Rating: 
Summary: The fall of evil
Review: This work is a fitting companion to the author's earlier "Hubris", and takes the story of Adolf Hitler down to the end of his life, and the end of the war he almost single-handedly caused. There is a great reliance upon the Goebbels diaries, and also post-war memoirs of others in the Nazi regime. I found the book well-written, although there were too many instances of an English word or phrase followed by its German equivalent, an affectation I could have done without. Also, the author was enamored of certain phrases, such as "pushing on an open door", which he used, in my opinion, excessively. On the whole, however, this is a book well worth reading, for it gives the reader the view of the War from the German perspective, and helps to explain a lot of what Hitler did, or was blamed for doing. Make no mistake, Kershaw places responsibility for basically everything that happened in Germany squarely at Hitler's doorstep, either directly or by implication. That's where it belongs, obviously. Read the book, you'll learn more than you may want to know about this embodiment of ultimate evil, but only by understanding this type of person will we be able to successfully confront someone similar in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Nemesis inferior to Hubris
Review: Vol. II is not up to the standards of Vol. I. Its prose is painful, there are many errors (constant misspelling of Kharkov in the Soviet Union), the explanations of important decision are prosaic. Kershaw does not a good handle on Hitler's inner workings here as he did in the earlier volume. Of course the earlier subject, why Hitler was the way he was, is much more interesting. Here Hitler is simply robot-like doing what he said he would do and finally failing. But one thing does come clear to me. I used to think that any nation could fall for a Hitler-type under the right circumstances. Kershaw has led me to conclude -- and this is probably not his intent -- that there is something inherently weird about the German people who could follow Hitler because they essentially approved of much of his objectives if not of all his methods. There is something wrong with the Germans -- it is not all Hitler's fault. There is something wrong with their military, intellectual, industrial, and cultural elites; their is something wrong with the way their nation has developed, how it has 'germanized' Christianity and western thought in a diabolic direction. In short, I am convinced that Hitler was possessed by evil -- the Devil if you will -- and that most of the German people gave itself willingly into the hands of diabolic evil. Kershaw has little to say about this because history narrowly interpreted cannot really answer fundamental questions. In fact, it cannot really answer any questions. History can only be understood from outside of History itself. A Hitler and the Germans who followed him can only be understood as the breaking out of satanic activity from the prisons of hell, allowed by God for a time and a season. I think perhaps I will stop reading about Hitler and the Germans; I have learned all I am likely to learn.
Rating: 
Summary: The Devil In The Wolf's Lair
Review: Volume one, "Hubris," rode the wave of a crescendo of Hitler's evil imagination, the misplaced anger of a nation, and the unconscionable cowardice of men of influence in Germany and elsewhere. For all the grim realities chronicled by the author, the reader experienced a grotesque curiosity in following Hitler's improbable ascent to power and the unfolding of personal, national, and international events that made his ascent possible.
Volume two continues the excellence of research and writing, but it is not a tonic for the soul. On the contrary, "Nemesis" is a scholarly apocalypse of the degradation of human life. While it is very possible that many readers will be more familiar with the events of this volume, most will probably be revolted to see just how inhumane the Third Reich really was. Although this work is generally free of polemic, it is safe to venture that author Ian Kershaw would like those who romanticize the Third Reich or present day neo-Nazi youthful idiocy to get a craw full of the real thing.
Kershaw's treatment of Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust reveals a dictator who is crazy like a fox. The author's careful examination of Hitler's orchestration of this abomination reveals a calculating mind and the rather extraordinary measures he took to lead his nation, and particularly his intimate advisors in all compartments of government, down the slippery slope to inevitable genocide. For all of Goebbels' carefully orchestrated anti-Semitic propaganda, Kershaw observed that there is no executive order, no speech, and no document, in which Der Fuhrer explicitly orders mass deaths of Jews. The Holocaust in effect began in the mid-1930's, through discriminatory laws and more significantly the intimidation and violence quietly encouraged and judicially tolerated among Nazi youth thugs. Those eager to do their leader's will believed they had a free hand from Hitler to do with the Jews as they wished, and of course in this they were correct.
