Author Topic: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich  (Read 13891 times)

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Offline Duke Nukum

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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« on: August 19, 2012, 03:54:10 PM »
I started 'reading' The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the other day. I bought it on sale from Audible because I like history and it is 54 hours long. But as I started it, I am wondering how reliable it is.

I am still fairly early into the book just finished the chapter on the influences on Germany and the NAZIs including Wagner,  Nietzsche, some relative of Neville Chamberlain among them.

So far it seems improbable that anyone would take Austrian slacker Adolph Hitler seriously.

According to Shirer, Hitler refused to help his poor mother support the family after his father died. That even when penniless in Austria, he still refused to do any real work.

Granted, I am informed by our modern world of Occupy and the unaccomplished 0bama, but how do these people get followers?
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Offline JohnnyReb

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2012, 04:04:49 PM »
As my uneducated daddy used to say(about local politicians), "If you hoot and hollar long enough and loud enough, you can get most people to follow you."
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Offline franksolich

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2012, 04:05:32 PM »
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, but he wasn't any relative of the political Chamberlains in England.

As for Hitler's "mystique" and "charisma," I never got it either.

Ostensibly he was a talented orator.  I of course can't hear him on old films, but from the way things look, it seems to me he was more of a shrieker than a speaker, and all of his maudlin body-language didn't help.

I never got it, but then and again, I wasn't a German during the 1920s.

It's kind of like how the primitives are enamored of Joe Bidet--WTF?
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Offline Chris_

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2012, 04:17:12 PM »
I never got it, but then and again, I wasn't a German during the 1920s.
I got the impression that it was a combination of crushing inflation and economic malaise after WWI and the Treaty of Versailles combined with Hitler's skills as a speaker.  We only see him later as chancellor, not as the rabble-rousing "community organizer" under the Weimar Republic and leading up to the Reichstag fire and the Night of the Long Knives.
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Offline Eupher

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2012, 05:12:26 PM »
I got the impression that it was a combination of crushing inflation and economic malaise after WWI and the Treaty of Versailles combined with Hitler's skills as a speaker.  We only see him later as chancellor, not as the rabble-rousing "community organizer" under the Weimar Republic and leading up to the Reichstag fire and the Night of the Long Knives.

Correctomundo.

He was able to hoodwink Paul von Hindenburg, the geezer that he was, in opening the door that made Hitler Kanzler in 1933, which then led to Führer and the loyalty oath that the military had to take acknowledging him as the be-all, end-all.

Night of the Long Knives in which Hitler obliterated his political rivals, Brown Shirts, mostly, in 1934.

So it wasn't all of a sudden. By about 1935 or so, Hitler was full-on love-me-or-die.

Shirer's work is colored somewhat by his having been in Germany prior to the war, but I always felt it was a solidly-researched book. Definitely a good read, especially in the events that Shirer covered right up till the war started.

Having served in Berlin for a very long time (almost 9 years), I enjoyed reading about those areas in Berlin that were known to me, and even those areas that were obliterated by the bombing and subsequent destruction of the city, most especially the Reich Chancellery on Wilhelmstr.

Good stuff.  :cheersmate:
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Offline franksolich

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2012, 08:02:09 PM »
.....but I always felt it was a solidly-researched book.

That's the general perception, and yeah, sure; much new information about Germany of the time has come to the surface since he was writing the book during the late 1950s, but overall, it's a solid work.

Also his The Collapse of the Third Republic is excellent, if one's into French history; it's about as long as The Rise and Fall, so be warned.

But as for his books involving his memoirs, blah.

Shirer was an unstable, squishy sort of person, and harped much in his memoirs about Dwight Murrow and Ronald Reagan, coming close to comparing the latter with Hitler in those memoirs.  Based on that silly bias, one can't take his account of the Murrow-Shirer feud seriously either.  Shirer was a very old man when Reagan was president, but for an old man, he sure had a lot of Hate going on there.
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Offline Duke Nukum

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #6 on: August 20, 2012, 12:06:26 PM »
The book is a real page turner. And it brings to light things I did not know before. For instance, that the Weimar Republic was starting to get the hyperinflation under control when the 1929 crash occurred.

And the from some of the NAZI writings saying things very much in line with Rahm Emanuel's "never let a good crisis go to waste."

Chilling at times.

What other histories can be recommended. I'm especially interested in some 19th century history that might touch on Wagner and Nietzsche and the kind of world/philosophy that produced them.
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Offline franksolich

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2012, 07:08:58 PM »
What other histories can be recommended. I'm especially interested in some 19th century history that might touch on Wagner and Nietzsche and the kind of world/philosophy that produced them.

I wish I could help you on that.

