lived on more than air. At best they were part-time informants, or squealing to get a felony lowered to a misdemeanor or to get a few bucks for the next joint or tab.

And what did the FBI do with the information once it verified it? After August 1963 the FBI learned Martin Luther King had a dream. The preacher had said so publicly. The raging question within the Bureau was “what was the dream about?”
It is more probable to conclude that the FBI was not playing with a full deck, and that Rosenfeld’s book gives the Bureau much more credit than it deserves.

The subtitle to Rosenfeld’s book includes “and Reagan’s Rise to Power.” Ronald Reagan is a villain in Berkeley. Too bad. “Prologue at the Governor’s Mansion January 1967,” happened two years, four months after the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley began, September 1964. Apparently the FBI met Reagan, and Rosenfeld cites this meeting a representing the close collaboration between them. It is misleading. Anyone who lived in the Sixties and watched Reagan’s rise to knew the FBI had nothing to do with his election victory in 1966 or the Governor’s popularity. Reagan represented one side of “anxiety triggers,” and the students represented the other side of the triggers:

“The campaign was supposed to be about big government, welfare and high taxation but, as Reagan recalled: ‘After several weeks of the campaign I had to come back and say, ‘Look, I don’t care if I’m in the mountains, the desert, the biggest cities of the state, the first question is, What are you going to do about Berkeley? and each time the question itself would get applause.’”DeGroot, Gerald J., The Sixties Unplugged, Cambridge, Harvard, 2008, p. 403.

Running against Reagan and that question, Pat Brown had no response. Brown was tied to an unpopular President. He lost badly. Or course, Rosenfeld presents none of this, how extremely unpopular Berkeley and the University of California were becoming. It is also distorting for Rosenfeld to suggest Reagan was an FBI stooge or got FBI help, rather than analyze Reagan as the effective, successful politician he was.

Much of Rosenfeld’s book discusses the FBI files and the Black Panthers who are mostly irrelevant to the University and University students during the Sixties. The Panthers began in Oakland in 1966; they had excellent speakers – Cleaver, Seale and Newton – but their activities were confined to activities in Black communities. Many of these leaders were in prison during the late Sixties. [Stokely Carmichael, not a Panther, spoke in Berkeley during the fall of 1967 to a large student crowd.]

In 1968 I believe Berkeley had fewer than 800 Black undergraduates of 28,000 total. Social Analysis 139X, Eldridge Cleaver’s course, Fall 1968, brought Cleaver onto the campus. It was not a Black Panther course. Its failure to get credit, and demonstrations and destruction of offices, stopped after Cleaver lost appeals for a parole violation and fled the USA. The Third World College, Winter 1968, involved many black-run organizations and included veterans from the San Francisco State protests and riots (Fall 1968). As riots that quarter continued, there were many fewer black rioters. After Winter 1969 Black organizations separated from many student protests in Berkeley.
It is unfortunate that Rosenfeld combines too much, student events with the Panthers. The Panther experience, incompletely written, is not serviced by mushing it with student/street people/hippie activities in Berkeley. NOTE, HOWEVER, if the FBI believed or considered that the student and Panther activities were directed by or coming from the same source, it reflects poorly on FBI analysis and indicates why the FBI was extraordinarily incapable to understanding anything. Ironically, Rosenfeld glosses over this point. The author of Subversives may have made the same mistake as the Bureau.

One gross problem, Rosenfeld misstates dates and facts. The Moses Hall, Social Analysis 193X arrests, did not involve 1,500 students.(425) Arrested were two bus loads rolling out to the University of California campus at Santa Rita. January 30 is on page 434. On page 435 comes the sentence, “Dissatisfied, Sheriff Frank Madigan sent an angry letter to Reagan…accusing the chancellor of failing to control the protests.” What Rosenfeld deliberate fails to tell readers is that for four days from February 1 was the worst street rioting on campus and around Southside that had yet to be seen in Berkeley. Note, these were not “protests” as Rosenfeld euphemistically calls them. They were full-scale riots.
Today, in southeastern Nevada Cliven Bundy, a rancher has used against all government regulations, land owned by the United States government. Bundy was supposed to pay rent for grazing rights; those haven’t been paid for 20 years. In essence Bundy is ripping off public land for his private use.

