Pertti Ahonen's "Death at the Berlin Wall" - a review

“Death at the Berlin Wall”

by Pertti Ahonen

OUP, £60.00, 309pp, index, notes, bibliography.

Nostalgia for aspects of life in the GDR, it seems, it still current.  In modern Berlin one can buy any number of products that one graced East Berlin households; the Trabant has acquired cult status; even the humble Ampelmann – who stood guard at pedestrian crossings in the East – has become an icon. 

For all that apparently innocent “Ostalgia”, Pertti Ahonen’s new book Death at the Berlin Wall, is a powerful antidote.  Ahonen examines a selection of the 136 individuals killed at the wall in its 28-year lifespan; from its earliest victim, Günter Litfin, in August 1961, to its last, Chris Gueffroy, in February 1989, who was shot and killed just nine months before the Berlin Wall fell. 

Some of the stories that he relates are well-known; such as that of Peter Fechter, whose fatal shooting in the August of 1962 unleashed a wave of outrage in the west; or that of the Wall’s youngest victim; 11-year-old Jörg Hartmann, who was killed trying to escape to his father in the spring of 1966.  Others are much less prominent, at least in the west, such as the stories of the “socialist hero-victims”; border guards Peter Göring, Reinhold Huhn or Egon Schulz, who were killed in shootouts with West Berlin policemen or desperate would-be escapers. 

Aside from engagingly relating such episodes, Ahonen seeks to analyse the popular and official reactions to the deaths; the propaganda resulting from both sides and the effect that they had on the ongoing politics of the Cold War and the division of Germany. 

His insights are fascinating.  One is astonished, for instance, by the breath-taking cynicism and mendacity of the GDR’s politicians in their attempts to discredit those who would flee the ‘socialist paradise’, yet the story that Ahonen tells is one which is much more nuanced than the simple one that might be told by a latter-day Cold-Warrior.

Rather Ahonen places the undoubted horrors that unfolded in the Wall’s shadow into a much wider context of developing procedures for policing such an unprecedented physical division, as well as question of the west’s recognition of the GDR itself.  He also suggests that the reactions to the deaths – on both sides of the divide – were as much an expression of the needs of domestic consensus and identity-building as they were the products of simple propaganda and ‘news-management’.  In many ways, he suggests, the Berlin Wall was not only a political icon and the most visible symbol of the division of Europe, it also became a highly sensitive barometer of Cold War tensions.

Ahonen provides an admirable combination of narrative and historical analysis, which skimps neither on the human stories at the book’s heart, nor on the forensic and painstaking research that serves to contextualise them.  It helps, of course, that Ahonen is a gifted writer, who is able to combine those elements into a highly readable, coherent and compelling account, but it is especially heartening to see an academic historian giving free rein to his writing and indulging in some good old-fashioned storytelling. 

Yet, aside from these necessary nuances and complexities, it is the sheer inhuman contempt that the GDR had for its would-be escapers that sticks most vividly in the reader’s mind.  Those wounded would be denied prompt medical attention, those killed could be anonymously cremated as “scientific material”, and those family members left behind would be intimidated, spied upon and persecuted.  The case of Michael-Horst Schmidt is one of the most shocking.  Shot and wounded in an escape attempt in 1984, the 20-year-old was dead on arrival at hospital 3 hours later, by which time the East German authorities were already beginning to weave a web of lies and obfuscations to blacken their victim’s name and shamelessly exculpate themselves.  It is stories such as these that should make Ahonen’s excellent book required reading for all those who still hanker for the ‘certainties’ of life in the GDR.

[This review first appeared in "History Today" in January 2012]

© Roger Moorhouse 2011

"Eva Braun: Life with Hitler" by Heike Görtemaker - a review

Albert Speer is said to have once opined that generations of future historians would be “disappointed” by Eva Braun.  Hitler’s wife, he implied, was a nobody: someone who – for all her proximity to great events – had exerted no influence, for good or ill, upon them.

