What interested me about this week’s reading is a sort of what-if scenario. In the book, Kershaw repeatedly emphasizes how much Hitler promoted himself as a “peace-loving” diplomat. He also mentioned that Hitler was able to do so because of his many successes in expanding through political manoeuvrings rather than by war. I wonder if the Allies had put up a stronger political resistance earlier, whether Hitler would have still used force.
It is possible that through resisting Hitler’s political advances before he had achieved all of his diplomatic successes that he would not have been bold enough to use force with so much public opposition to war. On the other hand it is possible that the Germans just wanted to avoid failure rather than avoiding war. Kershaw writes that “the feelings of millions of Germans towards the growing Polish crisis: ‘The answer to the question of how the problem “Danzig and the Corridor” is to be solved is still the same among the general public: incorporation in the Reich? Yes. Through war? No” (p. 142) which shows that even before the invasion of Poland that most Germans did not want war. However after the success in taking Poland, Belgium, Holland and France very easily, Kershaw writes that “there was what can fairly be described as a generally pervading ‘war mood’, disdaining any premature and presumed over-generous peace with Britain.” (p. 156) This change in outlook could show that success was more important than peace to the German people. This means that Hitler’s confidence that he could successfully defeat the Allies militarily would have resulted in open conflict even if the Allies had resisted earlier. So it is possible that Hitler was ‘lucky’ enough that he benefited from, as Ulrich Von Hassell wrote “a few intuitive master strokes, the lucky results of risks that were in themselves unjustified, and the short-comings of our enemies.” (p. 193)
On a completely different note I was wondering whether anyone found Hitler’s speaking to be very odd. Throughout most of our readings, we have read that Hitler was an awe inspiring speaker who could rally the masses. However, while watching Triumph of the Will, I noticed that his speaking style was very unusual. He crossed his arms a lot as well as using odd and exaggerated hand movements. Perhaps it is a personal reflection on his speaking style or perhaps it is a generational/cultural aspect but I found his speaking style to be more distracting than inspiring.
It was nice to see some talk of Germany’s foreign affairs in this week’s reading. The Blitkrieg was a great tactic used by Hitler knowing the general consensus regarding war at the time. Kershaw does point out that the majority of German society was still very much anti-war; the 1918 scar had not healed in the least. Given that so many of the initial occupations were so swift and “bloodless,” the rest of society was supporting Germany’s war without even knowing. The propagandist build-up of Hitler as a peace-loving dude must have infiltrated the psychology of the masses quite well.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading the story of Stalingrad, and how Kershaw repeatedly calls it a debacle. It was indeed; for the first time we see not only Hitler making some bad moves that are actually noticed and criticized by the public. For the first time we see that the Nazi propaganda efforts failed and worked completely against them. That they refused to report the “surrender” of Stalingrad was very important, I think. It was a poor move on Goebbels’ part to declare the event as the “heroic sacrifice” of 90,000 soldiers in the 6th Army.
On a side note, I liked the few paragraphs about the students in Munich. Also, the fact that it was Munich that was dubbed unofficially “the Capital of the Counter-Movement” is interesting to me, given the platform it represented for Hitler’s initial rise as, what seems to me, a local celebrity. Revolution often times seems to be in the hands of the youth.