William Tyler
Dreams Shattered

William Tyler - Dreams Shattered

- Welcome to everybody. Welcome back, or welcome back to me because I wasn’t with you last week. I missed you all desperately. That’s what it’s got written on my piece of paper here, so I have to say it. Yeah, I did actually miss it. You get into the habit of preparing and delivering and it’s just an enjoyable experience and I hope it is for some of you as well. Now, it’s never a particularly enjoyable experience to have to talk about Nazism, but I can’t talk about history of Germany without it, and we’ve now reached the point in the story of Hitler of the Second World War. But I want to begin in a different sort of way. This is not going to be the story of battles and campaigns. There’s plenty of books available were you to want to read up on a particular campaign or whatever. Large numbers of books. But this is again, a rather, what shall I say? A rather eccentric? No, that not is quite the word. A rather specific way of looking at it, which I’ve chosen to do. I hope it is of interest, and I hope you’ll find some information that you didn’t have before or information that makes you challenge other things. So let me begin by saying the hopes of Bismarck and the hopes of the Weimar government and the hopes of many Democratic Germans were dashed by the Nazis seizure of power in 1933, and then totally shattered by defeat in the Second World War in 1945. The second time in just over quarter of a century that Germany had been brought low by its own imposition of war on the European continent. And after the war, 1945 was over, after the war, Germany was again divided. Bismarck unified Germany in 1871, and in 1945 it began to divide again.

And it divided this time between totalitarianism, not Nazism, but communism, between totalitarian and democracy. And it divided into two German states, Marxist east Germany and Democratic West Germany. A story that we will in due course come to. Now, I should like to begin this final session on Nazism with a preface by quoting Primo Levi’s last book, “The Drowned and the Saved.” I’ve been rereading the book and it’s a wonderful book and everyone, if you haven’t read it, do. And I’ll put it on a list and put it on my blog so you can find it. “The Drowned and the Saved” by Primo Levi, and Levi says this. “The pressure that a modern totalitarian state can exercise over the individual is trifold, and he, of course, it’s writing about Nazism. It’s weapons are substantially three. Direct propaganda or propaganda camouflaged as upbringing, instruction, and popular culture. The barrier erected against pluralism of information,” we might say censorship, and the horror and terror as Levi talked about. “Nevertheless, it’s not permissible to admit that this pressure is irresistible, especially in the brief 12 year term of the Third Reich.” He talks about how people should have resisted it. He, of course, was a Jew and he, of course, was an intellectual and suffered horrendously in Auschwitz, but he lived to tell all the stories after the war’s end. And one of the comments on the back of the Abacus paperback edition of the book “The Drowned and the Saved,” by Paul Bailey says this, “‘The Drowned and the Saved’ dispels the myth that Primo Levi forgave the Germans for what they did to his people. He didn’t forgive them and couldn’t forgive them.

He refused, however, to indulge in what he called the bascule vice of hatred, which is an entirely different matter. The voice that sounds in his writing is that of a reasonable man. It warns and reminds us that the unimaginable can happen again. A would-be tyrant is waiting in the winds with beautiful words, that’s a phrase that Levi himself uses, with beautiful words on his lips. The book is constantly impressing on us, the need to learn from the past to make sense of the senseless.” And that of course, as I’ve mentioned before, using different words and different examples, that of course, is the problem that Nazism presents to us all these decades on. How could it ever have happened. And Levi in the example that I’ve just read to you suggests that it should have been resisted. And we talked about some of the resistance, but we largely talked about those who in various ways simply went along with the regime, let alone those who were convinced by Nazi ideology. The horrors of the show at Auschwitz in which 6 million Jews were murdered was just the very worst aspect of Nazism to go along with all the other crimes against humanity they perpetrated in the name of national socialism. And that is above all the reason we need to keep teaching today about the to people like me who are not Jewish as well as of course to the Jewish community, but we need to teach about the horrors of the Nazi regime as a whole that brought the world to a second world war. Ronald Reagan once said, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.” And for those of you who like me, are educators, then that is a firm purpose in my view and has always been that of adult educators, that to learn about democracy and to put democracy into practise at local levels and at national levels is important if we are to maintain that freedom and be on guard against totalitarianism, as Primo Levi points out.

So that is by way of a preface, and to me it was important to say that and coming back to his works again before teaching this course, it resonates so much in the world that we live in, in a world where Putin in Russia is acting in very similar ways. So now I must turn to the war that devastated Germany and much of continental Europe too. A war begun by Hitler. Now, in preparing this talk today, I’ve hesitated when I’ve been writing it, whether to use the word Hitler and to personalise it or whether to use Nazism, the ideology. For the two things are so inextricably linked. You could argue that if Hitler hadn’t come along, someone else like him might will have done. I’m personally not convinced by that argument, but that is an argument that that will go on and on amongst historians, some of whom see individuals as less important than ideas and themes. But to me, both Stalin and Hitler are monsters, and without them it could and might have been better. Would Nazism have survived without Hitler? Would it just be another odd fanatical group on the far right of the Weimar Republic? I suspect it might. So why did Hitler then take Germany to war once again? And to take all of us to war once again across Europe? And what was he doing it for? In the name of the German Reich, he might well himself have said if we’d been able to put that question to him at Nuremberg. You see, there was no sudden outburst of anger by Hitler who was well known for having outbursts of anger. He didn’t simply wake up one morning and said, “I’ve had it with Chamberlain and Daladier and we will invade in a month’s time.” It’s not like that. Nor did a single event trigger the World War in 1939. I’ve used an article here by the historian Gavin Mortimer in the BBC’s history magazine edition.