I was reminded of this comment when I finally got around to reading Beate Görtemaker’s biography of Eva Braun last week: “Eva Braun: Life with Hitler”, which was first published a couple of years ago.  Görtemaker touted her biography as the first serious study of Braun’s short life (she died aged 33) and in this respect she is absolutely correct.  Previous studies by Angela Lambert and US journalist Nerin Gun cannot boast the integrity and the rigorous approach of Görtemaker’s.  So, in that respect, the book is most certainly to be welcomed.

The book tells the story of Braun’s life well: her rise from middle-class Munich shop girl to Hitler’s mistress, her attempted suicides, her shadowy role as the ‘lady of the house’ at the Berghof above Berchtesgaden and her sordid death at Hitler’s side in the Reich Chancellery bunker in Berlin in 1945.  Görtemaker appears as an assiduous researcher, who is evidently keen to submit existing accounts and persistent myths to vital, critical scrutiny.

However, the book makes some rather grander claims: most notably that Braun was not the passive, “see no evil – hear no evil” character that history has thus-far perceived.  This is an interesting suggestion, and Görtemaker does well to analyse the various memoir accounts of those in Hitler’s entourage – such as his secretary Christa Schroeder and his architect Albert Speer – in trying to prove this point.  Many of those accounts, like Speer’s, are patently self-serving, dissembling and self-exculpatory – not least in claiming that life in the Third Reich’s inner circle was an interminable round of boring vegetarian lunches where no political matters were ever discussed.  

Yet, though the point about self-serving memoirs is well-made, Görtemaker fails to convince with her wider point about Braun’s possible knowledge of and involvement in Nazi politics.  Essentially, though it is well-written and engaging, the book is feeding off scraps.  Due to Hitler’s order at the end of his life that all his personal correspondence was to be destroyed, the evidential base for Görtemaker’s study is extremely thin.  Consequently, she is forced to rely far too much on speculation and guesswork, and as a result the book reads – at times – like a retreaded brief history of the Third Reich with a somewhat unconvincing ‘Eva Braun twist’.

This is a shame, but is perhaps inevitable given the lack of available material.  Despite the book’s shortcomings, this is still the best and most serious biography of Eva Braun that is available.  Yet, that said, it is hard to disagree with Speer’s alleged comment – Eva Braun does appear as a disappointment to history.

© Roger Moorhouse 2013

On UKIP (and Seasick Steve)...

On BBC Breakfast News this morning, blues musician 'Seasick Steve' was interviewed.  A rough and ready elaborately-bearded, and undoubtedly talented American guitarist, Seasick Steve had slept rough and made his own guitars before getting a big break in 2006 on a British music programme.  He has since gone on to considerable commercial and critical success.  In the interview, the presenter gave the somewhat obvious analysis that Seasick Steve's success was due, in large part, to the fact that he came at a time of manufactured pop-bands and sleek, all-pervasive marketing.  He was, put simply, a whiff of authenticity in a world of clones.

Half an hour earlier, another interview on the programme was far less cozy.  Paul Nuttall (MEP), Deputy Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) was on to discuss his party's impressive showing in the English local elections, where they were set fair to upset all the major parties.  He was given a rather bumpy ride, with the sort of hostile questioning that representatives of the major parties rarely encounter.

UKIP is a peculiar phenomenon, which the political and media elite are keen to dismiss simply as a good old fashioned protest vote; the kind of mid-term slap down from the voters that is traditionally expected in the local elections, a chance for the voting public to hurl their virtual tomatoes at their politicians without any fear of serious consequences (except for local government).  Another BBC commentator even described UKIP as 'plebeian' - bringing to mind Bertolt Brecht's line that "the people had forfeited the confidence of the government" so the government should "dissolve the people and elect another".

But, such arrogant complacency is very misplaced.  I would argue that UKIP is far more than just a reflexive public protest.  Though its origins lie in a rejection of the EU, and this issue undoubtedly still forms a core of its support, it seems to have grown into a much more profound revolt against the Westminster political elite and the supposed 'liberal consensus' that they espouse.  It is as much a rejection of the 'smooth operators' of Westminster: the expensively educated Camerons and Osbornes and Milibands, as it is a rejection of the identikit policies that they appear to represent: EU orthodoxy, gay marriage, 'diversity' and all the rest.  UKIP is in many ways a revolt against political correctness itself.  And Westminster needs to take note, not just hide behind the old cliches and slogans, and hope that it will go away.