It is good to see that Seth Rosenfeld believes Cliven Bundy is correct. I didn’t believe anyone sane would support Cliven’s position. In 1969 disparate persons in Berkeley took land owned by the University and called it Peoples Park. Reagan opposed that taking. Of course there were huge riots periodically over four years including one instigated by the student newspaper, The Daily Californian (May 1971). During the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong (April 1972) rioters ripped down the fence surrounding the property and ever since [45 years] that large vacant lost, now with a restroom, is a good cradle for street-level crime activities.

Rosenfeld lends support to Peoples Park supporters and the peoples take-ver by looking at that event in Berkeley like it is isolated from everywhere else in the United States. It’s a world of magic and drugs, of the people and love, of the community and hope, of tranquility and peace. The angels are singing all the way along the road to Hell.

Rosenfeld hypes with no specific examples the FBI-Black Panther feuds while discussing Peoples Park:                        “Reagan linked Rector’s death to those of a janitor killed by a bomb blast at UC Santa Barbara and two men shot on the UCLA campus in the feud between the Black Panthers and the United States. It was unknown that the FBI was in the midst of a counterintelligence operation using false letters, offensive cartoons, and informers that was intended to foment violence between the rival Black Power groups – or, as one FBI official put it ‘to grant nature the opportunity to take her due course.’”

This is wrong. Rosenfeld fails to identify and print one “offensive” cartoon, or print one “false letter,” or any other FBI generated or influenced document. I know that the cartoon may exist; the lack of one is appalling. Letters, whether truthful or false, have to be read and understood. Rosenfeld’s failure to present one letter destroys his argument and the book. [Note that Dan Rather’s charge and production of a questionable photo-copied letter, destroyed his career. Rosenfeld has taken Rather’s action a step further, produced nothing and said in words understood in Berkeley: the FBI, a counterintelligence operation, Ronald Reagan…The Boogie man is out there.]

In Subversives Rosenfeld tells of his long, brave fight to get lots of FBI documents. What Rosenfeld does not do is piece together specificities from all the pages and present a smoking gun: These documents show (A) An FBI plan, (B) reliable persons were contacted and (C) these documents show preparations: X riots, Y violence and Z injuries happened. Conclusion: FBI benefits as a result of A, B and C.

Instead, in a note for page 468, Rosefeld cites:
“On the FBI’s COINTELPRO involving the Black Panthers and the United States, see Church, book III, 189-195. The report says, “Because of the milieu of violence in which members of the Panthers often moved we have been unable to establish
a direct link between any of the FBI’s specific efforts to promote violence and particular acts of violence that occurred. We have been able to establish beyond doubt, however, that high officials of the FBI desired to promote violent confrontations between BPP members and members of other groups, and that those officials condoned tactics calculated to achieve that end.” ibid, 189.”

There is no evidence. The note is empty. The FBI may have desired anything: Eternal life to J. Edgar Hoover. But that is not a fact; it is not evidence; it is not logically supported; no reason stands with it. This note would not be permitted as support in any discipline: Not in law, not in sociology, not in history, not in journalism.

That desire establishes the foundation for myth, religion, superstition and much of the thinking that goes on and lingers in Berkeley today: What happened to the glorious Sixties? Don’t look at facts, evidence, reason or logic. Berkeley has myths, superstition, boogiemen, devil evil-doers, Ronald Reagan and like-minded persons who caused the downfall of Berkeley as a university and as a town.

In Berkeley at War (1989) William Rorabaugh tells that Berkeley professors felt uneasy leaving work, papers, research and writing in their offices. They knew what had happened at Columbia – wholesale distribution of University files and destruction of others. Berkeley professors saw disclosure and destruction of files at Moses Hall (October 1968). They observed rioters on several occasions trying to overturn card catalogues in the Main Library, and knew of the one arson attempt on the library in March 1970. They observed great violence hitting university buildings in the Winter/Spring 1969 and Spring 1970. Academia was under fire. How many professors did not come to Berkeley? Rosenfeld’s Subversives discusses none of these issues.