I’ll put that on my blog tomorrow. This is what Mortimer says is behind the preparation. “On the 5th of November, 1937, just over two years before World War II begins in September. Adolph Hitler summoned the inner circle of the Nazi party to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Among those who arrived on the chilly winters day, where the commanders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Reich War Minister General Werner von Blomberg and foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath. "The aim of German foreign policy,” began Hitler, “is to make secure and to preserve the racial stock and to enlarge it. It is therefore a question of space.” One of the inherent horrors of Nazism is the racism, the racism against Jews, but also the racism against Russia and its political system of Bolshevism. And when he talks about needing space, he means to the East. He wants to expand German territory into Russia. Mortimer says, “that was partially true as his audience well knew, particularly the head of the Air Force Hermann Goring. The previous year Goring had been tasked by Hitler to implement his four year plan, which in effect was an economic charter for war.” Now those of you who’ve done fascism at university and written your essay on is Nazism fascism, will remember that one of the answers is that no, it isn’t, because proper fascism like Mussolini’s fascism or if you like Franco’s in Spain had an economic policy, but Nazism didn’t. Its economic policy was a war policy. A war economy. So Mortimer writes, “which in effect was an economic charter for war. Six departments were to be organised to maximise Germany’s production and distribution of war materials in agriculture so that in the eventuality of war, the country will be self-sufficient and immune to the blockades that had had such a devastating effect during the first World War.”

Mortimer adds, “the solution as Hitler informed his inner circle to the question of quote, ‘gaining space for agricultural use for simple, Germany’s problem could be solved only by the use of force.’ The policy of acquiring living space known as Lebensborn had been a central plank of Germany’s imperialist strategy in the late 19th century, and Hitler had resurrected it in the twenties. Ultimately, he dreamed of a war with Russia, one in which he would simultaneously eradicate Bolshevism and acquire their territory for Germany. The idea of German expansion would’ve been laughable at the start of the thirties, laughable and unfeasible given the swinging terms of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, and as you well know today, most historians believe that the swinging nature of the Versailles Treaty against Germany was indeed one of the major actors that led Germans to support Hitler in the 1930s and was the lead to the second World War. Within a week of being appointed chancellor in January, 1933, Hitler informed his ministers quote, this is Hitler, "the next five years in Germany must be devoted to the rearmament of the German people.” 1933 plus five gives you 1938. So these are Hitler’s words. “The next five years in Germany must be devoted to the rearmament of the German people. Our position in the world will be decisively conditioned by the position of Germany’s armed forces. This huge German chip on the shoulder, which Hitler was able to use, the chip on the shoulder that its Bismarck’s chip, if you like, that Germany should be a powerful country, indeed the most powerful country on the continent of Europe. It should deal as an equal with the United States and with the British empire. By 1935, says Mortimer, there were around 75,000 workers engaged in aircraft construction, labouring to meet the Fuhrer’s target of 17,000 aircraft by, you’ve got it, 1939.

There was similar phonetic activity underway to strengthen the Navy at a cost of 111 million Reich marks. While the Kroop Manufacturing Company began the discrete production of hundreds of agricultural tractors, which were in fact tanks. Parallel to the production of tanks, planes, and ships was the introduction in May, 1935 of compulsory military service. From a figure of 100,000 men in 1933, the army including reserve swelled to 793,000 personnel within three years. For further reasons,” says Mortimer, “for Hitler to feel confident enough to talk about territorial expansion.” In other words, from the very beginning for those with eyes to see, war was inevitable. There were very few that did have eyes to see, although here on this island, Churchill had eyes to see, as early as 1933. In fact, he wrote journalist articles against Nazism prior to 1933. But the establishment in France and in Britain wanted, well, they wanted to see what they wanted to see. They failed to see the reality of Nazism. They failed to see the blueprint that was in Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf,” they went on to believe that they could appease Hitler. After all, he was uneducated. Not really one of them. They totally underestimated Hitler and Nazism and they didn’t draw the lessons that Churchill had drawn that we were inevitably, we would inevitably have to deal. And if you are listening from the states, of course America is in deep depression, big D economic depression, and has retreated in relation to Europe, into isolationism. It’s natural fall-back position. Russia, well, Russia in the 1930s is a Putin mess, isn’t it? With Stalin and the purges. And the Germans thought nothing of Russia, nothing of France, didn’t believe America would enter any war and believed that they could do a deal with Britain. Like France and Britain made errors of judgement in dealing with Germany, so Germany made errors of judgement in dealing with Britain, and later with the United States and indeed with Russia. And so we guide down the slope to war.

His personal, Hitler’s personal intentions, were clear from the start. Simon Sebag Montefiore writes this. “On the 20th April, 1937, his 48th birthday, Hitler revealed his real vision for empire to his too confidantes, Albert Slear, a suave young architect presented him with a model of his gigantic maniacal new capital Germania and in large Berlin. ‘Do you understand now we why we plan so big,’ asked Hitler as he along with Goebel admired a people’s hall that was seven times the size of St. Peters designed to hold 180,000 people. The fortress like Fuhrer Palace, a 260 foot victory arch to dwarf the Arc de Triomphe and a station bigger than New York’s Grand Central. ‘I did these sketches 10 years ago.’ Hitler had said when he commissioned Spear. ‘I knew someday I’d build them.’ Spear planned to complete Germania by 1950. Afterwards, he showed his father. His father said, Spear’s father said, ‘you two have gone completely mad.’ But now Hitler confided in Spear. Germania would be the capital of a new Germanic empire.” Hitler is, to me, always clear of what he intends to do. It’s a warped version of Bismarck. Germany is going to achieve power, not by diplomacy, but by the gun. So that is one enormous ground towards war and in inevitable war, I would argue. But the other strand is the highly racist against both Jews, blamed of course for the stab in the back at the end of the first World War in Germany and against Bolsheviks and Bolshevism against Russians, the Slavs, whom the Germans have hated forever, at least back to the Middle Ages. And I think without doubt, in the midst of all the horror of Nazism and World War II is the one thicker of Hitler. Michael Burley, the historian and an author of one of the great biographies of Hitler, writer Hitler’s tour of Austria following the Anschluss of 1938. And he writes this.

