Hitler: 1936-1945: Nemesis

The New Yorker declared the first volume of Ian Kershaw's two-volume masterpiece "as close to definitive as anything we are likely to see," and that promise is fulfilled in this stunning second volume.

As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and triumphed in his first challenge to the European powers. Idolized by large segments of the population and firmly supported by the Nazi regime, Hitler is poised to subjugate Europe. Nine years later, his vaunted war machine destroyed, Allied forces sweeping across Germany, Hitler will end his life with a pistol shot to his head. 48 pages of b/w photographs.

However the biggest flaw of this account is the subtle but pervasive bias throughout. Kershaw states up front that he detests Hitler but is obviously fascinated by his career. Later, Kershaw concludes that Hitler was "an ill-educated beerhall demagogue and racist bigot". While true, it is an incomplete description. Yet for Kershaw it is enough and he uses this account to paint a portrait of Hitler almost as a self-destructive fool who was incapable of seeing reality. Not only Hitler, but the Third Reich, the Whermacht itself, most of the generals and even the German people seem pretty incapable and fatalistic here.

Nowhere is Kershaw's account more biased than in his account of wartime operations. German successes are minimized, the campaigns in Poland, France, Norway and the Balkans get one page or less each. Kershaw attempts to chide the German Navy by stating that the cruiser Blucher was sunk "by a single shell from an ancient coastal battery". In fact, the cruiser was hit by two 11", thirteen 6", thirty 57mm shells and two torpedoes and despite this loss, the Germans still took Oslo. On the other hand, Allied disasters are totally ignored. Kershaw portrays Hitler's anguish over the loss of the Bismarck (mistakenly identified as a "pocket battleship"), but fails to mention the loss of HMS Hood. Hitler triumphs, like the glider assault on Fort Eban Emael or the sinking of HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow are ignored. Allied defeats, like Kasserine Pass or Gazala, do not appear in these pages. Later in the war, he notes the "ceaseless bombing that the Luftwaffe was powerless to prevent," while ignoring the fact that the Luftwaffe in fact dealt the Royal Air Force night bombers severe setbacks in early 1944. Arnhem is described as "heavy fighting," no mention of the virtual destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division. The Ardennes Offensive is described only in negative terms, no mention of the surrender of most of the US 106th Division or the initial panic all the way back to Eisenhower.

On the eastern front, it is much the same. Kershaw states about Operation Barbarossa, "in retrospect, it seems sheer idiocy" and says that, "Hitler's best strategy in autumn 1940 would have been to sit tight and await developments". It is hard to see what developments might have occurred to help Germany after 1941, and Hitler was certainly aware of this. Kershaw then claims that Barbarossa failed in July 1941! Absolutely ridiculous. The 1942 Case Blue strategy is described as "sheer lunacy". Certainly Barbarossa and Blue had over-optimistic objectives with inadequate resources, but "idiocy" and "lunacy" are certainly inappropriate descriptions. Kershaw ignores the fact that both offensives gained most of their objectives and had the Germans stopped to consolidate in time and been more flexible about retreats, then both offensives would have ended up as net gains for Germany.

Kershaw, like many other historians, directs intense criticism toward Hitler's intervention in military operations. To be sure, Hitler's mistakes in 1943-1945 cost Germany dearly. However, this doesn't give the reader a balanced view for two reasons. First, Hitler's interventions that were led to success are ignored. The glider attack on Fort Eban Emael was Hitler's idea, but is not mentioned. Nor are Hitler's orders to modify and enhance the German Panzer Arm in 1940-1 covered here, although they might show where Hitler was ahead of the "technical expert" (in fact, there were some real dunces in the German ordnance bureau). On the second count, Kershaw ignores the disastrous interference of other wartimes leaders like Churchill and Stalin. Churchill badly hurt the British war effort by diverting forces to Greece in 1941, then Singapore in 1942, then ordering a "no retreat" from Tobruk and later diverting RAF Bomber Command to bomb political rather than strategic targets. Stalin's stupidity in 1941 cost the Soviet Union 3 million men through "no retreat" tactics, and then thousands more in early 1942 in premature offensives. Furthermore, modern American presidents have involved themselves with micromanagement in military affairs that Hitler would never have dreamed of: Johnson had a terrain model of Khe Sanh built in the White House in 1968 and he attempted to direct units down to company level! The Kosovo War in 1999 allowed leaders to direct individual aircraft or missiles. Furthermore, the loathing and distrust that Hitler felt for his generals was echoed in 1968 and 1999 by US presidents who did not trust their military advisors. A less biased author might have been able to note that Hitler's interference was neither unique or wholly inimical.

By the end, it is apparent that this is a very flawed and biased account. Even murderers like Hitler deserve an honest account but Kershaw does not deliver that. Hitler was evil but he was also tinged with genius (Kershaw would say it was gambler's luck) and charisma, and he was also genuinely popular in Nazi Germany. The fact that a man from such a meager background could rise to control not only Germany but much of Europe is still staggering. So yes, he was "an ill-educated beerhall demagogue and racist bigot" as Kershaw describes, but he was also a lot more than that. He was a man who had the ability to rise from obscurity to threaten the entire human race with his evil vision. However in a self-hating account such as this, Hitler appears little more than a whimsical dreamer.