!Is there any issue omitted from Rosenfeld’s book, that should be there? YES. It was important to every male older than eighteen. The Draft. Berkeley and Stanford cooperated making one of the best Draft Resistant organizations in the United States. It is surprising and lubricious that Rosenfeld would overlook an issue, an organization and its activities on a National Security issue, War, which involved student groups. Options:

If the FBI made no investigations of the Draft Resistant movement and had no files, that demonstrates again that the FBI did not know what it was doing, it had no ability to analyze, and its collection of paper was stupid and fruitless. Rosenfeld should have mentioned that. Or,

If Rosenfeld fell upon many Draft Resistant documents and decided to omit any discussion of the issue, what else is omitted from the text of Subversives? Or,

If the FBI were successful sabotaging Draft Resistance (doing everything Rosenfeld claimed the Bureau did), Rosenfeld may have had facts, evidence, proof demonstrating in this issue that the FBI was successful. However,
Perhaps Rosenfeld realized, cynically, when it came to politics, the FBI was a failure. He omitted giving examples on the Draft issue, and decided to pander to the superstitions, speculations, myths, boogiemen and the feelings and sensitivities of people in Berkeley.

If the FBI were successful sabotaging Draft Resistance (doing everything Rosenfeld claimed the Bureau did), Rosenfeld may have had facts, evidence, proof demonstrating in this issue that the FBI was successful. However,
Perhaps Rosenfeld realized, cynically when it came to politics, the FBI was a failure. Hence, Rosenfeld panders to the superstitions, speculations, myths, boogiemen and the feelings and sensitivities of people in Berkeley.

THE WEST OF THE IMAGINATION

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This excellent book by Wiliam H. Goetzmann and William N. Goetzmann (father and son) attempts to explain how perceptions of the West (of the USA) live and how many are myths and legends. Our views are sculpteed by lands which are artworks in and of themselves. No artist, painter or photographer can ever represent Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon or numerous physical features elsewhere. In and among these monuments to the earth have come human beings, many illiterate and others incapable of recording life. The motto for the American West (and perhaps for all human history) is best described in a John Ford movie: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Art and painting represent the legends of the West. Most paintings were made put on canvass in the West. Early on, painters sketched and painted in the off-season in the East. OR, paintings were made in a studio long after an incident occurred e.g. Custer’s Last Stand. Indeed, one depiction was known as the “Anheuser-Busch Poster” a marketing tool. Beer drinkers could sit in bars and saloons and speculate about the Last Stand. Of course, recent forensic studies have proven all the paintings, legends and eye-witness accounts, are pure fantasy. In 1913 another Indian battle Wounded Knee, was filmed using as many participants of the original incident as could be gathered. All but one reel of the film has been lost.

More myths? How many United States soldiers did Native Americans kill after 1865? Another history gave the answer of fewer than 1000. But given the massacres depicted in film and in some books, it seems the total amounts to a genicide. Until reading the Goetzmanns’ book I did not know that forts west of the Mississippi were not attacked by Native Americans alone; they knew the futility of attacking fortifications. The books mentions one of the last attacks of a fort or settlement, circa 1770, Booneville, Kentucky, the settlement of Daniel Boone. Yet, film is primarily responsible for perpetuating the myth of numerous attacks in the nineteenth century.

The chapter on Frederick Remington is excellent. When individual artists come up much humorous stuff comes out: Buffalo Bill’s first impresario, Ned Buntline, had the unprofitable careers as an U.S. Army deserter, an politician-instigator of race riots in St. Louis, a bigamist and a temperance reformer, all before he went into entertainment. But the best chapter is about Charles Russell and his business-savey wife, Nancy. When he was considered to paint a mural for the Montana House of Representatives, Russell told the committee in very Western fashion: “If you want cupids and angels and Greek goddesses, give this New Yorker the job. If you want a western picture, give it to me.”

What Remington and Russell show in paintings, drawings and sculpture was motion in the world they knew. They did that as well as anyone. Viewers can see a paintings and know what had happened in time before the painted scene; the viewer can anticipate what will happen. Viewing A Dash For the Timber  (Remington) horses and riders are coming at the viewer. Russell’s, Smoke of a .45, the viewer is in a gun battle and wants to stand out of the way of bullets and fleeing men on horses. These paintings catch motion as completely as Rembrandt did in The Night Watch, or Michelangelo did with Moses. (see Sigmund Freud essay) Yet contemporaries of Remington and Russell (Impressionists) did not show motion well. Their paints relied on technique and style to project the images.