“Speaking in Frankfurt on the 31st of March, 1938, Hitler’s life story became a pilgrimage throughout Germany in his speech delivered in Salzburg, a week later he announced,” this is Hitler’s own words. “In the beginning stood the Volk, was the Volk, and only then came the Reich.” Burley comments that blasphemers became boundless because that is Genesis written in Nazi language. Hitler went on to say at Salzburg, “I believe that his also God’s will that from here a boy was to be sent into the Reich, allowed to mature and elevated to become the nation’s Fuhrer, thus enabling him to reintegrate his homeland,” Austria, “into the Reich. There is a divine will, and we are its instruments.” This is extraordinarily mad. And Burley comments, “these were not simply rhetorical flights, but revealing of the messianic conviction with which Hitler approached the ensuing self-generated crises over Czechoslovakia, whose demise he was actively plotting, and the little worms,” Hitler’s phrase, “and the little worms who temporally frustrated his designs at Munich.” The little worms were Chamberlain from Britain and Daladier from France talking about appeasement. The little worms. Michael Burley earlier in his book wrote this. “All people had to do, all German people had to do was to make the quantum leap of faith. Unified national self-belief was a solution to every mundane problem. As both Mussolini and Hitler remark, faith could indeed move mountains or make mountains seem to move. Isn’t it extraordinary how totalitarianism in the form of either communism or Nazism can present an alternative religious infrastructure almost to people? It’s an extraordinary thing.

Hitler is quite extraordinary. The story of the Second World War itself, as I said earlier, is a very familiar one to us all. But here is a brief resume. Prior to September, 1939 and the opening shots of World War II, first of all, there’s the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, and France who could have stopped it, or Britain and France together who could have stopped it, did nothing. And we now know that Hitler’s orders to the Viamach were that if there was any resistance at all from Britain and France, they would draw back. But there was no resistance. In 1936, Franco brings civil war to Spain, and in that war, Hitler sends German troops, but more importantly, German aircraft, and the Luftwaffe learn about modern bombing techniques during the Spanish Civil War. And thousands of German soldiers received firsthand frontline experience of war. In 1936, Germany does a deal with Mussolini’s Italy. In 1938, which we’ve just mentioned is the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria, not as a conquered territory, but an integrated part of the new German Third Reich. And then the failure of Munich, And the horror to Britain’s looking back of Chamberlain returning with his piece of paper. "Peace in our time,” said Chamberlain. And then the invasion of Czechoslovakia in ‘39. And Britain and France stand aside. And then the German-Russian Pact of 1913. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which they agreed to divide up Poland, but Germany all along and Russia knew that this would not last, but they divide Poland now. And it’s Poland that brings France and Britain into the war.

So for us in Britain and for the French, the phoney war began in 1939, but it’s 1940 with the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. Denmark surrendered. Norway fought off with British and French troops, and it was a disaster. And led to the replacement of Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill as prime minister in May of that year, 1940. 1940 was one of the grimmest, if not the grimmest year in British history. Forced out of France at Dunkirk in order to fight another day, the French surrendered and the Battle of Britain began. As Churchill said, “the Battle of France is over. Now we face the Battle of Britain.” In 1941, the war spread to North Africa and to Hitler’s ill-advised invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa. The Germans actually reached Moscow, but so did Napoleon. But few leaders seem ever to bother with history. And the Germans reached within 60 miles of Cairo. But all of that was to prove the height of German success. Britain was not taken. The RAF defended Britain with little left. You all remember, I’m sure. Well, the Brits will remember the story of how Churchill went to one of the command posts of the RAF in southern England on the worst day of the blitz in which we could, on the worst day of the Battle of Britain which we could indeed have lost. And he stood up in the gallery and he turns to the Air Vice Marshall and says, “when are you putting the reserves up into the air?” To which the answer is, “we have no reserves, sir.”

But Hitler turned away from Britain and towards Russia. He’d always had this sneaking admiration for the British Empire, like a Kaiser. And he thought he could deal with Britain. And of course he knew Edward VIII and met Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, but in October, 1942, the British had a victory under Montgomery in North Africa at El Alamein. And Churchill said at the time, “now this is not the end, it is not even the beginning at the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” And after the war in his account of the war, Churchill wrote, “before El Alamein, we never had a victory. After El Alamein, we never had a defeat.” Well, that’s technically true, but in fact, the world had changed because America had been bombed into the war by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour in December '41. And in 1942, American troops arrived in North Africa commanded by Eisenhower, and the rest, as they say, is history. Across North Africa, across the Mediterranean, up through Italy. And Britain and its empire no longer stood alone in 1942. We no longer were the only voice of freedom in the world. America was now in the fight, and Germany really had got itself into an impossible position. With America, all its resources of arms and men on the west and in the East Russia with all these resources of arms and men, and Germany in the middle of these two advancing forces. One might have expected with the final defeat in May, 1943 in North Africa and the defeat of the Germans at Stalingrad in February, 1943 that the war would be over. But it wasn’t to be over until May, 1945.