According to Kershaw Hitler realized that open genocide would not only bring world condemnation but would probably not be accepted even by a nation that hailed him. Thus, he was careful not to establish concentration and extermination camps where they would be obvious to Germans, specifically, in Germany. Rather, the grim business of detention and mass execution was centered in Poland after its conquest. Nor did Hitler originally envision the cold-blooded gassing and crematories of the death camps. Hitler's utopia, if it can be called that, was more complex and quite surprising, even for a man like Hitler.
Throughout both volumes Kershaw goes to considerable pains to elaborate one of Der Fuhrer's most significant ruminations, his perception that Germany did not have enough "living space." This is a critical piece of the puzzle, for it explains what would appear to be madness of his foreign and military policy, particularly in the later years of the Reich. To be sure, Hitler wished to reclaim what had been lost in World War I, and in these efforts he enjoyed universal support from the citizenry and the military. Restoration, after all, made perfect sense.
But having accomplished this, Hitler's vision of the future was evidently something that few citizens truly understood, nor did they feel it worth the horrible sacrifice of human life and civilization invested in making it come true. Hitler envisioned a new Germany extending well into western Russia and the Balkans. He would then have the space to expand his country as well as oil and natural resources into virtual perpetuity. His plan went on to a relocation of western Russian citizenry further to the east, and beyond that to relocating European Jews to Siberia, where he expected them to die. [He had briefly considered Madagascar for similar abominable purposes.] This vision of the future explains the dilemma that every schoolboy has pondered for sixty years: why attack Russia and fight a two-front war?
Russia would eventually drive the Germans back at horrible cost to both nations. Hitler's megalomania prevented him from accepting advice from his generals, who recommended strategic withdrawals from time to time to reduce casualties and to regroup forces. For the last three years of the war Hitler lived in his famous "Wolf's Lair," a private war camp in East Prussia, for the express purpose of directing the eastern war front himself. As his geographic utopian plans crumbled, the execution of Jews by direct methods in the camps accelerated. Hitler seemed to know what international reaction to his genocidal conduct might be, and he used this insight to enmesh his generals and advisors in the full knowledge and concurrence of the camp activities as a deterrent to defection to the West, as Rudolf Hess had done in 1941.
The German public rarely saw Hitler once the Russian war began, primarily because he would have very little good news to report once Moscow regrouped. Entire years would go by without so much as a radio broadcast. Thus, what Germans saw of their government were primarily war casualties, material deprivation, and police state intimidation. Gradually they emotionally rejected him, though public demonstrations against him were rare. Hitler, for his part, grew to despise the German citizenry as weak and undeserving of his talents. In 1944 he narrowly escaped death when a bomb, planted by a staff officer, exploded within several feet of him. More paranoid than ever after this attack, Hitler trusted basically no one and the rotation of officers and advisors began to take on the trappings of comic opera. Even his last day, marked by marriage to Eva Braun, was surreal. Kershaw was able to take advantage of recent access to Russian war archives to clarify many, if not all, the questions surrounding the death of Hitler and the disposition of his corpse, fittingly and ironically cremated.
Rating:
Summary: The Hitler biography for this generation.