The painters and most other Western painters knew the animals they painted and drew – standing still, at peace, cold, war, running, off balance. At art schools in the East horses and other animals were dissected in classes to demonstration motion of the animal, for the greenhorn students. And all artists knew the magic of horses: Frank Tenney Jackson explained, “People like to buy pictures with white horses. If I paint a picture with one horse in it – it’s a two-hundred dollar picture. If I paint the horse white, it’s a four hundred dollar picture.” (319)

This book is entirely too short. Not every picture discussed is shown. There could easily be another 100 prints. More text could be hand about a painter’s impression of his intervention with nature to produce art; and the historians could tell by interpretation the painter’s impressions. In its survey the text runs through movies as being an extension of painting and photography, but movies distort the history, perpetuating myths and legends. The text about movies runs until 1970; Westerns are on the decline; comedy rips apart the genre in Blazing Saddles; also omitted is the saloon scene from The Great Race. The end of the Western era arguably lasted in 1976 with John Wayne’s, The Shootist.

A sidebar about Westerns and movies: Taking the place of Westerns and its heroes  and anti-heroes in this day of Machines Take Command are crime stories whether the protagonist be a detective, a private investigator, a low-life cop or a rogue spy. The common elements to these characters, whatever be the previous job, is an obsession for truth, justice and the underhanded way, plus a speck of heart that is gold. 

Finally, the authors of The West of the Imagination observe an disturbing trend that is running amock today:  “Modern publishers seem to think that the eye measures the depth of the popular mind.” (314) As for this book, READ IT.

Background

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I read a lot of history; I read it in sprees. For a year twentieth century history has been my nut, primarily the two European wars and Germany and the Soviet Union. There are times I’ll find an author, and buy books from Amazon or Bookfinder (and others), but most of my reading comes from used books, stuff bought at library bookstores or library sales.

Why read history? To understand more completely. In Barrons today, Jack A. Ablin of BMO Private Bank, is quoted (M16): “It is hard to conceptualize from our Western point of view, but roughly 80% of Russians surveyed believe that economic growth and jobs are more important than their form of government.” I agree. That has been an issue many books I’ve read over the last year, decade, scores of years.

However, I went to read three volumes by Richard J. Evans, the first being, The Coming of the Third Reich (borrowed from the library). In total the three volumes are about 1500 pages. I read the Preface, and Evans discusses other survey books telling of the Third Reich. He notes William L. Shirer’s books, The Rise and Fall and says it is weak, but he fails to mention it is the first. It is unusual for a historian to criticize, outside critical literature, books. He is complimentary to everyone he mentions, English and German historians. He finally, and has to mention Gordon Craig, an American, but only one of Craig’s books: The Politics of the Germany Army 1640-1945.

I finished the Preface and wondered why it was incomplete: Gordon Craig has a book, Germany: 1866-1945 (1978). It seemed spot onto Richard Evans’ topic, but it wasn’t referenced. A German who became an American wrote three volumes, the last covering 1840-1945. Hojo Holborn was a brilliant historian; he died in 1967. Reading about the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and its culture, one finds Hajo Holborn mentioned. He was part of German academia and participated in the culture before the Nazis came to power. He left Germany in 1933 after losing his university position.

I wondered why Hajo Holborn and Gordon Craig’s other books were not in the Preface. I looked at the bibliography where they were also absent, saving Craig’s German Army book.

I turned the page to Chapter 1, page 1, line 1 or Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich:

       “Is it wrong to begin with Bismarck?”

Richard Evans book was published in 2003, almost forty years after Gordon Craig’s book. I realized I had read this book before. I stopped reading. Indeed, Germany: 1866-1945 by Gordon Craig, Chapter 1, Page 1, line 1 reads: 

       “Is it a mistake to begin with Bismarck?”

SPEER – A FINAL VERDICT, Joachim Fest

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The last chapter of this book, the conclusion, is a masterpiece. What is Albert Speer’s life worth apart from being Adolph Hitler’s architect and munitions minister? Not much, unless Speer can be used as a model of an early twentieth century German boy, man, adult to explain why the Germans, each of them lemmings, ran off the cliff again, after the horrible tragedy of World War One. This biography gives suggestions but does not provide a thorough analysis.

