Berlin and the Nazis - Richard Evans Article

Richard J. Evans has an extremely interesting article in the New Republic. He's not keen on the book he is reviewing - Hitler's Berlin by Thomas Friedrich. Basically, Evans's says, Berlin never was Hitler's city. It was not enthusiastic about Hitler, nor Hitler for it.

When, in July 1932, the Nazis won 37.4 percent of the vote in national Reichstag elections, making them the largest party in the country, Berlin remained resistant. The combined support of the Communists and Social Democrats in the capital was almost double that of the Nazis. In the November 1932 Hitler's party lost two million votes, while in Berlin its support dropped to 721,000 votes. At the same time, the Communists increased their support in the capital to 861,000, with the Social Democrats coming in at 647,000 votes. When Hitler came to power, he laced Berlin with torture and execution chambers to stamp out opposition.

Hitler despised the capital as degenerate and internationalised. He ambition was to re-model it entirely, and re-name it Germania. One can see why he had little compunction in seeing Berlin crushed under the hammer of the Red Army in 1945. He suicide there seems more like an gesture of spite and contempt for the city of his death, than as an act of homage.

Evans' article has a particularly fine comparison of Berlin and Munich in the post-Great War years. Well worth reading

New Book by Geoffrey Roberts

I'm very pleased to see that Geoffrey Roberts has a new book out on Marshal Zhukov, and not only because Prof. Roberts is based at University College Cork. His last book, Stalin's Wars, was a cracking read, and impressively balanced. As one might guess, Stalin comes across as a thoroughly nasty piece of work, but also as a Great Power leader with real 'virtues' (if that's the word), not least an unexpected ability to learn.

Stalin was different from Hitler not least because he could come to realise that he was mistaken. Hitler always thought that he knew more than his professional military men. Now, he had some cause: his generals were unhappy about his insistence on invading western Europe in 1940, but the amazing success of German arms (and the terrible failure of French and British) unfortunately vindicated him. Most specialists also believe that Hitler was correct in demanding that the Wehrmacht sit out the Winter of 1941, after the failure to take Moscow. A strategic retreat, as advised by the generals, would probably have turned into a flight and rout.

Hitler's mistake was in becoming convinced that he was infallible. He ignored his generals' advice to pull-back in the east and consolidate behind defensible lines. After the war, Goring thought this had been the Fuhrer's greatest mistake. Instead he insisted that the German Army defend all its conquests, and the Red Army was able to batter the over-extended Germans into pieces. During the last days in the bunker, Hitler blamed his generals for Germany's downfall, rather than himself.

Stalin's trajectory went the other way. His insistence that the Red Army never retreat in the face of the Barbarossa offensive was disastrous, allowing huge numbers of soldiers to be kettled and shipped off to camps (and usually death). As time went on, he showed an impressive ability to learn and master technical and strategic military detail. Compared  to the other war leaders - Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt - he probably had the best military mind. More importantly, however, he realised that no matter how competent he might become, he was an amateur, and war-making needed to be left to the professionals. Morbidly suspicious, as he was, and unspeakable cruel to those who crossed him, Stalin nonetheless came to understand that men like Zhukov should be able to contradict him, and to ultimately prevail in debate. Zhukov was able to develop a more flexible and realistic military doctrine, and somehow the enormous disasters of the first stages of the war in the east were overcome.

I'm much looking forward to reading Roberts' new book.