"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 . 

Christmas Books...

Its that time of year again, so I would like to jot down a few of my favourite books of 2012, to give you - should you require it - a few pointers for the perfect history gift for your own resident historian...

First up - my absolute favourite book this year - was Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956.  If you have an interest in central Europe or in Stalinism - this is the book for you.  Brilliantly conceived and executed, insightful, sympathetic, readable...  I really can't recommend it highly enough.

Next - Antony Beevor's single volume The Second World War was a welcome addition this year.  It has all the old Beevorian touches, and reads fantastically well, but there is the suggestion that the sheer scale of the book prevented the usual flourishes, so real devotees of his work might feel that it is lacking something in pizzazz - but it is excellent all the same...

One book from late last year that sticks in the mind is Robert Gerwarth's Hitler's Hangman, a biography of Reinhard Heydrich which is both scholarly and thoroughly readable, finally a volume to do justice to this most fascinating, mephistophelean figure.

Other nods go to:

Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers; a revisionist assessment of the run-up to the outbreak of World War One.

Clare Mulley's The Spy Who Loved, about the remarkable life of Polish SOE agent Christine Granville - aka Krystyna Skarbek.  Perhaps a tad breathless for my taste, but still an excellent piece of work.

Patrick Bishop's Target Tirpitz is a characteristically rollicking read about the various efforts to destroy one of Hitler's most dangerous battleships.

Nicholas Best's Five Days that Shocked the World is a well written account of the final week of World War Two in Europe, skilfully combining many memoir accounts.

Lastly, I would like to recommend a slightly unusual choice, as I think this book evaded every one of Britain's literary editors - Jonathan Clements' Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy is the biography of one of Europe's most important leaders of the 20th century - Finland's Gustav Mannerheim...  You might think that Finnish history is not terribly relevant, but the genius of this book is that it makes it relevant - and Mannerheim's life is the stuff of fiction...  Well worth a try..

Of course, all of these are physical books (that's how I like 'em) - but if you are into the whole e-book thing - you could try any of these - or else you could try my own new release, The Wolf's Lair - a collection of published and unpublished essays on the history of the Third Reich, which is priced at a remarkable £1.99... ;-)

Happy Christmas all

Hitler and his 'charisma'

Hitler's 'charisma' & Laurence Rees' new book... 

One of the most interesting developments in our understanding of Nazi Germany in recent years has been the recognition of Adolf Hitler as a charismatic ‘personality’; an apparently magnetic character instead of merely a malevolent, psychopathic void.  It is indeed a paradox that such a fundamentally dysfunctional individual - unable to form normal relationships, unable to debate rationally, unable to perform most normal social interactions - could have become a figure of adulation for so many millions of Germans.

It’s a very valid question, and Laurence Rees’ new book – and the TV series that it accompanies – draws on this trend to examine Hitler’s charismatic appeal and ask how all this was possible.  Rees goes some way to providing an answer, arguing that Hitler’s rise to power was attributable – at least in part – to an unholy fusion of his own most peculiar nature and the urgent need of the German people in the inter-war years to find some sort of messiah-figure to save them from their malaise.  Germans, Rees suggests, desperately projected their political and messianic desires onto Hitler, and his arrogant, intolerant, inflexible personality appeared to confirm that he was, indeed, someone who was ‘on a mission'.  It turned out to be a marriage made in the darkest depths of Hades.

In fact, I think there are two points relating to Hitler's charisma.  On the one hand, there is what we might call Hitler's 'political charisma' - the aspect outlined above, which encompasses his undoubted sense of political 'style', his speaking manner, his dress sense, his image-consciousness - his charisma, as it was experienced by the many millions of his followers across Germany, the vast majority of whom never met the man, and never even saw him up close.  This aspect of the story Rees explains rather well.

The other aspect - that of Hitler's personal charisma - is a little more complex, and this Rees handles rather less well.  Peculiar though it may sound to our modern sensibilities, Hitler undoubtedly had a magnetic personal appeal.  This has been confirmed many times by members of his household - those that knew him best and saw him most often and, crucially, when off-duty - all of whom testified to his immense personal charm; his bourgeois manners, his sense of humour and his caring, avuncular nature towards his secretaries.  

On another level, Hitler also had the knack of impressing those who visited him in his headquarters.  He tended - according to those that met him - to use his striking blue eyes to great effect, holding his gaze on a new arrival to 'test' them, for instance. Few were unmoved - Stauffenberg was one of those that found Hitler personally most unimpressive, but he was very much in the minority. In other instances, Hitler proved himself most adept at convincing his underlings of his point of view, not always by ranting and raving (though that also played a part, especially as the war turned against him), but by persuasion.  There are countless examples of military men coming to the Fuhrer-HQ urgently seeking to convince Hitler of their opinion, and coming away equally passionately convinced of Hitler's...  

This is an important distinction.  If we suggest that the "political charisma" is most important in Hitler's rise to power, it is then the "personal charisma" that is surely more instrumental in keeping him there, in heading off potential rivals and critics - with ultimately disastrous effect.