The book reveals little about the Nazis, although one anecdote is noteworthy. On April 24, 1945 Speer met Heinrich Himmler, SS honcho, who believes wrongly he is to become Hitler’s successor. After saying good-bye to Hitler, Speer has just left  Berlin, now under assault by the Russians. Himmler dresses down Speer, telling him he won’t be part of the new German government and since no building will be done in the foreseeable future [bombed out Germany in April 1945], Speer’s services as an architect won’t be needed. Knowing that Himmler is an abject coward, Speer offers him his plane so Himmler can visit Hitler one last time and say good-bye. Himmler refuses the offer.

There is a sense in the biography that Speer’s IQ ran ten points higher than anyone he dealt with, until May 1945. There is no confirmation in the biography. An elevated IQ will cause restlessness in a young man as thoroughly as wine, women, drugs and mental illness. Was there recognition that the boy, Albert, was bright other than excelling at school, and everything he did came to him easy?

Apparently not. It is not part of the biography. To give a sense of Speer and the society he grew into as an adult, one must write a Life and Times book – sociology, cultural affairs, religious matters, academic successes plus biography. A boy usually gets his initial bearings from his family, but Speer’s parents were distant and not affectionate. A boy is exposed to society though institutions – schools, social organizations and churches. Speer was never religious, but what of the other institutional influences? The book suggests that Speer had no anchor and no safe harbor, despite being married, until 1931 when he heard Hitler speak: First speech – reasonable; Speer joins party. Second speech – distasteful; Speer didn’t like it. Third speech – offensive; Speer remains in party. The party was someplace to be.

There is the statement that joining the Nazis and accepting architectural commissions was the easy way. Nature had made life and society easy for Speer, someone who did not know how to work through problems: Solutions came to him easily. When life comes to an individual easily there is a human tendency to claim self-righteousness and being right, all the time. Yet, Speer’s problem was after April 1945 when life, events and circumstances, and his psychology was not easy to handle or deal with, and for a long time about many issues Speer was lost forever. 

The problem with the biography and in German history with the rise of the Nazis becomes 50 million lemmings ran Germany off the cliff – a highly cultural, highly educated, a sophisticated, intellectual people could not see the the Nazi danger, avoided observing what was going wrong and continued to follow until foreign armies had crushed the country. If it were one person who had gone off the cliff, that would amount to nothing. If it is 50 million, that is a story that needs telling in full. 

NOT I

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Not I by Joachim Fest

Many facts in this volume need to be known, but the author reaches the wrong conclusion. Fest wonders how Hitler, Nazism and the Third Reich took swift root in Germany. He presents a persuasive argument, but in the end Fest didn’t get it. One statement: “Democracy…if one approached it responsibly was rather boring.” (378) 

I concede that most of what happens in a democracy is not exciting UNTIL DEMOCRACY MUST BE USED. DEMOCRACY becomes efficient and powerful, much more so than totalitarian systems like Nazi Germany where everyone must wait for the chief thug to awaken from his beauty sleep to make the wrong decision.

DEMOCRACY might be boring it it is not material, relevant or important to balance the interests of individuals, or the interests of the individual versus society, or the interests of an individual versus groups of individuals, of the interests of groups of individuals versus those of other groups. Instead, the people of a totalitarian country have no need to worry because the chief thug can make snap decisions and the problem is eliminated.

DEMOCRACY is boring if considerations, elements and factors constituting and defining freedom and liberty are uninteresting to a people who are grabbing the feet of the chief thug, heiling him at every chance and giving their lives to the caprice of a mentally ill victim of medical malpractice.

In essence Fest does not explore as fully as he should to excuse the actions of the German people into 1945. Unlike Fest’s father who never cooperated with the Nazis, Fest seems to accept still the German influences which infected his family: The glories of German culture.

This book admirably adumbrates circumstances leading the Germans to Hitler: Education, family, culture and society. Fest’s father is political; he attends political meetings. But one wonders about the naiveté and the ignorance. After the War starts the father discusses with a like-thinking neighbor whether they or anyone could justly kill a tyrant. The men discussed St. Augustine and Johannes Althusius (158). Assassination if a political act. The killer does not need theological or philosophical sanctions.