Millions more military personnel as well as civilians are to be killed and murdered before the day of victory came. In the biography of Hitler by A N Wilson, Wilson writes this, “there were Germans in plenty who’d always detested Nazism, and by the turning point of the war and the disastrous Russian campaign, 1943, there were many who had previously believed in Hitler who were now disillusioned, aware that he’d lied to his people about wanting peace and was insatiable in his blood lust. But the recognition that Germany was lost until it got rid of Hitler and the Nazis did not make it easier to achieve the desired goal.” And Wilson reminds us of one of the resistors whom I did not speak about last time when we talked about the July plot. And this was a man called Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a pastor in the Lutheran church and was anti-Nazi from the very beginning. “Bonhoeffer whose psychiatrist father,” writes Wilson, “had given it as his opinion that Hitler was insane, came to believe that it was his Christian duty, as well as his moral duty, to support the assassination of the leader.” Bonhoeffer worked for the Abwehr, the German Army’s intelligence organisation. Now he was brought into that by a friend who was already a plotter against Hitler and he was brought into it to save him from being drafted into the army. So Bonhoeffer is in the Abwehr, the German army intelligence organisation.

“Many of whose members, said Wilson, "were involved with a series of conspiracists throughout 1943 to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1944 and accused of implication in the July Plot, the Styferberg plot in 1944. He wasn’t, he knew a lot of the plotters, but that didn’t care. You can read various versions of how Bonhoeffer met his death. Some say he was strangled with piano wire. Others say he mounted a scaffold in the prison and said a long prayer before he was hanged. Almost certainly both stories are untrue. Almost certainly he was simply hanged along with others of the plotters in the prison courtyard. He is a very interesting man, and if anyone listening is a evangelical Christian of a radical nature, you may have read Bonhoeffer who has very interesting theological thoughts about the nature of God. An interesting man, but a man who was always opposed to Hitler and believed it was Christian duty to oppose it. He knew, for example, what had happened to Jewish friends. It was that July plot of 1944 that kickstarted, it’s been argued, Hitler’s mental and physical decline. Wilson in the same biography writes in this way, "the plot of 1944 was crushed, but it crushed Hitler psychologically. He could no longer trust anyone, even his dearest dog. Secretaries overheard him saying crossly to his German shepherd dog, 'look me in the eyes, Blondi! Are you also a traitor like the generals on my staff?’ By 1944, he’s losing it or he’s lost it.” He’s heavily on drugs and narcotics. He’s a shadow of the former man leading the rallies back in the 1930s. And yet. And yet he persists in the war. He convinces himself that the war can still be won, but he can’t.

Doesn’t stop him, in December, middle of December, 1944, launching the last major German offensive in the west in the Ardennes forest, which led to so many allied soldiers losing their lives and maybe some people listening to me lost relatives in the Ardennes Offensive. And Michael Burley writes in this way, “the objective of the offensive was to cross the Meuse and then to converge on Antwerp, inserting American forces and denying the allies a major port, Antwerp, from which to resupply their armies. It was also to shatter the morale of the Western allies so that they would settle for something less than total victory, enabling Hitler to concentrate his remaining forces against the Soviets in the East. He still thinks he can do a deal with Britain and America. He misjudges both nations. He misjudges Churchill, he misjudges Roosevelt. The advance in the Ardennes from the German point of view was a disaster, caused by the unforgiving nature of the hills, woods, rivers, that whole terrain of the area was a nightmare to fight through. And also by the overwhelming force of American armour and motorised infantry. By this time, Germany is having enormous problems replacing lost armaments. Think Putin in Ukraine. But the Americans are turning this stuff out, I don’t know what one says, by the mile, by the hour. And finally, German tanks were unable to move because they couldn’t find fuel. Indeed, they became reliant on capturing fuel from the allied forces advancing towards them. That was December ‘44. By January '45, well judge for yourselves whether you think he’s lost it completely by January, 1945.

Again, I’m quoting from Wilson’s book. It’s such a short book, it’s easy to quote little passages to sort of take my story on. "As the Americans under the command of General George S. Patton pressed on to victory, Hitler gave a new year broadcast January '45. Germany, he predicted, would rise like a phoenix from its ruined cities and go on to victory.” Now, come on. Come on. Is anyone, even the most committed Nazi in the regime, is anyone really thinking victory was possible by January '45 with the Red Army advancing increasingly rapidly towards Germany and towards Berlin? And with the offensive we are then failing and with the Americans advancing with the British and French towards Berlin from the other end, the other side from the west, victory? And where was victory going to come from? Of course, some believed, very few, that they could devise new weapons. Well, we and Britain knew about the use of V bombs, but they didn’t have the nuclear bomb. It doesn’t bear thinking about it. If the case had been not the Americans dropping the H bomb, the atom bomb, not the Americans dropping the atom bomb on Japan, but Germany dropping an atom bomb on London, that might well, you could argue, save the war. But they weren’t near that. And the whole infrastructure of the country is falling apart by the beginning of 1945. And 1945 moved inexorably towards its conclusion. And again, using Wilson’s book, I read. “In these early months in 1945, it was clear to everyone except the deranged leader that the Germans had lost the war. The war would’ve begun to rescue Eastern Europe in the hands of two repressive tyrannists.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia was about to be won by Soviet Russia. Not caring how many of his own men perished in the attempt, Stalin impressed his red army onwards to conquer Berlin. While the American forces under General Patton slowly lumbered through the rural.” Wilson goes on to say, “on both his forces, Germany was now overwhelmed. Berlin had become a surreal inferno with almost 3 million of its inhabitants trapped in the cellars of the vast flat towers, anti-aircraft, in placements, or in its bunkers, or, if their homes possessed cellars, underground at home. Hitler followed suit by retreating to his elaborately constructed complex of tunnels and rooms beneath the Chancellery and the other government buildings. He emerged into Berlin only twice after January, 1945. Once to attend a meeting of gallon litres on the outskirts of the city and once to visit General Busse to discuss their by-now hopeless defence of the river Oder. On both occasions, the blinds of the car were kept firmly closed. He did not wish to set eyes upon the ruin he had created. He never once visited a bomb site. And finally, the German dictator,” says Wilson, “must not overcome ultimately because he defied Churchill or defied the Red Army, but because he defied reality itself. Hitler suffered just as strongly to the very end from a Napoleonic feeling of battlement that things have not gone his way. He said, 'I am beginning to doubt whether the German people is worthy of my great ideals,’ which was Hitler’s ways of describing the difference between his plans for the world and the way it failed to conform to them.” He’s an unrecognised Messiah in his own mind.

