Nazism and War (Modern Library Chronicles)

I enjoyed this book as I didn't really have a very good grasp of Germany's path to Nazism prior to reading but found much of it repetitive. In particular, a few basic statements were repeated several times, perhaps for emphasis. Overall, I'd say that if you want a concise journey thru Germany from the early '30s to 1945 this would be a very good book to read. It's certainly much more "history" vs. "battle history" which is what I had hoped.Those wanting more information to the lead-up years from the end of WWI to the 1930's should probably, however, look elsewhere. Of course, the brief informative overview is the intent of Modern Library Chronicles books so that is certainly not a fault. I just think the author could have used one more pass thru the book. For Modern Chronicles readers I'd rate it just above "London" and not quite up to "Inventing Japan".

Richard Bessel's "Nazism and War" is fantastic survey of the ideology and practice of Nazi racial war and empire building. Much of Bessel's work consists of thoroughly investigative monographs, but Nazism and War will appeal to both casual readers and specialists alike. Bessel will challenge casual readers, who are probably familiar only with traditional military or popular histories of World War II, by contextualizing Nazi policies and practices within the historiographical landscape that has characterized more structural scholarly studies of 20th century German history. But he does so in a gentle and unintimidating way, eschewing technical terminology for a vocabulary that even readers new to the subject will be able process and enjoy. For specialists in the field of German history, Bessel doesn't offer much that is entirely new, and the book only utilizes primary documents sparingly. What he does offer specialist historians is a concise but thorough overview and synthesis of the most recent trends of scholarship, including a surprisingly broad array of recent German scholarship that may not be readily available to North American scholars or historians without fluency in German. Professionals will definitely appreciate this synthesis and Bessel's sharp observations as well.

I would give this book a 4-Star rating if you are not familiar with the Nazi ideology regarding racism and war but only 3-Stars if you are already familiar with the subject. That is, you probably won't really learn much new here.The book highlights the intimate relationship with the Nazi views on race and inferior beings who deserved to be annihilated and the way in which the Germans conducted war (I.e., genocide and mass murder). There are also some other subjects that are addressed to varying degrees of detail:* Pages 55 - 60 discuss the German rearmament and economy of the 1930s. The author argues that the German leadership planned for massive armament development and that there is no evidence for a so-called "short war" concept as advocated by many historians.* Chapter 4 "The Aftermath of the Second World War" describes the consequences of complete military defeat on German society and the huge German refugee problem as eastern European countries expelled ethnic Germans from within their borders.

The purpose of this little book is plain and simple: to establish that Nazism and war were inseparable and inevitable. Of course, some reconstruction of history has to take place before this argument becomes compelling and while the author makes an interesting presentation of his point of view, it is not without its defects. For example, too much emphasis is placed in the beginning of the book on the musings in Hitler's Mein Kampf to predict (and thus support as inevitable) future acts of Hitler and the Nazis, while the post-Mein Kampf events that actually influenced Hitler are conveniently ignored. Part of the problem with this reasoning (an undue reliance on Mein Kampf) is that it is based on Hitler being inflexible in his views and how to achieve his goals. Yet that reasoning ironically misses the point entirely of the basic construct of Mein Kampf, which is that Hitler realized (after the failed putsch that put him in jail and allowed him to write Mein Kampf) that he must not be inflexible but had to be amenable to changing his strategy of obtaining power and seek to obtain it through legitimate means rather than force. In other words, the use of Mein Kampf to attempt to show the inevitability of wishes, desires, and delusions discussed therein is undercut by the book itself and the events that led to its being written. In this instance, as the author's thesis is predicated on this faulty logic, the entire work necessarily suffers accordingly.Some historically inconvenient facts ignored by the author are: (1) the terms of the Versailles Treaty were indeed harsh on the Germans not just bothersome as the author argues; (2) war for Hitler was not an either or proposition (total victory or total defeat), e.g., he tried to engineer peace treaties with England and, later, the Soviet Union while in the midst of war with both of them; (3) Hitler's policy of not willingly giving up territory but fighting to the last man and the last bullet was not only not axiomatic for Hitler (i.e., this supposed rule was broken again and again) but was not even unique to Hitler, Nazism, or World War II (e.g., the 300 Spartans) and was strategically used by all sides in World War II (e.g., by Stalin to save Stalingrad); (4) the idea of the Germans (or the French or the Italians) as a race of people was not unique to Germans or the Nazis but was a commonplace way of thinking at the time (e.g., the Allies in both world wars, including both Churchill and Eisenhower in World War II, repeatedly referred to the necessity of defeating the German race), thus the fact that Germans (or French or Italians) may have thought of themselves as a race of people was not in itself inherently or intrinsically evil, it was what the Nazis did with the concept (the idea of the Germans as a super-race of people [although even then there were constraints on this superiority, witness the Nazis' euthanasia programs] and the idea of other races or peoples or groups as sub-human) that led to the horrors that followed in the wake of Hitler's being handed the reins of power in 1933 and the Reichstag fire shortly thereafter that allowed the institution of rule by emergency decree.I could go on but do not wish to belabor the point. In sum, this is a book that is trying to convince the reader of a certain point of view. The book should be considered only as a useful introduction to the topic.