Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

I am drained.

Two months of free, uninterrupted time immersed in the history of a singular, totalitarian culture and civilization is draining. It sucks the soul from the reader while binding them to the words by inspiring a sick fascination. "How did they do this?" "Why did nobody stop them?" "What atrocity comes next?"

And among all these thoughts, there is the ultimate question pounding at the back of the mind: "Can it happen again?"

How did they do this: Hitler was the right man, at the right time, in the right place to take power. He alone had the experiences of being an "Austrian waif" along with the single-mindedness and background that would allow him to rise above his fellow German soldiers. Germany was broken, not just militarily or economically, but psychologically. Collectively the hopes of an entire people were crushed under Allied artillery fire.

Why did nobody stop them: Lots of people tried. The police fired on the Nazi Party's Beer Hall Putsch. Churchill tried to rally the British Parliament. The central European countries called out for help again and again. The generals and officers of Valkaryeie tried blowing up Hitler numerous times.

The most consistent thread of failure is this: division amongst Hitler's enemies allowed Hitler to conquer them.
* Hitler rose to power due to an alliance with conservative factions who thought they could control him. Social democrats and communists were too divided to combine their efforts against him.
* Poland would not allow Russian troops through her land, making an agreement between Britain, France, and Russia impossible.
* Chamberlain had an extreme reluctance towards dealing with the Russians, and preferred to manage the constellation of central and eastern European states... but those states distrusted each other and wanted the lands of their neighbors!
* Once Hitler had finally been nearly successfully killed, the officers of the Wehrmacht who had joined the conspiracy failed to rally to the conspiracy and attempted to slink away.

By playing his enemies off each other, or by their own mistaken divisions, Hitler was able to destroy them one by one by one.

The second reason why nobody stopped him was simpler: nobody believed him. He wrote it all out. Mein Kampf was literally Hitler's primary source of income before he achieved even a hint of power. It spelled out every goal he had and was the source of German grand strategy from the rise of the Nazi party to his suicide in the Berlin bunker. When a man says he is going to expel an entire group of people from your country, that they're the reason your people are suffering, and that he will use violence against them, you should believe that man.

What atrocity comes next: a dizzying array. While reading, I lurched from historical marker to historical marker with my preexisting knowledge. I knew he rose to power in 1933. I knew he purged out the SA with the more elite SS. I knew the slow motion escalation of terror that led to the Holocaust. I knew he declared war on Poland in 1939, that America would join in 1941, and he would fall in 1945.

But what I didn't know is how slow it was. "One day Germany was the Weimar Republic, and the next day it wasn't" is a naive way of thinking about it, but that's how I thought about it. Instead, Nazi power grows like a weed. First, it's an election where they have a viable minority. Then they gain a couple million more votes in the next. And then they're allied with the conservatives. Hitler is ruling. They've begun purging the violent radicals (who they framed)... they've begun purging the moderates. Hitler and the Nazi legislature are in absolute control. Hitler is now in absolute control. Hitler is now the final and total arbiter of life and death.

But within those steps are weeks and months. Death did not come for the world with a knock at the door; it came for the world with its robes loudly shuffling.

Can it happen again: Obviously, yes. It has happened again. The world has sat by while tyrants destroy those that make a mess of their pure dystopias. The world has sat by as mobs bring machetes, sticks, and stones across the faces of children. But could it happen in a rich country? Could it happen in a country that is richer than modern day South Africa or Indonesia (which have a similar GDP per capita to pre-war Germany)?

Certainly. All it takes is:
* An economic crisis. [✓?]
* Racial and class resentment [✓]
* A demagogue to inspire the people to violence [✓]
* A demagogue who pursues societal purity [✓]
* A demagogue that consistently repeats calls for international war [✓]
* A divided and broken opposition [???]

Since finishing the history, I have one question in my mind now: Are we divided and broken?