Good book but not fun to read   November 14, 2000
Tom Munro (Melbourne, Victoria Australia)
83 out of 97 found this review helpful

This is the second and concluding volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler. It takes up the story in 1936 when Hitler started a policy of rearmament followed by territorial expansion.

The major problem in reading this book is nothing to do with the author who writes with considerable skill. It has nothing to do with the material in the book that includes updated material and a perspective, which is more in line with reality than earlier books. The problem is that Hitler was such a boring self centered and self-pitying person. After 1943 when Germany started to suffer defeat after defeat he withdrew from most social intercourse with other people. He suffered paranoid delusions that he was being continually betrayed and would eat by himself and bore anyone senseless about what a raw deal he was getting.

By this time Hitler spent most of his time directing the German military. He was not involved as was Stalin with day to day control of his part or directing industrial production. The others dealt with in the book are generally military commanders. Most of them have the moral depth of a dried out puddle and their main complaint with Hitler was that he seemed a bit common and low class.

Early biographies of Hitler were influenced by the memoirs of German Generals. In addition early histories of Nazism were influenced by the times. After Hitler had gone the west faced a far more serious opponent in Joseph Stalin. There was an urgent need to incorporate West Germany into European Defence. It thus became convenient to shelve off responsibilities for what had happened in the war to Hitler and the SS. Books written by German Generals had the aim of white washing thier reputations and placing the blame on Hitler for the defeat of Germany and its racist policies. These memoirs led to earlier histories of Germany absolving Germans for crimes of the time. More recent books such as Hitler's Willing Executioners have sought to show that the crimes of the regime were broadly embraced. That every little village in Germany was willing to put up signs insulting Jews and to force them out. Kershaw's book spares no punches and shows how the German military totally embraced Hitler's plans for the destruction of Russia reducing it to a rural appendage of Germany.

Since the war has become more distant the phenomena of revisionism has come into being. That is suggestions that the genocide of the Jews did not take place and that Hitler had a limited role in it.

Kershaw's tries to rebuff these theories and discusses the Holocaust in the light of there allegations. The book clearly shows that the destruction of the Jew's was Hitler's responsibility. It does however suggest that the policy was arrived at in a different way than normally was thought to be the case. That is that rather than they're being a specific order at a certain point that the Jews be eliminated the policy evolved. The background to the policy was Hitler who never seemed to make a speech that did not centre on racial hatred. He continually spoke out against "Jewish Bolshevism" portraying communism as the work of Jews. The killing of Jews in a systematic way seems to have started on the Eastern Front and grew out of the killing of Communist Officials. The police units who had the responsibility of killing communists started to routinely kill Jews at the same time. This led in turn to the establishment of the extermination camps. Kershaw shows that the decision clearly would have been referred to Hitler. The way that he does this is to show how all other decisions involving the execution of significant numbers of people were referred to Hitler. Hitler made decisions about the continuation and ceasing of the euthanasia programs for instance. At the same time Hitler was eager for such decisions to be verbal ones rather than written decrees to avoid the repercussions of such decisions.

One is continually struck by the degree to which there was sympathy for Hitler's program in every part of German society. Racism was deeply part of German life and there was never any trouble getting Germans out to beat up some innocent Jewish people or to break their shop windows and to steal from them. Courts, police, the army and all other instruments of government embraced the Nazis with excitement and passion. There was never a moments hesitation or sympathy for the Jews, Poles Russians or any of the victims of the regime.

With regard to the military history of the period he demonstrates that the German Army were generally supportive of Hitler and his strategy up to 1944. This support not only included his strategy by the means by which it was to be achieved. Prior to the invasion of Russia Hitler had decided to destroy Russia as an entity. He wanted to kill all members of the communist party and to reduce Russia to a nation of peasants. He aimed at not only shooting all communist officials but he wanted to destroy the major cities of Leningrad and Moscow. The higher ranks of the German Army were totally behind this policy as shown by another recent book Hitler's War in the East by Muller and Uebershar. They lectured to their soldiers on the need to kill Russian officials and that the war was one of extermination. Hitler's Generals and large numbers of Germans were believers in a racist nationalism.

As a book this two-volume study is no doubt the definitive biography of Hitler and has incorporated recent developments. It is however not a pleasant read.