This disconnect to reality reminded me of Lenin’s comment about the Germans: (paraphrased) The Germans could not occupy a train station unless the window were open for sale of platform tickets.

Fest writes “…trust in the German culture always won out…A nation…that had produced Goethe, and Schiller and Lessing, Bach, Mozart and so many others would simply be incapable of barbarism…” (181) Having laid out facts, Fest presents a few examples. Germans quote Goethe to one another. Fest employees Goethe in the text sometimes to provide explanations. The German reaction seems to be if Goethe did it or talked about it, the solution is obvious; the matter is resolved. 

Note Americans and English use authorities, but Abraham Lincoln played games with Shakespeare. In Illinois his friends and he would recite the Bard, not as an authority about life, but to gain the upper hand.

An uneasy sensation comes from reading Not I. Germans are not always living in reality. Gather all the facts and weigh them against individual wants and needs. But Germans carry a load with them, what they call their culture which directs and controls their lives. When Germans wants their culture to restrain the Nazis and save the nation, they imposed too much culture. Culture became meaningless, and the Nazis used culture icons smartly. I believe when Hitler had succeeded to avoid war at Munich and much of Czechoslovakia was taken, German radio made the announcement and punctuated it with a Beethoven symphony, as a grace note.

How detached were the Germans swept into poetry and culture? A neighbor of Fest’s neighborhood was “singing in her wailing tremolo that she was doing to dance into heaven…” (182) Americans, at least, want to dance in the streets.

Americans knew what to do with German culture. Fest became a prisoner of war. Upon his arrival at the POW camp, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (supremely beautiful music) “thundered from all the loudspeakers, and was still doing so nine days later when we left; day and night without stopping and with an annoying click after the sixty-fourth bar.” (295) I’m not sure Fest appreciated this aspect of American punishment combined with humor.

If I read Not I correctly (I doubt because I can’t believe such poor, ignorant advice departing from reality), Fest’s father urges him to study the Italian renaissance, especially Fifteenth Century Florence. That city as supposed to be the happy combination of art and culture plus and a positive political system. How can anyone be more wrong? The American Founding Fathers studied all Italian politics intensely and thoroughly and realized how temporary were those affair. Florentine politics were obviously not exemplary. Machiavelli thought not. He had to write The Prince.

Fest fails to provide an explanation why Germans who prize intelligence, education and knowledge did not take lessons from World War One: The failings of the German government and shifting politics (in the end it wasn’t a monarchy but a military dictatorship), the inadequacy of its leaders, limits to military success and relying to much on the military, and a necessary restructuring of the whole government. The Germans did none of those things after the First War, although the facts were before them. They acted on ignorance, misinformation and myth (stab in the back). In the end the Germans could only rely on an excuse, a superior culture. [Note the Germans had to wait until after World War Two (1955) to get an excellent book about World War One, Germany’s War Aims in the First World War, Fritz Fischer.] 

Lessons to take from Not I and the German domestic experience is how wrong a people can be. The Germans were not just misled by an evil tyrant and his herd of evil doers, but many in the country supported him, disregarded the horrors of Nazism and overlooked their deteriorating lives. Fest writes about members of his own family who refuse to talk about the Nazi years in Germany, although they knew Fest was researching and writing about those times. It is equally odd that more books like Fest’s have not been published. Germans, telling where they got it wrong, could do much to influence humanity for the better. My perception is that they have avoided that responsibility, unlike European Jews who wrote under the most adverse conditions during those times, to save humanity.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, William L. Shirer

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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, William L. Shirer

In a memoir, A Native’s Return, W. L. Shirer tells about selling The Rise and Fall to a studio and the meeting the studio chief in 1960. Shirer was an East Coast guy, and he took along two East Coast friends: John Houseman and George Roy Hill, then a Broadway director.

The chief greeted them and while leading the way into his office, says to Shirer: “For three nights my wife and I have read your book [The Rise and Fall].”

Shirer looks at Houseman who says, “That’s absolute bullshit.”

