Review by Choice Review
In this highly readable little book, Bessel, eminent historian of 20th-century Germany, effectively highlights the essential link of Nazism and war by retelling German history from the post-WW I era through the 1950s from that perspective, which he regards as "the hinge on which not just Germany's but Europe's twentieth century turned." Nazism was spawned and nurtured by the WW I experience and aftermath of violence, despair, and increasingly racialist national hatreds. Nazis in turn transformed war to a total battle of racist extermination. This is, of course, no new interpretation but the oldest, most commonly accepted view underlying all popular renderings in school texts and popular movies. Yet the book is hardly simplistic. Bessel engages extensively with the best current literature on the period, but he necessarily falls into a strong determinism and intentionalism as Hitler quotations set the stage for all four chapters. Events not relevant to the thesis, even WW II military action, get scant attention. While the book seems suited to introduce readers to the subject, it often assumes considerable familiarity with detail. This competent, even stimulating book will not fill any particular coverage needs in library collections. ^BSumming Up: Optional. General collections. D. Prowe Carleton College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Bessel is an established academic historian whose work has often focused on World War I and its aftermath as lenses for understanding WWII. The four essays in this compact, eloquent selection distill a great deal of research and debate on this subject into a relatively narrow volume. Bessel's basic premise--that wars past, present, and future were at least as central to the Nazi ethos as racism--is not a radical hypothesis, but it is an illuminating one, correcting many a crude caricature. War was both cause and effect, condition and consequence, of Nazism, he argues; it was both precondition and teleology. War was essential to Hitler's worldview, defined for him in the trenches of Ypres, but it also defined the worldviews of average Germans, especially those too young to fight in the first war but of age to run the second. Such views, hardwired into Nazism, would needlessly doom millions of Germans (as well as their victims) by cementing them into conflict, which, for Germany, was effectively unwinnable after 1942. Clear, engaging, and quietly profound. --Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This noted historian?s book on Nazism offers both the serious scholar and the lay reader a concise yet comprehensive perspective on the events and horrors of that period. Bessel?s main contention is that, rather than viewing racism as a component of the Nazi war machine?s ideology, we must understand that the Third Reich?s views towards race and war were inseparable. ?War was itself an expression of the applied racism of the regime,? Bessel writes. ?Nazi war was racial struggle; Nazi racial struggle was war.? Bessel concedes that other regimes throughout history have committed atrocities and genocide, but he argues that Nazi war had a different quality: ?It was not fought in order rationally to defend national interests or to ensure national security; it was fought in order to redraw the racial map of Europe through violence and mass murder.? Instead of examining one narrow aspect of the history of Nazism, Bessel takes an integrative approach, discussing the political, economic and social aspects of Germany, as well as its military history. For Bessel, any history of Nazism must address what came before WWII and WWI?and what came after the eradication of the Third Reich. Having written two books on closely related topics, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism and Germany After the First World War, Bessel is well equipped to tackle these topics with authority and to present this rich, well-rounded portrait of the country and its citizenry. (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Review by Library Journal Review
Bessel (Univ. of York, England) here examines the rise of Nazi ideology and its impact on German politics, economics, society, and militarism. He sees Nazism as the "manifestation and culmination of a long-running theme in modern European history-namely, racism" and depicts it as inseparably linked to a culture of war. While this racist ideology was not unique to Germany, its adoption by the "political gangsters" of the Third Reich had devastating consequences. Thus, mass murder and racial extinction became the hallmarks of Nazism, which ultimately aimed to achieve the "creation of a hierarchical new order." The author's scholarly achievement is to have demonstrated the pervasiveness of this racist ideology for the duration of the Third Reich. Bessel presents his argument in four essays covering the rise of Nazism, the preparation for war, the conduct of the war, and the aftermath of the Nazi regime. Lengthy notes and a solid bibliography complete this impressive study. Highly recommended for academic libraries.-Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"Nazism was inseparable from war": not a novel thesis, but brightly defended here. From the start, Adolf Hitler and his "band of political gangsters, inspired by a crude racist ideology," made no secret of their desire to go to war. One cause was to avenge the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary in WWI, which helped induce economic ruin and political chaos, as well as inspire the sense that the politicians had stabbed the army in the back. Ten million German veterans were able to vote after the war, and they voted far right. Apart from Hitler and a few of his comrades, however, most Nazis had had no direct experience of the war; quoting memoirist Sebastian Haffner, Bessel (History/Univ. of York) observes that "the truly Nazi generation" was born after 1900 and saw WWI as a great game. Inexperience notwithstanding, the Nazis also pushed a war in the East meant to secure "living room," destroy Bolshevism, and annihilate the Jews and other supposed lesser peoples. Thus, on coming to power, the Nazi leadership put the German economy on war footing: "For Hitler, the economy was not primarily an arena for generating wealth, but one for providing the hardware required for military conquest, and the determination to rearm underlay all the regime's economic policies." Against some leftist historians, however, Bessel posits that the Nazi regime was not a tool of big business: "It would be mistaken to conclude," he writes, "that the underlying logic of Nazism was unbridled capitalist exploitation," adding that Hitler rejected free-market ideology and accommodated capitalism as a useful pawn, just as practical-minded capitalists with Germany began formally preparing for defeat as early as 1943. It took Germany decades to face the past, Bessel writes, and because its enemies committed extreme violence, too, Germans could think of themselves as victims, as people to be "pitied rather than reviled." Bessel ably shows why such thinking is incorrect, and how the Nazi regime was able to secure so much support in its project of total war. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
