Creating Hitler’s Germany: The Birth of Extremism
How did it happen? This must be the greatest question of the 20th century. How did a technologically advanced, highly educated, European parliamentary democracy fall under the control of such a violently irrational, immoral, totalitarian regime as the Nazi Reich? This was not a foreign conquest or a military coup; the German people voted for Hitler, if only by 52 to 48.
Tim Heath has already written two books on the BDM, the female branch of the Hitler Youth. Some of the interview material is recycled in this book. I do not think he solves the puzzle, but he lets ordinary Germans, victims and oppressors, speak for themselves, either with hindsight or through contemporary letters and diaries. Although the book concentrates on Hitler’s rise to power, it goes right through to the final tragedy, which he calls the ‘reciprocal genocide’.
It is not pleasant reading, but it is a lesson in what can befall a country not so different from our own.