Nobody can read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in three days, let alone three nights. It is an invaluable book by a writer/journalist writing about people he saw in action twenty years before. In this writing he got to tell a more complete story. Most of it centers in foreign policy and diplomatic efforts, incidences Shirer was able to observe and report at the time. The text presents well, spelled out or implied, about this blunder of that one. Shirer hits the German-Soviet Union August 1939 Pact, partitioning Poland and designating spheres of influence, hard. He notes correctly that Stalin’s agreement started the War: Hitler likely would not have invaded Poland with no agreement if the Soviet Union had not committed itself and Hitler were not certain.

It was an enormous mistake for the Soviets, a nation of chess players. Two little-known Soviet accommodations to German war successes included shipping supplies from Murmansk to Norway in 1940 and shipping rubber across Russia to Germany. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union (June 1941), the Soviets were confused, perplexed and overwhelmed – the Soviets had done almost everything the Germans wanted. But the German Army was professional and proficient. Millions of Soviet citizens were killed; complete Soviet armies were destroyed; and three million prisoners of war were captured (few lived to see the War’s end).

This complicity is observed, and a balance is noted. The Soviets complained that they had to face the German Army alone in Europe in 1942-1943. Early on the Germans did not make the mistake they made when invading Russia. Shirer notes the D-Day invasion force and its provisioning was a huge effort before June 1944. He notes the completely inadequate German preparations to invade Britain in 1940 and gives the assessment that the British would have chewed up any Germany army put ashore in Britain. Perhaps Stalin wanted the British and Americans to be as reckless with their men as the Germans and Russians were with their own.

Equally poor was the ability of the French and British to foresee foreign policy and diplomatic mistake after mistake. At one point Shirer says Charles Lindbergh was “startlingly naiveté.” Lindbergh was a moronic dupe. Yet at one place Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Minister) was “well meaning,” but Shirer hardens against the mustached P.M. Having read Shirer’s description of Munich (French/British surrender of Czechoslovakia September 1938), it is easy to conclude the only thing Chamberlain failed to bring to Britain after the negotiations was a toothbrush mustache. As PM Chamberlain interfered with Churchill’s plans to defend Norway. In short the best service Chamberlain performed for Great Britain was to die in November 1940.

Shirer notes what the German’s learned: Had the Czechs fought the Germans in 1938 Germany may have finally won but it would be greatly weakened the German army and left it incapable of pursuing further war.

Throughout the history Shirer noted the assassination attempts to kill Hitler. This is a matter of course, but the attempts are not equal and should not be treated that way. The assassination plot before the Munich agreement was very credible. Shirer’s book is an early history and is not as complete as Joachim Fest’s (and others) book on the same subject.

!I have read much about World War Two. Reading The Rise and Fall, I realized the war was fought in stages: I. Rhineland occupation, 1936; Austria Anschluss, March 1938; Czechoslovakia, 1938. Those lands and their industrial and economic bases were captured with no or little destruction. II. Poland, September 1939; Scandinavia, May 1940; Netherlands, Belgium, May 1940; France, June 1940. Those lands sustained more damage, but the industrial and economic base would be restored. III. Britain, Soviet Union, Balkans, Africa – the Germans were invading lands that were destroyed or desolate and the population was targeted. Little benefit came to Germany by having its armies run 1,500 miles across eastern Europe.

Equally maniacal and idiotic were Nazi racial policies. I have not read it but surmised if the Germans were not so obsessed with killing people and more devoted to overcoming their opponents’ military abilities, Germany had a chance to win the war. Shirer somewhat discusses this point especially with the invasion of the Soviet Union(June 1941). But the Germans were incapable of treating any occupied peoples (Danes and Dutch included) as anything other than second-class human beings.

Omissions occur in an 1140 page book like this. The text concentrates on The Rise of the Third Reich. The telling of The Fall, one-quarter of the book (December 1941 to May 1945), concentrates on the military and Nazi leadership.

By in large absent from the book is Third Reich Domestic Germany, and much Sociology of the German People – there is no humor, comedy or black humor.

Military campaigns especially those adversely affecting Germany are raced through e.g. the air war against Germany is told statistically (except the German people wanted to lynch captured American and British fliers). That air war kept 70 percent of the Luftwaffe at home defending the fatherland; the Soviet army benefitted from the lack of air support.

The German people knew they were losing the war – lines on a map got closer, but more likely they witnessed bombed out cities, factories, facilities and homes. “The White Rose” protests (February 1943) seemingly came from nowhere because the German people are portrayed as monolithic.