So - to return to 'Seasick Steve' - stretching the analogy somewhat, UKIP might be seen as the 'Seasick Steve' of British politics: a popular rejection of the bland, the manufactured and all that which is perceived as false and mendacious in Westminster.  But, as such, it must be prepared for a rough ride both from the media and from its political rivals.  Break the mold in music and you will be hailed as a visionary, but break the mold in politics and you risk being cast as a dangerous heretic.

"Hitler's Hangman" by Robert Gerwarth, a review

“Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich” by Robert Gerwarth,

Yale UP, £20.00, 336pp,

It is peculiar that Reinhard Heydrich has not been the subject of a few more serious-minded biographies.  After all, as the architect of the SS-state and the master-planner of the Holocaust, he offers a unique perspective on the inner workings of the Third Reich, whilst as an individual he displays the sort of nefarious, Mephistophelean character traits that would have many historians salivating. 

Yet, despite his high profile in the historical record, Reinhard Heydrich has until now only rarely attracted the attentions of serious English-language biographers.  Robert Gerwarth’s book is something of a rarity therefore.

It is certainly worth the wait.  Gerwarth ably tracks the stages of Heydrich’s life; from his early years in Halle, through his aborted naval career, to his fateful meeting with his later wife – and convinced Nazi – Lina von Osten.  It was Lina who evidently turned the, until then, rather unpolitical Heydrich into the prize Nazi specimen that he would later become; allying his cold, calculating nature with a political and racial ideology within which he could achieve his ambitions. 

Once installed in Himmler’s security apparatus, from 1931, Heydrich would be the driving force in the emergence of the SS, constantly expanding its remit and espousing a perpetual radicalisation of Nazism.  He was ever vigilant, seeking out new enemies – real or imagined – to be confronted and destroyed.  Not so much a safe pair of hands, rather a radical and utterly uncompromising administrator, Heydrich quickly emerged as the coming man of Nazi Germany. 

His career was correspondingly stellar.  Already Himmler’s deputy, he headed the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) from 1939, thereby uniting all branches of the Nazi police and security network under his control.  Later, in 1941, he was appointed to head the politically sensitive and economically vital ‘Protectorate’ of Bohemia and Moravia.  Most infamously, perhaps, he assumed supervisory responsibility for the ongoing Holocaust at the Wannsee Conference at the start of 1942.  Only his death at a Czech assassin’s hand the following summer stopped his seemingly inexorable rise. 

Gerwarth tells this complex tale with considerable aplomb.  He writes with real verve, pacing his account well and providing the perfect mix of narrative and analysis.  Pleasingly, he is not shy of indulging in a few dramatic flourishes when the material and the circumstances allow, making this a history book that one can genuinely read almost in a single sitting.  Moreover, he is surefooted and admirably clear on the historical framework, not least in explaining the murky and complex inter-relationships within the Nazi police state, and delineating the twisted course of the genocide against the Jews. 

The Heydrich that emerges from this account is a more rounded individual from the earlier, sometimes rather breathless, biographies.  He is revealed here as a human being; a single-minded, paranoid, psychopathic human being, but a human being nonetheless.  Interestingly – in a state that prized physical and racial perfection – Heydrich was the only one of the senior personnel who came anywhere close to matching the taxing ideals, despite a persistent rumour of his part-Jewish blood.  Tall, blond, aquiline, he was an accomplished sportsman (he fenced at national level), a gifted violinist and a trained pilot.  A man of deeds rather than theories, he was an ascetic and workaholic and he played the Byzantine world of Third Reich politics like a chess grandmaster.  He was as close to a “Nazi Renaissance man” as it was possible to get.

Robert Gerwarth set out to remedy the lack of a scholarly biography of Reinhard Heydrich – one of the most pivotal and influential figures in the history of the Third Reich.  He has succeeded admirably, producing a work that is as authoritative as it is enjoyable, and in the process setting a new standard by which subsequent biographies of Hitler’s ‘Blond Beast’ will surely be measured.  

