And here is my next excerpt: History bookshelf
Next book on the shelf is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
So deciding on an excerpt here was daunting. There’s so much in this book – and – I can’t even believe, in retrospect, that I finished it. It can be a total GRIND. It’s a hard book – thick, fat, with a gazillion footnotes, and – at least in my copy – pretty small print. I have bad eyes. The small print is a challenge. But I’m really glad I read it.
I have two other of Shirer’s books which I actually prefer – I’ll excerpt those next – The Nightmare Years (his experiences as a journalist in the 20s) and his Berlin Diary – his own personal journal describing living in Berlin with his wife in the early 30s, as he saw all of this stuff begin to happen. Berlin Diary is amazing. But I’m a sucker for first-person stories, anyway.
But Rise and Fall is obviously the book he will be remembered for. It’s a massive heavy accomplishment – kind of astonishing when you think of the MOUNDS of paperwork the Nazis left behind.
From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
With Mussolini in the bag, Hitler turned his attention elsewhere. In August 1936 he had appointed Ribbentrop as German ambassador in London in an effort to explore the possibility of a settlement with England — on his own terms. Incompetent and lazy, vain as a peacock, arrogant and without humor, Ribbentrop was the worst possible choice for such a post, as Goering realized. “When I criticized Ribbentrop’s qualifications to handle British problems,” he later declared, “the Fuehrer pointed out to me that Ribbentrop knew ‘Lord So and So’ and ‘Minister So and So.’ To which I replied, ‘Yes, but the difficult is that they know Ribbentrop.'”
It is true that Ribbentrop, unattractive a figure though he was, was not without influential friends in London. Mrs. Simpson, the friend of the King, was believed in Berlin to be one of these. But Ribbentrop’s initial efforts in his new post were discouraging and in November he flew back to Berlin to conclude some non-British business he had been dabbling in. On November 25 he signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, in which, he told the correspondents (of whom this writer was one) without batting an eye, Germany and Japan had joined together to defend Western civilization. On the surface this pact seemed to nothing more than a propaganda trick by which Germany and Japan could win world support by exploiting the universal dislike for Communism and the general distrust of the Comintern. But in this treaty too there was a secret protocol, specifically directed against Russia. In case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan, the two nations agreed to consult on what measures to take “to safeguard their common interests” and also to “take no measures which would tend to ease the situation of the Soviet Union”, It was also agreed that neither nation would make any political treaties with Russia contrary to the spirit of the agreement without mutual consent.
It would not be very long before Germany broke the agreement and accused Japan — unjustifiably — of not observing it. But the pact did serve a certain propaganda purpose among the world’s gullible and it brought together for the first time the three have-not and aggressive nations. Italy signed it the following year.
On January 30, 1937, Hitler addressed the Reichstag proclaiming “the withdrawal of the German signature” from the Versailles Treaty, an empty but typical gesture, since the treaty was by now dead as a doornail — and reviewing with pride the record of his four years in office. He could be pardoned for his pride, for it was an impressive record in both domestic and foreign affairs. He had, as we have seen, abolished unemployment, created a boom in business, built up a powerful Army, Navy, and Air Force, provided them with considerable armaments and the promise of more on a massive scale. He had single-handedly broken the fetters of Versailles and bluffed his way into occupying the Rhineland. Completely isolated at first, he had found a loyal ally in Mussolini and another in Franco, and he had detached Poland from France. Most important of all, perhaps, he had released the dynamic energy of the German people, reawakening their confidence in the nation and their sense of its mission as a great and expanding world power.
Everyone could see the contrast between this thriving, martial, boldly led new Germany and the decadent democracies in the West, whose confusions and vacillations seemed to increase with each new month of the calendar.
Though they were alarmed, Britian and France had not lifted a finger to prevent Hitler from violating the peace treaty by rearming Germany and reoccupying the Rhineland; they had been able to stop Mussolini in Abyssinia. And now, as the year 1937 began, they were cutting a sorry figure by their futil gestures to prevent Germany and Italy from determining the outcome of the Spanish Civil War. Everyone knew what Italy and Germany were doing in Spain to assure Franco’s victory. Yet the governments of London and Paris continued for years to engage in empty diplomatic negotiations with Berlin and Rome to assure “nonintervention’ in Spain. It was a sport which seems to have amused the German Dictator and which certainly increased his contempt for the stumbling political leaders of France and Britain — “Little worms,” he would shortly call them on a historic occasion when he again humbled the two Western democracies with the greatest of ease.
Neither Great Britain and France, their governments and their peoples, nor the majority of the German people seemed to realize as 1937 began that almost all that Hitler had done in his first four years was a preparation for war. This writer can testify from personal observation that right up to September 1, 1939, the German people were convinced that Hitler would get what he wanted — and what they wanted — without recourse to war. But among the elite who were running Germany, or serving it in the key positions, there could have been no doubt what Hitler’s objective was. As the four-year “trial” period of Nazi rule, as Hitler called it, approached an end, Goering, who in September 1936 had been put in charge of the Four-Year Plan, bluntly stated what was coming in a secret speech to industrialists and high officials in Berlin.
The battle we are now approaching [he said] demands a colossal measure of production capacity. No limit on rearmament can be visualized. The only alternatives are victory or destruction … We live in a time when the final battle is in sight. We are already on the threshold of mobilization and we are already at war. All that is lacking is the actual shooting.
Goering’s warning was given on December 17, 1936. Within eleven months, as we shall shortly see, Hitler made his fateful and inalterable decision to go to war.