There are evaluations by German generals justly criticizing Eisenhower’s hands-off participation of the Sicilian and Italian campaigns.(1943, 1944)

A theme in the book is suggested by the facts, but I did not sense it was cogently advanced. It is obvious that the Nazis tried to construct a very robotic society founded on terror and murder. Most of the terror and murder are set out, but other forms and uses of coercion to conform and to comply are omitted. Any society urges compliance from its population and uses overt and subtle means to insure order and stability. The idea of happiness might arise from these efforts: If everyone is content doing the same thing, everyone should be happy. I don’t know if anything like this postulation popped up in Nazi Germany. I suspect it had to – the rulers’ definition of happiness for each individual – is present in any totalitarian society. Shirer does not get around to tell his readers about it.

When The Rise and Fall was published (and perhaps today), the Germans grossly objected to it as anti- German and anti-Germany. The book is fair; those German critics and defenders are wrong. Those German critics and defenders exalt in German culture. It is true that the Germans excelled in music and advanced that art much. I note though that Mendelssohn was considered Jewish, and by the late ninetieth century the Germans were not the best composers. (Mahler was Jewish.) The other arts? Painting: Albrecht Durer, the best German painter but who since 1530? Sculpture – Nada. Literature: Goethe, but who else throughout the nineteenth century – persons who weren’t Jewish, or considered non-Aryan, disreputable and degenerate like Thomas Mann? Education: The Germans had to best universities until the brains left, and the Americans got the pickings. Film: Thank you for sending Billy Wilder and many other great talents.

If the Germans base their superiority on uncontaminated, cultural and intellectual attainments, Shirer tells the Nazis destroyed that superiority immediately. Shirer suggested but fails to analyze how a people so supposedly artistic sensitive and appreciative of fine arts and achievements, can be politically dense, stupid and inept. An idea was recognized that the Germans swooned about the arts and intellectual accomplishments; so long as that production was possible, Germany was superior. After the Second War Bertolt Brecht conceived the axiom (paraphrased): Maybe the Germans will now stop thinking about trees. (quoted in Hitler, Joachim Fest.)

Shirer gives no cause and effect, but there is a suggested answer. German philosophy. While many European countries experimented and implemented enlightenment policies and improvements, making strides to remove themselves from the strictures surviving from medieval society, the Germans looked at the enlightenment and ran the other way: Shirer writes an essay(Chapter 4) about the creeps of German philosophy – Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Marx. Divorced from any human exposure and experience these men advanced concepts of people, their thinking and society that decades later resulted in National Socialism, Hitler and the horrors perpetuated. As part of their intellectual superiority the Germans got caught up in ideas completely remote – intense philosophical stories, pretentiously profound, devoid of faith and disassociated from any human thinking and behavior. That an an excellent definition of a Nazi.

If German critics and defenders complain about The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, they should start with this pillar of William L. Shirer’s book.

 

ENVISIONING AN ENGLISH EMPIRE

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Editors: Robert Appelbaum, John Wood Sweet

This is not a Valentines Day post. 

What were the English thinking when they commenced exploration and colonization of the New World, @ 1575-1630?

The 12 well-referenced essays in this book present a fresh perspective on many issues. Some issues are resolved. For instance, reports from the early Jamestown settlement (1608) complained of hunger and starvation. English and Native American ideas of eating differed. The English were becoming civilized – meals at set times during the day. The Native Virginians ate what nature served. When food was plentiful, they feasted and gorged; when food was scarce they went hungry but didn’t complain. Englishmen did not like the hunger spells endured by the native Virginians. The English figured they were starving; many got sick and died.

There are essays on landholding and titles; investigations into specific sources which mislead students today; a description of John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia as thought it were a literary production; English relations with the Turks and Moroccans; Grace O’Malley, Irish female entrepreneur and pirate, and her meeting with Elizabeth; and many references to Elizabethan and Jacobian literature, drama and poetry…when they refer to issues involving colonization – political, sociological and economic. 

This book is heavy lumber. The essays are well-written and packed. I could not read it fast; I could not read much of it during a day. But the challenge of reading was enjoyable. I can read law, (land titles) which I went through quickest – I don’t need to know much more of that stuff. But there are many essays to stir the imagination in a subject matter foreign to many readers.