Review: Was he great? asked Joachim Fest in his own Hitler biography. Fest allowed Hitler a 'botched greatness', a sort of monstrous parody of what we expect greatness to be. Other writers have given depth to this portrayal - John Keegan called Hitler's leadership style 'False Heroic', in contrast to the 'Heroic' Alexander the Great, the 'Unheroic' Welllington and the 'Anti-Heroic' Ulysses S. Grant.As far as I can see Kershaw does not contradict the Bullock or Fest biographies, rather he complements them, and further explains the malignant 'working towards the Fuhrer' by which Hitler's will rather than his spoken orders were carried out. Kershasw gives an in-depth description of the chaotic Third Reich in which Hitler became the spider in a vast web of intrigue, in-fighting and betrayal. Out of this nexus grew the Final Solution and the Second World War, two of the most fateful events that ever befell the human race. Kershaw has been critised in not giving more credence to Hitler's 'military genius'. It has been pointed out that the portrait of 'Hitler the military blunderer' is a self serving one painted by his generals who liked to talk as if they were prevented from winning the war by the mistakes of a rank amateur. True, Hitler was not the clumsy blunderer of legend who by accident won a war against France, and by sheer guile almost pulled off the defeat of the Soviet Union. Yet, his successes can also be exaggerated. While there will always be arguments about the success (or otherwise) of Barbarossa, yet by Christmas 1941, it was clear that Barbarossa has been no more successful than the Schlieffen Plan of 1914. Yet Germany persisted in the same course as it had then, struggling against lengthening odds until final defeat. Similarly, all his diplomatic and political victories were against weak opposition - Hugenberg, von Papen, Dollfuss, Chamberlain, Daladier, the hapless Hacha, even Benes, were not of the calibre of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. Yet Hitler behaved as if they were. For all his emphasis on 'will', his own will failed him in 1940 during the critical struggle with Churchill, on which so much turned (This was recently given a brilliant analysis in John Lukacs' 'Five Days in London'). Hence I think Kershaw's portrayal of Hitler is accurate - for example, he gives Hitler the credit for saving the German army in the winter of 1941 when a precipitate retreat might have turned into a rout. However, if the Germans had been forced to withdraw closer to their borders, they would have been able to repel the Red Army for quite a long time. Hitler's style was therefore richly suited for circumstances which were in his favour. Failing that, he made mistakes, and his emphasis on his 'will' only compounded his errors.Let me add there is little comfort here for those English 'revisionist' historians who argue that Churchill betrayed Britain's interests by not making a deal with the Nazis in 1940. They fail to say which part of the British Empire (whose existence they praise) should have been given up to placate Hitler and his allies (Suez or Egypt to Italy or Vichy France, perhaps, or Gibraltar to Spain?) For a brave and decorated soldier, Hitler's degeneration into the 'false heroic' leader is surprising and, for those who served with him, unexpected. Once, he had the blinds of his carriage pulled down so he would not see wounded German soldiers in an adjacent train. Compare that with Alexander, whose veterans filed past his bed with a last goodbye and whom the dying King acknowledged with a movement of his eyes. Or compare it to Wellington, his duty done, dying honoured among his countrymen. Or Napoleon in lonely dignity in his exile. Or Ulysses Grant, struggling with cancer to finish his autobiography so as to leave his family free of crippling debt. One can only say that Hitler received the end he deserved - -hidden in a deep bunker he took his own life in manner that had no dignity or honour.
Rating:
Summary: Hitler and the Holocaust Explained
Review: Why do we read about Hitler? Somewhere deep inside are we fascinated by the life of this commoner who rose to the giddy heights of power few individuals have ever risen to? What was it about this person that has bestowed upon us those indelible images of wildly adulating throngs of Germans? And what led this highly "advanced" society to such deepest and darkest depths, it makes us shudder to know what we are capable of. This isnt a book about the Holocaust. It's about Hitler's life. All 841 densely filled pages. I had earlier read 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' by Daniel Goldhagen, it gave me a lot of the how and the who but not the why. As one plows through this book (and its first part) a picture emerges, of Hitler and with him the inner workings of the Third Reich. It isnt something that can be summed up in a pithy sentence, each part in itself can offer no explanation and yet when put together it manages to give us possibly the best answers to questions about this era. Was Hitler solely to blame for what happened? What was the complicity of the leading Nazis, the Wehrmacht, Himmler's henchment, ordinary Germans? I wont lay down my opinions, read this book and you can form your own. Kershaw has his failings too. He feels obliged not to acknowledge his subject's genius. He leads us right upto that conclusion and then shies away. He repeats himself over and over, giving us maybe just an inkling of the tedium Hitler's hapless private audiences must have suffered. And not that it matters, but Hitler's sexual life is curiously glossed over, a somewhat glaring omission given the depth of detail otherwise.
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