Many years ago, shortly after his 21st birthday, my Dad started walking from Normandy to Berlin with the US Army. It is my understanding that he carried a radio on his back, and likely came ashore in Normandy well after D-Day; while not at the front lines he nonetheless put his life at risk as part of the effort to put an end to the Nazi horrors.
In 1973 my good friend Richard Nixon sent me a draft card. We were living in Canada by then, so I was in no immediate danger; but Dad's vehement opposition to the war in Vietnam contrasted with his military service. I set about reading as much as I could about Hitler's rise to power, starting with the classic The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William Shirer; at the time that was pretty much what could be found outside academic journals. I concluded that advocating for peace is good but sometimes you need a more forceful response.
The questions in my mind revolved around how did Hitler manage to come to power in a democracy? How did he stay in power? Were all Germans complicit in supporting him, or was it only the politicians that he bullied and the industrialists that made fortunes working for him? There was and is a huge amount of history written about the war, battles back and forth, terrain taken and lost; but many of these social history questions have not really been clearly answered. Many are only now being revealed by a new generation of historians, mainly Germans born after the war, and as these books are translated the world can find out more.
For starters, there is now a new biography of Hitler, the first serious academic work on the topic written by a German since the mid-1930's. Volker Ullrich's two-volume biography is detailed and well worth reading; Volume 1 (published in German in 2013, in English in 2016) covers the years to 1939.
This is all now critically important in light of the last US election, and the upcoming one. The January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol, where a mob attempted to change the results of the 2020 election, are a horrible reminder of the Beer Hall Putsch of November 8-9, 1923, where a mob incited by Hitler attempted to take control of the Bavarian parliament. The Putsch failed, of course, and Hitler went to jail where he became a martyr to the cause and wrote Mein Kampf; the legal system of the 2020's has moved much more slowly.
Hitler learned from this that a frontal assault wouldn't work, but that he needed to work within the democratic structures of the day. It took just over 9 years before he was named Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Among the first orders of business were to abolish future elections.
Today's article in The Guardian (click here) shows further evidence of the disregard for the rule of law, if any more were needed, held by one of the nominees; the threats may seem farcical but the building up of warnings that the election, if lost, will have been rigged and force will be needed to put things right, is scary.
So my intention is to read and report regularly between now and November 5. Two of the books in the lineup are shown in the photos below. I'm not sure how much I'll get done in the short time available, especially given other demands on my time; but if this encourages you to dig deeper on your own, I'll be happy. Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
