I’m listening to two audiobooks right now that make for an interesting, though unplanned, juxtaposition when read side by side.
The first is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travelogue A Time of Gifts, and the second is William Shirer’s classic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Fermor did a walking tour through Germany during the 30’s, at a time when Hitler was solidifying his power. Almost every day Fermor had interactions with quirky locals, which he narrates with a vividness that brings to life this bygone age. It is remarkable how little Nazism features in these interactions. One gets the sense that throughout the 30’s the German people were very normal and never had any aspirations of entering a world war.
Actually neither did Hitler, at least not initially. Regardless of the broad territorial aims articulated in Mein Kampf, the German warlord did not initially seek a large-scale war. That is something that struck me again and again as I’ve been working my way through this fifty-seven hour audiobook (which is never boring, as Shirer writes in the story-telling style of a good journalist.)
In Hitler’s early territorial moves—undertaken when Germany was still very weak militarily—he counted on no resistance from England, France, and the Soviet Union (nations for whom it would have been child’s play to stop Hitler during the early days of the Reich’s expansion). When Hitler first remilitarized the Rhineland, German soldiers had instructions to retreat if they encountered any resistance from France. Hitler wavered on the invasion of Poland when he thought Britain and France might intervene, and only proceeded once the Soviets were neutralized through a temporary treaty, and once he was convinced—correctly as it turns out—that the Western powers would not immediately honor their treaty with Poland in the form of a military intervention.
Despite eventual overreach in the East, Hitler was a brilliant general. He was also a mastermind of diplomacy, and accomplished his bloodless early victories through incredible skill as a shrewd tactician and manipulative mastermind. It was important that the early victories—in the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia—be bloodless since Hitler knew he was in no position to fight a prolonged war. Even after the invasion of Poland, the Western powers might easily have come to the aid of Poland by attacking from the West, where German defenses were still relatively weak. That would have irreparably damaged Hitler’s reputation at home, and thus hastened the end of the Reich. As things stood, Hitler’s early territorial expansion only worked because the Western powers continued pursuing the type of appeasement so famously on display at the Munich conference. Hitler gambled that this appeasement would continue, as he did not want to prematurely rush into a world war, or even a two-front war.
After Britain committed troops in 1939 to aid Belgium and France only to be swiftly defeated, Hitler and his generals were so confident that Britain would sue for peace that they did not even begin planning an invasion of England until May 21 (at least, that is the first point in the German records where Hitler appears to have seriously contemplated such a possibility). Even as late as June 15, 1940, Hitler informed his generals that he wanted the army partially demobilized, going from 160 divisions to 120. With his Air Force continuing to pummel Britain and his navy enforcing a blockade, it was only a matter of time before Britain would ask for peace just as France had done. When English continued to prove obdurate, the German generals expected the English people to rebel against Churchill and force surrender.
After Hitler had to abandon his plans for invading England due to the RAF (who could have made mincemeat out of a naval invasion force), Hitler at least expected no further trouble from the island or its empire, and felt safe turning his attention eastward. With the industrial might of all Europe at the disposal of his war machine, and England isolated, Hitler began to have a sense of invincibility, believing it was time to conquer Russia. In the Führer’s mind, conquering Russia was even a roundabout way to finish off England since the collapse of Russia would not only strengthen the German war machine but relieve Japan (an enemy of Russia) to make war against the US, thus further isolating England and her potential ally. Never did he expect that England would rebound to cause Germany to face a two-front war (Hitler’s ultimate nightmare).
Another thing that struck me in working through Shirer’s account is that the horror that became WWII happened because of appeasement, denial, and looking the other way until it was too late. If this was true for figures in the international community like Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax (who not only pursued a policy of appeasement, but minimized the Anschluss with Austria and even supported Hitler in annexing large portions of Czechoslovakia), it was equally true for most Germans even up through ’39. Though embittered about Versailles and the lingering memory of the post-WWI settlement, few civilians wanted a pan-European conflict and chose to look the other way at their Fuhrer inched the nation closer to the precipice. And that brings me back to Patrick Fermor’s A Time of Gifts. The majority of Germans of the late 30’s were not war-mongers, and slept-walked into the world war without realizing what was happening until it was too late.
Fermor’s poetic and artistic mind glorified everywhere he traversed with a sense of wonder. His memoirs are filled with the most delightful descriptions, as his mind runs continually to metaphor. Almost every evening Fermor was offered hospitality by complete strangers. He would temporarily become part of their idiosyncratic lives before resuming his journey to the next village. This was possible only because the world of the 30s was still fundamentally communal, since the logic of technology, industrial capitalism, and the nation state had not yet eroded the ancient vestiges of localism, based largely around relationships and community.
While reading A Time of Gifts, I am struck that the most significant changes looming just around the corner for the Europe Fermor walked through were not the coming war but the erosion of local cultures that would unfold throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Industry, urbanization, technology, industrial capitalism, and the modern administrative state would all work in tandem to usher Europe into a condition scarcely recognizable from the world Fermor encountered.
Further Reading