I've lived long enough, and read (and owned) all sorts of books (especially long ones, copiously footnoted), but Germanic history wasn't anything I ever got excited about.

I can't even think of a book I've heard about (as compared with actually reading it), that's considered a definitive work on Germany during the nineteenth century.
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Offline Duke Nukum

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2012, 07:49:39 PM »
I wish I could help you on that.

I've lived long enough, and read (and owned) all sorts of books (especially long ones, copiously footnoted), but Germanic history wasn't anything I ever got excited about.

I can't even think of a book I've heard about (as compared with actually reading it), that's considered a definitive work on Germany during the nineteenth century.
Thanks for thinking on it.

In some ways it feels like poking a totally alien culture.

Having just read Robert Graves' Claudius books, I am reading Rise and Fall informed by Graves' version of Claudius' assessment of the German people.  And Shirer's Luther to Hitler ideas. Plus, I like opera including Wagner.  All of that together makes me wonder what is really true.
“A man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far enjoys even his sufferings after a time”
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Offline franksolich

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #9 on: August 21, 2012, 07:40:51 AM »
Thanks for thinking on it.

In some ways it feels like poking a totally alien culture.

Having just read Robert Graves' Claudius books, I am reading Rise and Fall informed by Graves' version of Claudius' assessment of the German people.  And Shirer's Luther to Hitler ideas. Plus, I like opera including Wagner.  All of that together makes me wonder what is really true.

Oh man.

Great books, Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God.

Unfortunately, you're the only person I know besides myself who's read them.

Great books.
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Offline vesta111

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2012, 01:03:01 PM »
Oh man.

Great books, Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God.

Unfortunately, you're the only person I know besides myself who's read them.

Great books.

Mom tells me that the USA were in fear of Germany when she was in High School. Must have been mid 1930's when her school was let out to watch one of the Zeppelin fly over and she never forgot the big swastika on the back.

Such a sight the huge behemoth that seemed to just float in the sky.   All was very quiet, no talking just a couple hundred kids watching in amazement endear.   Traffic came to a standstill and factory's and shops let people out to watch this display of might and power.    Very unsettling for those on the East Coast.

It may have been the fact that the craft made no noise in a time everyone and his brother were building in barns and sheds these small airplane's that sounded like a chain saw does today, It was the size and the stealth that  impressed them.

Then New Jersey when the zeppelin blew up due to lightening at its teather, [  OH the Humanity ], that we relaxed and knew that that we had no fear of these silent sky flyer's.   They were not invincible.

Onward into Moms history, Every one went to the movies at that time, Mom had married Dad in 1938 and I was far into their future.  Most entertainment for young married was the movies and Holleywood came in with the Defence department to show before the movie a World event program of what was happening outside the USA.

The Major thing Mom has a problem with are the films before we entered the war of Hitlers audience of screaming adoring young woman.    This man was a chubby male, losing his hair with a face like Charlie Chaplin.     Hitler was no Elvis so why the appeal to the young woman ??????

Of all the good looking and wealthy German males, why did this runt send the girls into a frenzy  ?????

Offline Duke Nukum

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #11 on: August 23, 2012, 05:57:34 PM »
I am to the point where Hitler is preparing to invade Czechoslovakia.

My God! This guy is such a little nothing. If anyone would have been willing to stand up to him... Even his generals want to off him, they send word to England, and nothing, if I read it right, they may have even been betrayed by some of the people they contacted in England.

Chamberlain just wants to believe Hitler is reasonable. And France doesn't seem to be much of a player in Shrier's account.  There is Russia too but they are only obligated to act if France does.

League of Nations...worthless.

I might check out Richard Even's trilogy at some point in the future. The first one is said to start in 1871 with the unification of Germany. That might be the book I was asking for earlier in this thread.
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Offline Duke Nukum

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #12 on: October 09, 2012, 08:50:26 PM »
After a brief respite, reading the religious novel, The Harbinger, and the William Gibson classic, Neuromancer, I started the first book in Richard Evans' trilogy.

So far I am deeply satisfied. It starts with the 1870 unification of Germany under Bismark. It gives a good overview of the Wiemar Republic and its weaknesses. It did a very good job of conveying how dispirited and shocked the Germans were by their defeat in WWI. Shrier did a good job with the basic facts but Evans has a wider scope and goes into some personal stories of soldiers home from the war being harassed by OWS-type Reds.

I just passed the death of Friedrich Ebert and Hindenburg succeeding him.
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Offline Chris_

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Re: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
« Reply #13 on: October 09, 2012, 08:54:40 PM »
Interesting.  I'll check it out after I finish 'Voices From The Grave', about some higher-ups in the Irish Republican Army.
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