I’m coming towards an end and I thought in this final part carefully of what I might do. And again, I’m going back to Primo Levi’s “The Drowned and the Saved” book. And I wanted just to read a passage here. “The entire history of the brief millennial Reich,” remember that he was going to create a Reich that would last a thousand years. “The brief millennial right can be read as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality. All of Hitler’s biographies while disagreeing on the interpretation to be given to the life of this now so difficult to classify agree on the flight from reality, which marked his last years, beginning especially with the first Russian winter. He had forbidden or denied his subjects any access to truth, contaminating their morality and their memory, but to a degree which gradually increased and attained complete paranoia in the bunker. He barred the path of truth to himself also. Like all gamblers, he erected around himself a stage set woven out of superstitious lies, which he ended by believing with the same fine faith that he demanded from every German. His collapse was not only a salvation for mankind, but also a demonstration of the price to be paid. One we must remember the truth.” Hitler never could understand why Churchill told the truth in Britain. But it’s the difference between totalitarianism and democracy, or at least it should be. Truth. Truth from leaders to the people they lead is absolutely essential.

It’s a democracy. Is there one book which I think every child should read at the point that they’re capable of understanding it? For me, it would be Georgia Orwell’s “1984.” And true it’s based upon Russia rather than Nazi Germany, but it is accurate of course about totalitarianism. And those of you who remember reading it, perhaps when you were much younger, return to it, read it again. It pays. And you remember that the hero of Orwell’s “1984” is Winston. Don’t have to tell you where he chose the name from. Well, Hitler commits suicide at the end of April, 1945. And on the 7th of May, 1945, General Yodel signed a simultaneous and unconditional surrender on all fronts. The war was over. The Red Army was already in Berlin. And so if you want a German, this is a book called “Hitler’s Last Day” by Richard Dargie. And Dargie writes this, I thought this is a really simple sentence that encapsulates Germany. “Adolf Hitler promised to make Germany great again, but his legacy was defeat. Devastation and decades of division.” He had undone all the good that Bismark had tried and attempted to do. All the good that the Weimar government had attempted to do is gone. What a terrible story is this in Germany and it’s gone another 40 odd years to run in East Germany and East Berlin. The horror of the German story is unbelievable. This hundred years from the dismissal of Bismarck to the falling of the Berlin Wall and of Marxism. A hundred years.

In a hundred years, Germany had twice taken Europe to war. And our generation, my generation,, many of you who are in your seventies or beyond, have not had to fight. I suppose some of you might have had to fight in Vietnam, it occurs to me as I say that, but I haven’t had to fight in Britain or for Britain, but my family’s had in the first war and the second war. And many, many, many, almost everybody will say the same here in Britain. France is more complex in terms of the post-surrender of France and the establishment of Vichy and collaborators with the German army. But in Britain, it’s an extraordinary thing to think that Germany took this country to war twice. Quite extraordinary. So if that is the story of Germany, what of the Germans? Well, in the East, the population found itself living under a new totalitarian regime, that of communist East Germany. In the West, despite the trials at Nuremberg, there was a general unspoken in West Germany, there was a general unspoken agreement between Germans and Western allies to move on. In the famous joke in Britain, don’t mention the war. So East Germans find themselves under this appalling Marxist regime for 40 odd years. West Germany, with a German economic miracle post-World War II, West Germany becomes an established democracy. But there are questions about the revival of Germany, West Germany. Of course we know of those brought to Nuremberg and tried and executed fo crimes against humanity. We know that. We know of the German senior staff, the elite of the Nazi regime who took the coward’s way out like Hitler and committed suicide.

And we know of the Germans who were at the top of the regime like Admiral Durnich who succeeded Hitler as Fuhrer who were sent to prison and subsequently released. And I wanted to end with a story because it takes me on to the post-war world. We know about East Germany, we know exactly what, it’s West Germany that raises issues. This is a book called “Hitler’s Last day” by Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie. And at the end of the book, they give an a count of allies and Germans after the war had ended and they’d given an account of Nicholas Von Below, B-E-L-O-W. Von Below was Hitler’s Luftwaffe Air Force agitant. So he’s with Hitler in the bunker. He’s the Luftwaffe’s advisor to Hitler at the very end in the bunker. After Hitler’s suicide, he acquired some civilian clothes, ditched his Air Force uniform, and put on the civilian clothes. He left Berlin and he registered as a civilian under a false name on the 4th of May, 1945. He was given an identity pass and a ration book by Allied forces. He worked his way, job by job, odd jobs, towards his in-laws home near Magdeburg, a hundred miles south east of Berlin. He arrived at his parent’s in-laws house on the 20th of June, 1945. He remained there with his pregnant wife and three children, but when his wife gave birth in the clinic and he visited her, he was recognised, and he was forced to flee again. He hid with friends in Bonne until the 7th of January, 1946. And then he was denounced to the British. The British imprisoned him and used him as a material witness at the Nuremberg Trials. He was discharged on the 14th of May, 1948 from imprisonment. He had helped, he’d collaborated if you like, whatever words you want to use, with the British. He didn’t die until 1983. A free man.