This aspect of his personal charisma, I would argue, still does not get sufficient attention.  We saw a glimpse of it in the excellent German film "Downfall"- where it was almost possible - thanks to Bruno Ganz's brilliant performance - to feel sympathy for Hitler as his Reich collapsed about him.  Yet, this is still rather the exception.  It seems, perhaps, that we are still unable to acknowledge Hitler's humanity - we still prefer to see him as an 'other', someone quite apart from ourselves.  I would suggest, on the contrary, that acknowledging his humanity tends to make his crimes all the more horrendous.  

Though it does not go far enough then, Rees' book is nonetheless interesting, and is a useful vehicle for many of the first-hand accounts from eye-witnesses and participants that he has collected over his years as a TV documentary film-maker.  Consequently, there are numerous interesting contributions from ordinary Germans; those transfixed by a Hitler speech or perhaps unnerved by his piercing blue eyes or his unblinking stare.  

But the book feels padded and overlong.  And, with other venerable Hitler volumes available, I would suggest that this subject would have been better treated in a shorter, more essayistic style, rather than producing yet another full-length narrative. It is also curious that the book comes to a rather abrupt halt, covering the last two years or so of the war in a final, breathless chapter, despite this being a time when – as Ian Kershaw has convincingly shown – it was Hitler’s charismatic leadership that was largely instrumental in keeping the Third Reich fighting to the bitter end.  Perhaps this is where Rees reveals his blindspot - Hitler's "personal charisma".

Hitler was undoubtedly charismatic, and this is an aspect of the story of the Third Reich that is well-worth examining in some detail.  Unfortunately, however, Rees’ book does not quite do the job well or coherently enough.  It is too long, too unfocused and too obviously a TV tie-in.  There is certainly a book to be written on Hitler’s charismatic aspect – but, sadly, this isn’t it.  

(this is an extended version of the review that appeared in the Independent on Sunday: 14.10.2012)

The Missing of World War One

I went along on the trip last weekend to the Western Front, accompanying a group with the tour firm that I am involved with - Historical Trips (www.historicaltrips.com).  It was fascinating, of course, and chilling, visiting all those sites of such unimaginable carnage and slaughter - Ypres, Messines, the Somme, Cambrai, the Lochnagar Crater.  But what struck me most, perhaps, was the sheer number of 'missing' that one saw listed on so many memorials...  How on earth can one 'lose' so many people?

I first encountered this aspect a few years ago when - in a fit of enthusiasm for genealogical research - I tracked down my great uncle (via the Commonwealth War Graves Commission www.cwgc.org) Charles Moorhouse, who I had been told was killed during the Great War.

Dud Corner

I read on the CWGC website that Charles had been killed in April 1918 and was listed on the memorial at Dud Corner cemetery near Loos in the Pas de Calais.  Visiting the site, I found that my great-uncle was one of over 20,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers commemorated there who 'have no known grave': just a name, engraved on a large marble plaque, fixed to the cemetery wall.

Menin Gate

I hadn't really thought about Charles, or the "missing", again until this weekend.  Naturally, on our tour, we visited the beautiful and sombre Menin Gate at Ypres, where nearly 55,000 names are inscribed of those British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Ypres salient and 'have no known grave'.  To their eternal credit, the people of Ypres mark that sacrifice every evening at 8.00 with a short service of remembrance and the sounding of the Last Post.

Not far from Ypres, is another memorial - that of Tyne Cot - which was built to accommodate and commemorate those of the missing that did not fit on the vast Menin Gate...  The Tyne Cot memorial, therefore, commemorates an additional 35,000 UK and Commonwealth soldiers listed as "missing".

The following day, our tour made its way to the battlefields of the Somme, where famously, some 20,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day alone.  But the Somme offensive lasted over four months, and the meat-grinder would scarcely slacken.  Consequently, the nearby village of Thiepval was chosen for the construction of a vast memorial to the missing of the battle - over 72,000 names are inscribed on Lutyens' strangely beautiful arch - the largest British war memorial in the world.


Totting up the figures from those four memorials, all within a few miles of each other in northern France and Belgium, one quickly reaches nearly 200,000, a large proportion of the total estimated 500,000 British and Commonwealth "missing" of World War One. (according to Fabian Ware's study of 1937)

It is still staggering to me that an army can 'lose' half a million men in a war.  Of course, there are many unnamed graves on the Western Front, but they account for only around 180,000 of the missing, leaving nearly 330,000 - a third of a million men - completely unaccounted for.  Where are their bodies? Were they atomised by shellfire? Or simply sucked deep into the Flanders mud?  We just don't know.  I appreciate that French and Belgian farmers are constantly turning up war material and bones with their ploughs - we saw some of their 'iron harvest' stacked at the edge of a field - but 330,000 men?  330.000 skulls, 660,000 femurs and tibias...  Simply astonishing.  For those that teach World War One, it is perhaps worth stressing this aspect (if they don't already) as it brings home the sheer horror of the fighting and the scale of the sacrifice - the blood price - that was paid by all sides.  Lest we forget.