Hitler on the dissecting table   October 31, 2000
John Barry Kenyon (Pattaya City, Chonburi Thailand)
42 out of 46 found this review helpful

Not surprisingly, this is a splendid follow up to Ian Kershaw's biography of the younger Hitler to 1936. The author has not set out to provide a new thesis, still less a revisionist stance, but provides a meticulously researched account of Hitler's successes followed by his slide into total defeat. He has used recently available source material, especially Goebbels, and livens up his narrative by pertinent statements of ordinary Germans who lived through the second world war. Kershaw's judgments are always sane. We learn that the British escape at Dunkirk was Hitler's military blunder, not some halfbaked attempt to encourage the peacemakers in London. The author is rightly suspicious that the Russians found and performed an autopsy on the Fuhrer's corpse. What comes across strongly in this book is Hitler's obsession with secrecy which probably explains why massacres and atrocities were rarely debated in Hitler's presence. At the end, Hitler was totally obsessed by treason and betrayal. Even Goebbels, it appears, tried to persuade him to make peace with Stalin. The index to the book is excellent and makes specific inquiries that much easier to track down. Some of the lesser known photographs appear to be stills from Die Deutsche Wochenshau. This volume is a thorough and up to date investigation of what made Hitler tick and how and why he ultimately failed to achieve his military goals.


Magisterial, a model biography   December 29, 2000
pnotley@hotmail.com (Edmonton, Alberta Canada)
19 out of 24 found this review helpful

The second volume of Kershaw's biography of Hitler cements his reputation as one of the finest historians of modern Germany. Throrough and definitive on every topic, scrupulously and fulsomely annotated, with many brilliant passages, Kershaw's life is not simply the definitive account of a dictator, but of the society that created him and the world he ravaged. Most biographies simply concentrate on the man and elide the background that made him possible. Kershaw's book, by contrast, is superb in noting both the extent to which he influenced Germany and the way larger trends and forces affected his actions.

Particuarly valuable is Kershaw's concept of "working towards the Fuhrer," and the idea of cumulative radicalization. With full acknowledgements to his scholarly mentors and colleagues Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen, Kershaw notes how Hitler systematically undermined the normal structures of German government. The cabinet did not meet after 1938, the bureaucratic structures lost their authority, and months would go by as Hitler ignored vital issues and instead let competing factions fight it out among themselves. As a result crucial questions like the move towards a war economy in 1937 occurred not by design but as a result of this chaotic regime. The result was that Nazi Germany, apparently the heir to the cruel efficiency of Prussian bureaucracy, had an amazingly flawed bureaucratic regime. The victory of America, Britain and Russia over Italy, Japan and Germany was as much a victory of superior bureaucracy as it was of armies. Kershaw notes how Nazi officials squabbles among themselves and how they spent six months inconclusively debating whether to ban horse racing. Germany did not even try to solve its critical labor shortages by getting rid of domestic servants until the last few months of war, and by then vested interests made sure that it would be largely ineffective.

The consequence was to encourage the most radical groups among the Nazis and those who supported the most vicious alternatives. It was radicals who took the initiative in the anti-Church struggle and it was their momentum which led to Krystallnacht, the ghettoization and Poland, and ultimately the Holocaust. This is not to say that Hitler did not order or encourage the Holocaust. On this issue he was the most radical of the radicals, even if it was Heydrich who was crucial to putting it into practice. "It had consisted of authorizing more than directing." says Kershaw. But his account of how the genocide combined a dialectic of local initiative, central authority and wide government consensus, as we move from the euthanasia program to the first Polish atrocities, to the abandonment of the Madagascar Plan to the Einzatzgruppen and the setting up of the extermination camps, provides an account that makes horrible, yet scholarly impeccable reading.

One area where Hitler did have a large amount of authority was on military strategy, and Kershaw provides a nuanced account of Hitler's skill as a military leader. As a military leader Hitler's intuitiions were no worse than Stalin's and Churchill's. On questions like the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the attack on Czechoslovakia and the successful war against France Hitler was successful despite the opposition of much of the military. In his largest single mistake, the attack on the Soviet Union, the military shared his dangerous over-optimism. What hampered Hitler as a military leader was not so much his flaws but an ideological fanaticism that prevented him from taking other people's advice and from delegating authority. Even worse than this was a hatred of the Soviet Union which led Hitler to start a war that would have been extremely difficult for him to win. After he started losing his belligerent refusals to retreat may have hastened German defeat. But after Stalingrad and definitely after Kursk he could not have possibly have won and the major problem with his military strategy is that any negotiated peace would have required his removal. For obvious reasons this was not an option for Hitler.

And so we go to the final pages as Kershaw details how Germany was bombed into rubble while Hitler continued his Wagnerian rantings. Gradually the area under his control slips away and his followers fall away or are cut off and we see the final pathetic man behind the hideously empty solipsist. Hitler, Kershaw properly reminds us, was not insane. This makes his death at least, somewhat more satisfying.


Kershaw's Bunker   November 21, 2000
Luger (USA)
13 out of 138 found this review helpful

This book, promising to be a novel account of the twilight of the Fuhrer's momentous struggle against the menace of judeo-bolshevism, is full of what Hitler himself would call talmudistic pettifoggery but says nothing new. Indeed, the only good parts seem lifted directly from the brilliant David Irving's pathbreaking, revisionist "Hitler's War." The rest is just plain uneventful. For example, there still is NO repeat NO evidence of a written order concerning the necessary internment camps, a fact that must horrify the hysterical Ms. Lipstadt no end. Save your time for the Fuhrer's own fascinating "Mein Kampf" and "Table Talk."