So you may ask, what did he do after the British released him in ‘48 for the rest of his working life? Did he disappear into the background doing some humble job? No, he becomes a pilot for the German civilian airline Lufthansa. And if you travel in the 1950s, 60s to Germany on a Lufthansa flight, you might well have been flying with Hitler’s personal Luftwaffe agitant. That’s one story. There are many more and we shall look at those, I hope, in the couple of weeks or what we’ve got to come. There’s a lot to cover still, and the story I hope becomes, well, not more interesting, but it becomes more real perhaps, because we enter a period in which most of us have memories, direct memories. Some of you may have been to Germany during that period. To West, some of you may even have been to East Germany for business. And we know the history, or we think we know the history. So I’m going to try and untangle some of that in the meetings to come and finish up with our word about where we are today in Europe with Germany. What is Germany today? What is Germany ray Ukraine. What is Germany ray France. What is Germany ray Britain? Interesting questions to come. Thank you very much for listening. I’ve got to come to a halt now, but I’ve got a feeling that there might be lots of comments today and lots of interesting comments hopefully like there has been recently. Let me read those.

Q&A and Comments:

Michael, you are quite right. This is a dodo, not a duck. And it’s from Oxford. It’s the Oxford stock dodo.

Edmund says not all British who tried to appease the Nazis were Nazis. No, of course they weren’t. And I hope I didn’t give that indication. Absolutely not. I mean, you wouldn’t begin to think of Chamberlain as an Nazi. If we’re talk about Edward VII, Mrs. Simpson, that’s a different story. But what would underlay appeasement was the view held by Chamberlain and many other people that the first war was so horrendous that we could not even contemplate a second war. It would just be too awful to think about.

Oh, Edmund, very good. Thanks very much. “Coffee with Hitler,” a book which has recently come out. Thank you for mentioning that. I haven’t read the book yet, Edmund. It’s now on my list.

Oh, the Primo Levi book is “The Drowned and the Saved.” “The Drowned and the Saved.” You can get it extremely cheaply in paperback on Amazon where I got my latest copy.

Oh, and Faye, you answered the question. I don’t know why I bother answering! I should just skim down because people have answered the question better than I can! Yes, how could it happen again, said Steven. Says Stan. Sorry, Stan. How could it happen again? Look around the world, say Stan. And that’s what I think. And that’s why I think we have, in democracies, wherever you are listening from, we have to teach this dreadful period of history. And more importantly, we have to teach democracy. And in most countries, the children do not understand some of the things that we perhaps have grown up with.

Carol says, here in Israel, we too have a fight for our democracy against the forces of darkness and it’s propaganda. Democracy cannot be taken for granted. Yes, I’m not getting involved in the internal politics of Israel, but I understand exactly what you are saying. Democracy cannot be taken for granted, and the problem with the darkness is that it’s like real darkness, isn’t it? It comes slowly. There are very few places in the world which darkness comes. You know, one minute it’s bright and sunny as it is where I’m sat this early evening in southern England. It doesn’t suddenly go dark next minute. It’s a slow process. And you don’t notice it. You don’t notice it. I remember as a child that my mother wouldn’t draw the curtains. She would always keep them open. And whether this was a relic from the war when she had to close the curtains, I don’t know, but she would always resist closing curtains. And you would say, “mom, it’s dark. Can’t we have the curtains closed and the lights put on?” “No, no, no. There’s plenty of light still.” And in the end she finally agreed, when you are in absolute darkness, that the curtains have to be pulled and the lights put on. And that’s what darkness in politics is like. And we notice, or many people notice too late. Too late.

Oh, Victor. I can’t answer that, Victor, in five minutes. I’m sorry, He wants to know what characterises or distinguishes racism. I don’t know, Victor, whether you are writing that from Britain because of the comment made by a former labour frontbench spokesperson, or whether that was a general question. I really can’t answer that quickly. It requires a whole lecture. Unless I’m going to be sort of just not touching the surface.

They’re not ducks, Hannah. They’re dodos!

Q: If Germany was bankrupt, how could it pay for all that? Marion says Switzerland helped up.

A: Yeah, they borrowed money. They also put the whole thing on, that’s the point with the economy. The economy was put on an entirely war-like footing. And they taxed, of course.

Q: Was it the upper classes like Lord Halifax who had right wing views?

A: No, the right wing views, there were right wing views across all sectors of British society. Think of those who followed Oswald Mosley, the Black Shirts, middle class, working class. So not just the upper class. The upper class do have right wingers, that is true. But another way of putting it is that the upper class had many links with Germany and were pro-German. That doesn’t mean they were pro-Nazi.

Q: Were they anti-Semitic?

A: Yes, Angela. There was deep anti-Semitism across British society, not least among the hierarchy. Now, Lord Halifax is a difficult problem. Lord Halifax was, Halifax nearly became Prime Minister in 1940 instead of Churchill, but he chickened out and we’re very fortunate he did so. Then Churchill sent him off to New York out of the way as ambassador. Lord Halifax might well have been acceptable to the Germans had they conquered Britain in 1940. And Halifax, I think personally, might well have gone along with them. Would he have gone along with the Holocaust? That’s a different question. And you must make your own minds up.

Q: Were there no high Nazis or general admirals who felt the Westwood fight did have some military might and told Hitler so?

A: No, they regarded Frances as a broken reed. And they were right. France was a broken read. France surrendered. As for Britain, they thought they could do deals with the British. They thought they had this belief, which is not without foundation, that Germans and Britains were very similar people. Now, forget about Nazism for a moment. Pre-Nazism, they have been allies against France at Waterloo. They regarded us as acceptable non-Germans. Did they think we would fight? No, I don’t know that they did really. No one anticipated.

Q: Had Churchill been there and Halifax had, would Halifax have done a deal with Hitler?