Link to Gerwarth's "Hitler's Hangman"

This review first appeared in "History Today" in July 2012

The Rosenstrasse Protest - Myth and Reality

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Rosenstrasse Protest - one of the most fascinating and poignant episodes in the grim history of the Holocaust.

On this day in 1943, the Nazis rounded up the remaining 8,000 or so Jews who were living legally in the German capital.  In the so-called "Fabrik Aktion", or 'Factory Action', the unfortunate victims were intercepted as they arrived for work in Berlin's myriad factories.  Rounded up and put into trucks, they were processed and transported to various holding centres around the city - including a former music hall - to await deportation.

In the days that followed, some 6,000 of those Berlin Jews were duly deported to Auschwitz and a most uncertain fate.  Yet, curiously, one group of prisoners was spared.  The 1,700 that were taken to the Jewish community building on Rosenstrasse in Berlin-Mitte were not deported.  They were held there, in horrific conditions, as their wives and families gathered on the pavement outside, chanting, protesting and demanding the return of their menfolk.   In due course, after around 5 days, the captives were released.  Even the 25 that had been 'mistakenly' deported to Auschwitz-Monowitz were returned.

So much is clear.  The controversy arises with the interpretation that has subsequently been applied to these events.  Some - quite understandably - have sought to make a causal connection between the facts of the families' protest and the prisoners' release: suggesting that the prisoners were released because their families had protested against their deportation.  If only it were that easy.

The truth - as ever - is rather more complex and rather less romantic.  The protests at Rosenstrasse were certainly brave; the women present there risked their own lives for those of their loved ones and took part in one of the very few examples of popular mass protest against the Third Reich.

Yet, I would argue that there is no causal link between the actions of the families and the release of their menfolk.  The prisoners were primarily those Jews in mixed marriages - the women outside, therefore, were Aryan (in Nazi eyes).  These prisoners, therefore, belonged to a liminal category and had already been selected out of the main body of prisoners - hence their incarceration together at Rosenstrasse.  There is every likelihood that these Jews would have been deported in due course, but it appears that they were not scheduled for deportation in March 1943.  Regardless of the brave actions of their womenfolk, therefore, it seems that they would have walked free in any case.

Rosenstrasse, then, was most certainly a heroic, romantic episode, but it is not quite the heroic, romantic episode that some think it was.

If you are interested in reading more on this - I can recommend my book "Berlin at War" :-)

On Socialism and National Socialism

Twitter took another scalp a couple of weeks ago, when one of the UK's newly appointed 'Deputy Police & Crime Commissioners" - one Dr Rachel Frosch - was obliged to resign after passing on (retweeting) a rather clumsy comment linking Socialism and Nazism.

Of course, the political left cried foul and Dr Frosch was hung out to dry by her own side (the Conservatives).  She was certainly guilty of an error of judgement - in the sense that she should have known better when in public office than to goad the left side of the electorate so blatantly.  Yet, there was nothing wrong with the suggestion that Socialism and Nazism are intimately linked.  Her actions might not have been good politics, but they made pretty sound history.

As it happens, yesterday was the 93rd anniversary of the promulgation of the Nazi Party's "25 Point Programme" - a quasi-manifesto for the nascent party, so this gives a good opportunity to take a look at the Nazi Party's origins, and see what it stood for at the start of its odious, calamitous, political journey.

The party, which was then known as the DAP - "Deutsche Arbeiter Partei", or "German Workers' Party" - had only just fallen under Hitler's leadership at that point, having been founded by a Munich railwayworker, Anton Drexler, in 1919.

The Hofbrauhaus, Munich

Hitler's "25 Points" was an attempt to formalise the nascent party's programme and push it out to a wider electorate - and for that reason, the programme was announced at the cavernous Munich "Hofbrauhaus" beerhall, with a capacity of over 2,000.

The "25 Point Programme" includes many of the staple demands and complaints that one would expect of the Nazi Party: the creation of a "Greater Germany" encompassing all German people (Point 1); the scrapping of the Treaty of Versailles (Point 2); the demand for land for colonisation (Point 3) and the exclusion of Jews from the German body politic (Point 4).