A: Yes. In my view, yes. What is the difference in Britain? Churchill. You need someone to lead. Yes, there would’ve been resistance in Britain. There was resistance in France, but it would’ve been meaningless until Churchill breed life and soul into British resistance. And Churchill knew he had to do that for one reason, to keep it going until America could be persuaded to come into the war. Churchill believed that as early as 1940.

No, USA did not declare war in Germany. Germany declared war on the USA. Why did they do that, says Irv. They did it because Japan was an ally of Germany, after Pearl Harbour, the American government, Congress declared war on Japan. They did not declare war on Germany, Hitler declared war in the US because America declared war on their ally, Japan. The domino ghost down.

Q: If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler, could war have been averted?

A: No, war would’ve come. It may have come later and we might have been better prepared, but no, there would be no way. But Chamberlain was unable to give the leadership in war at the Norwegian campaign. He was a broken man. In fact, of course, as you probably know, he was dying of cancer in 1940s, dead by the end of the year. The source of arms capital is borrowed from Switzerland, as we said. It’s also within Germany itself. It’s taxation, it’s the utilisation of the whole state to produce this war machine.

Q: Can you equate the Spanish War as rehearsal with Ukraine at the presence, says Sandy.

A: That’s a frightening thought. You mean Ukraine is Russia’s Spanish Civil War and if he wins in Ukraine, he’d go, I don’t even want to think about that. No, I don’t think you can, to be honest. Well, what a thought. Why should I say, I don’t think that. But there’s no reason, Sandy, why you shouldn’t. That’s just my view. Oh, this is Sally, the defence of Chamberlain. What he actually did was buy time to re-arm. But that is not, I believe his intention. That was a unexpected consequence from it.

Judith says, in USA, we have a movement of Christian nationalism. Yeah, I know a little about that. It is something be worried about. Also see racial hate speech. We need to look back to German.

Yes, Christian nationalism frightens me enormously in the states and we’ve got all sorts of odd nationalisms here.

Yeah, it was Dr. Johnson that said “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Oh, Marsha, I’ve got my answer in before you did! I apologise. You’re completely right, Marsha.

Q: Well, David asks, do you believe that today’s governments in the western world are democratic, especially due to their large size, large budgets, and their control of the messengers?

A: I’ve annoyed more than one of you by saying, no, I don’t think they’re democratic. First you have to define what you mean by democracy, which isn’t easy. And there are many different definitions. Do I think we need a reset of democracy? Yes, I do. We need a reset in Britain and probably, well, many of us would say in Britain, along with many of you in the States, we need a reset of democracy in the states. I’m not answering for any other country, but certainly here, the latest is attacks on the civil service by this government and the British Civil Service, which was established in the 19th century to be impartial, that is to say with not political leanings, now the government is talking about politicising the civil service. That is an attack on democracy. The idea that we are going to breach in Britain international law by deporting asylum seekers who may brand illegal immigrants without facing a court with the right of appeal, but are simply going to be sent to Rwanda is also worrying. Now, no, we’re not a fascist regime, nor was the experience of Trump a fascist regime, but I don’t think you can deny that in both cases they’re very unlike the democracies we grew up in. Whatever party you voted for, either Britain or the states, the political parties, conservative and labour of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and in America in the same period, whether Republican or Democrat, are certainly different today. Now whether the right, in British case, the Conservative Party, in America’s case, the Republicans, are undemocratic, you must answer for yourselves. I have talked about this on lockdown before. You see, as I read law as my first degree adoption, I worry about democracy. I worry about the attack in Britain, and I worry about the attack in the states on law, on the courts, on judges. It worries me. And so you’d need other people involved in the argument to say William is talking nonsense. We are nowhere near a situation in 1930s Germany. No, I’m not saying we are, but there is an awful, there is a road that’s been opened in both our countries, which, were we to go down it much further, we will be in difficulties. That’s all I’m going to say.

Marilyn, history books always talk about the importance of America entering the war.

Q: How much did Britain depend on troops in the commonwealth countries?

A: Yes, of course we depended on troops in the commonwealth countries, but we would not have won the war without American money, American arms, and American men, America’s entering the war is essential. Why is it essential? In the last analysis, because it leads to a new war. The Cold War. Without America facing Russia, if you like, across the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in the Cold War, it is possible, maybe even more than possible likely that Russia would have spread Marxism over the world. Remember that at the end of World War II, Churchill tried to persuade the Americans to advance into Russia because he thought we should defeat it now while we had the men and the arms and the push to do so. He was laughed at and probably rightly so, but the argument logically is that without America, despite whether we would’ve won the war without, which I don’t think it was possible, then we would’ve found ourselves in a second war against Russia, which we would’ve been in no fit state to resist.

I think we’ve explained, Peter, why Hitler declared war in the USA in '41, because Japan was an ally of Germany and Hitler thought that Japan coming into the war would be, which it wasn’t, a huge advantage to Germany. It wasn’t. Well, why didn’t Hitler finish off Britain before turning to Russia? Because Russia was his obsession. The Slavs, Bolshevism was his obsession. Britain, he thought Britain could be dealt with at any future date. They totally misread Britain.

Oh, I like your comment, Vivian.

Michael, I’ve got finish here. Michael, please remember Canada declared war on Germany on December the 10th, '39. Absolutely, absolutely. I’m not sure whether that’s pulling me up, which I knew I know perfectly well that Canada, Australia, New Zealand all come into the war. Of course I know that, but I’ve got a feeling that statement is aimed at the country south of Canada. I may be wrong. Michael says, America entered World War II, not like its own choice, but by the actions of enemies. That’s true. But Roosevelt, FDR had always wanted to come into the war. He realised, in the way that we realised today, although we’re not in the war directly, that America and Britain today realise that we have to support Ukraine because Ukraine is the front line of the fight to hold back the totalitarianism of Putin. Roosevelt realised that it had be held back. Of course, Hitler, the idea that Hitler could ever in invaded America as I think is just pie in the sky, but it wasn’t that. It was that Roosevelt felt that democracy should stand together. Not every American agreed. Isolationism is deep in American DNA. Isolationism with Europe. We’ve been through all this recently in Britain with Biden’s visit to Ireland, which struck many people in England as well.