The Nazi "25 Point Programme"

Yet, alongside the xenophobic, anti-Semitic demands, there is also a rich seam of populist 'socialism' - including the following: the abolition of unearned income (Point 11); the criminalisation of "war profiteering" (Point 12); the nationalisation of all "trust" industries (Point 13); profit sharing of all heavy industrial concerns (Point 14); an expansion of old age welfare provision (Point 15) and finally a thoroughgoing land reform (Point 17).

So, the 'socialist' aspect of the Nazi Party Programme of 1920 is indisputable.  Indeed, part of the Party's rationale was to attempt to craft a form of socialism in which loyalty to the nation was paramount, but by which the nation's working class could still be won round.  In short, an attempt to supplant the "International Socialism" of Marxism with a new form of "National Socialism".  Appropriately, this formulation was duly added to the Party's name a couple of months later - the DAP became the NSDAP - the "National Socialist German Workers' Party - known to its opponents as the Nazis.

This 'socialism' was no passing dalliance.  Much changed in the years between 1920 and the Party's 'seizure of power' of 1933, of course; accommodations were made with 'big business' and a cruder realpolitik supplanted some of the early working class populism.  Of course, Hitler's personal adherence to any ideology - beyond anti-Semitism and his own advancement - is rather dubious, yet the broadly 'socialistic' strand within Nazism was never fully extinguished.  Indeed, it was demonstrated by the "Strength through Joy" workers' leisure organisation and the central importance throughout of the 'volksgemeinschaft' or 'national community'.  Goebbels himself, alongside the Strasser brothers, was a proponent of the 'socialist' strand of National Socialism.

All of which merely goes to show that the traditional "left-right" typology of politics can be profoundly unhelpful in understanding such complexities - and that the 140 character tweet is not the place for such challenging and divisive issues to be aired.

The "Mössingen General Strike"

 This curious story caught my eye this morning.  


Yesterday - 30th January - was the 80th anniversary of Hitler's so-called "seizure of power", and the day involved much memorializing and a good deal more soul-searching about the fragility of democracy and the need for vigilance...

Of course, the "seizure of power" was really nothing of the sort.  Hitler was merely given his opportunity on that day, because he was elevated to the German Chancellorship by the country's elites in the hope that they might be able to control him and - through him - govern Germany. He did not need asking twice.  He took them for all they were worth and swiftly showed them who controlled whom.  But, though the 30th January was feted in Nazi Germany as the "day of the seizure of power" - of the "Machtergreifung" as the German version has it - it was just the beginning of that process in which Hitler's power was secured and extended and the dictatorship was built - it was in fact to be a process that would last around 18 months until August of 1934.  

So, 30th January as a turning point is a bit of a red herring, historically speaking.  But the day's significance to contemporaries was still considerable, as this following story demonstrates.

On the afternoon of 30th January - as news of Hitler's appointment spread - a group of communists and socialists in the small town of Mössingen in south-western Germany decided to organise a protest of their own.  As preparations continued for calling a strike for the following day a demonstration began that evening in which locals cried "Hitler means War!" and "Perish Hitler!" - a corruption of the Nazi slogan "Juda verrecke" or "Perish Juda". 

The following day - the 31st - protests continued along the same lines, and a strike was called of local workers.  At around 2pm, some 600 workers were already out in protest, their numbers swelling as the workmen from other factories were called out.  

By early evening, the authorities seem to have decided that the workers of Mössingen had had their fun and a group of police armed with rubber truncheons broke up the demonstration and sent the protesters fleeing over the surrounding fields. 

In the aftermath - 98 strikers were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.  A smaller number of ringleaders were singled out for harsher treatment, with some being imprisoned and at least one being sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, (which opened in March).  

After that, the story of the "Mössingen General Strike" disappeared.  The Nazis did not want any blemish on their narrative of a grateful nation welcoming the Führer to its bosom.  Post-war history also forgot about Mössingen, a small town caught up in the maelstrom of events.  Yet, the strike at Mössingen, for all its modest origins, was the only strike organised in Germany in direct protest at Hitler's appointment - and for that fact alone, it deserves to be better known. 

This small tale tells us that Germany did not "go gently" into the Nazi night.  At least some of its citizens saw clearly the danger that Hitler portended - even on the day of his appointment - and were prepared to act .