I’m in deep, deep water here, I’ve got to finish, but it did strike many people in England as unhelpful, shall we say. Some of his speeches were decidedly unhelpful. Incidentally, which Clinton’s worked. But Biden’s got this, he’s got this chip on his shoulder about England and Ireland without really understanding the issues. That’s my view. All your Americans are now up in arms are sending me emails saying, “you don’t understand. You shouldn’t be criticising Biden.” But that’s how it appeared here. So I’ll say it, and Clinton did never appear like that. Yes, oh Jean says, I read that the Germans gave the soldiers amphetamines to keep them awake and fighting, and the allies then gave their, yeah, there’s very interesting academic work on the use of drugs in warfare. Tight back to Roman Greek ancient times of how you get men to do impossible things and drink is one way and drugs is another way of how you do it. Well, was there a time when Hitler could have been stopped before the horrors he imposed? So how much responsibility did the electorates or the major democracy have the leaders they chose in that period? No, the only way that Hitler could have been stopped was internal in Germany. And I don’t think there’s any way that he could have been stopped from outside of Germany. Arlene, how much of Hitler’s descent could be attributed to venereal disease? Oh, that recurs as an issue. I don’t know the answer to that.

Oh, Rita has written, Levi died in 1987, injuries sustained in a fall from a third story apartment. His death was officially ruled a suicide, but some after careful consideration suggest that the fall was accidental because he left no suicide note. There were no witnesses and he was on medication that could affect his blood pressure. Yes, there is a lot of argument. This book, the book that I’ve been talking about, “The Drowned and the Saved” was the last book he published. If you want my opinion, and it’s only an opinion if you read him, I don’t think he would’ve committed suicide personally. But the jury is out and it will never come back with a definitive answer.

Barbara, I will put all my books that I’ve been using on my blog tomorrow, I promise. And I’ll put a few more on as well. Marsha writes, the war in Europe was over. In August, the war in Japan ended. I know that only too well, because I was born in November '45 and my dad was in India. He’d been sent to India as part of the invasion force to invade, to land in Japan before America dropped the bombs. Thank God the war was ended. I would never have ever seen my father if he came back in '46 from India. But yeah, I know all about that in our family as it was.

Monty, Patton is accredited, like Churchill, in saying many things. Some of which he did say, some of which he may have said, and some of which he probably wished he’d said. So let me read what you have said. You don’t want to die for your country, but get the other poor bastard to die for his. Fantastic. Patton was somebody.

Thank you Rose for your comment about Primo Levi. Yes, he was an Italian Jew and he found it difficult being an Italian because he found that others, even other Jews didn’t necessarily accept him. Read his books. I think their books are very informative as well as very, very moving. The book I’ve been using, I think to me, is one of the most important.

Q: Is there any truth in that there are quite a few years nobody knew of Hitler had really committed suicide?

A: Oh, well, people always want to say, “oh no, he’s not really dead. He’s living in South America. I saw him when I went on holiday.” No, no, no, he definitely did. It was the Russian’s fault for getting rid of the evidence. But the evidence subsequently came out because they’d saved jaw and stuff.

No, no, no, he was burnt as he’d asked to be.

Oh, Dennis. I was 11 years old at the time of the Munich agreement and can still remember the clever piece that circulated. Read downwards at the third letter. And the third letter it says, Mussolini, Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, which wins? And you read the third letter of each of those and it spells Stalin. Dennis, I’ve never come across that before. That is wonderful. Dennis, I’m so glad I gave this talk this evening. You’ve made my evening.

With the rest of the world in depression, well, the depression was over, but in a totalitarian state, you can get money. I’m not sure, Judy, whether I’m going to cover Nazis who fled to South America. I can’t remember what titles I gave, but I’ll adjust the thing anyhow and try and cover things that you’ve asked me to cover. Let me read this and then I think I must finish, John writes, it was believed in the late thirties that the French Army had better artillery than Germany. That the Gaul understood that tanks were the future, but the horrors of the first war still haunted them, hence their reluctance to engage in another war, same as Britain, 20 years after 1918. Then there was a large communist movement wholly committed to strategies throughout the war and after the end of war, which led to the betrayal of Eastern Europe. Yeah, all of that is true. It’s Meteron on who said that the world, that humankind killed more of its own in the 20th century than all the previous centuries added together. Pray God, we will be better, but we don’t appear to be particularly better. Harriet, I’ve got to read on. You are being so clever tonight.

Tom Lera, Harriet says, once all the Germans were warlike and mean, but that couldn’t happen again. We taught them a lesson in 1918 and they’ve hardly bothered us since then. Well, fantastic. I’m going to have to stop there and lots of the questions are the same. You’ve asked about the financing of the war effort, and I’ve only given brief answers. I will put that on the agenda for next week and I’ll try and give you as definitive a list and as detailed as time allows on the financial source of German rearmament cash. I’ll try and find, I’ll try and put that into a little piece at the beginning as it were, as a bit of sort of recapitulation if you like, because so many of you have asked, you’ve also asked me, and I’ll make a note of that, about Nazis in South America. And in South America and I will say something about Nazis post-'45. Right, okay.

Then I’ll see you all. I look forward to seeing you all next week. Have a good week in between.