Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe
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Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.531
EAN: 9781594201882
ISBN: 1594201889
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 768
Publication Date: 2008-09-18
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The
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Editorial Reviews:
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Drawing on an unprecedented variety of sources, Mark Mazower reveals how the Nazis designed, maintained, and ultimately lost their European empire and offers a chilling vision of the world Hitler would have made had he won the war.
Germany’s forces achieved, in just a few years, the astounding domination of a landmass and population larger than that of the United States. Control of this vast territory was meant to provide the basis for Germany’s rise to unquestioned world power. Eastern Europe was to be the Reich’s Wild West, transformed by massacre and colonial settlement. Western Europe was to provide the economic resources that would knit an authoritarian and racially cleansed continent together. But the brutality and short-sightedness of Nazi politics lost what German arms had won and brought their equally rapid downfall.
Time and again, the speed of the Germans’ victories caught them unprepared for the economic or psychological intricacies of running such a far-flung dominion. Politically impoverished, they had no idea how to rule the millions of people they suddenly controlled, except by bludgeon.
Mazower forces us to set aside the timeworn notion that the Nazis’ worldview was their own invention. Their desire for land and their racist attitudes toward Slavs and other nationalities emerged from ideas that had driven their Prussian forebears into Poland and beyond. They also drew inspiration on imperial expansion from the Americans and especially the British, whose empire they idolized. Their signal innovation was to exploit Europe’s peoples and resources much as the British or French had done in India and Africa. Crushed and disheartened, many of the peoples they conquered collaborated with them to a degree that we have largely forgotten. Ultimately, the Third Reich would be beaten as much by its own hand as by the enemy.
Throughout this book are fascinating, chilling glimpses of the world that might have been. Russians, Poles, and other ethnic groups would have been slaughtered or enslaved. Germans would have been settled upon now empty lands as far east as the Black Sea—the new “Greater Germany.” Europe’s treasuries would have been sacked, its great cities impoverished and recast as dormitories for forced laborers when they were not deliberately demolished. As dire as all this sounds, it was merely the planned extension of what actually happened in Europe under Nazi rule as recounted in this authoritative, absorbing book.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: a thorough review of an evil reign
Comment: Memories of the Nazi horror fade and many remember nothing of Hitler's ghstly regime. If thwe allies had not thoroughly trounce Nazi Germany, what would the world look like today. One shudders to think. Thyis book refreshes our memories on just what the Third Reich stood for and did. Unrelentling tyranny and inflicted death rivaled only by Hitler's earlier ally Soviet Russia which played a huge role in scuttling Hitler's empire irreversibly. A great but sobering read.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Analysis of the Weakness of Nazi Rule
Comment: This is a relatively new area of study of the Nazi era. We all know the stories about the 'final solution', and the brutalization of those people in the 'occupied countries'. But little has been said about how the average person in these occupied countries was treated. Needless to say that the SS and Police (under Henrich Himmler) felt it was most useful to 'work the Slav to death' and then replace them with 'German settlements', the view as to how to treat those in Western Europe was totally different.
Those areas that were to be incorporated into the "Greater German Reich" were under civilian authorities who were governed by a Gauleiter (usually an old comrade of Hitler's) and were run by local collaborating civil servants. In Denmark, the Netherlands, and (initially) in Vichy France the same was true but without a German in any capacity above 'Advisor'. What is interesting was that with all the planning that went into arming the Wehrmacht and developing logistics to keep them in food and weapons (though this was really an afterthought) once the war began to drag on; little or no planning was done as to how to administer the 'occupied lands'.
Much of what was done was done 'on the fly' or by Ad Hoc committees of the Party. Hitler was vehement that those who could be 'germanisized' should be treated as members of the Reich who later would become citizens. But in those areas that could never be 'reclaimed', the population was either slave labor or fertilizer or both. Those 'unter' menshen (underpeople)' who were kept as servants and slaves would be taught to understand simple commands and to write their names. If they began to 'breed' to fast, the surplus could be sterilized or liquidated.
But no one in the Nazi hierarchy has any idea of how to rule over those people they had conquered and whose land the Wehrmacht occupied. Since all Nazi 'operations' would be of short duration, this problem never came up. The lack of a labor force for industry (after most German men had been conscripted) left a big whole to fill and could not even be filled by conscripting labor from the occupied countries. The four and a half million Russian and Polish POWs that were killed or starved to death could have helped solve this problem. Had the Nazi's used some common sense, these POWs and many of the Ukrainians could have been put into an Army that could have defeated the 'Reds'.
The sadness of the whole war was that at the end no one got what they wanted (except Stalin) and millions (upwards of 30 million) died for an ideal that was ultimately unattainable.
Zeb Kantrowitz
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interesting but divergant view of Nazi rule of Europe
Comment: Mark Mazower deserves a lot of credit for shedding new light on a previously unexplored topic area of World War II. Unlike a lot of books pertaining to occupied Europe, Mazower does not focus solely on the Holocaust and instead focuses on how the Germans ran Europe as a number of personal and often conflicting fiefdoms. What was most interesting is that somehow this all survived despite how rotted it all was.
Mazower does a fine job of explaining how the combination of German brutality and incompetence resulted in mass starvation and suffering throughout occupied areas. Also the incompetence of German leaders combined with their innate brutality resulted in raising the ire of peoples who may have supported the Germans. Still the book is very interesting for demonstrating how easily some people were co-opted by the Germans early in the war when victory seemed within grasp.
This is a well thought if imperfect history of Germany under Nazi domination. I recommend it to someone who is interested in a under Nazi rule.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unprofessional Insinuation
Comment: This is an amended review based on additional reading of this text. I had originally assigned a 4-star rating--now revised downward to 3-stars based on the following:.
I am a longterm (but casual) reader of works relating to European history, 1929-1949. My initial impression was that new ground was broken in this new release which examines the many conflicting efforts of the Third German Reich to integrate, exploit and ethnically cleanse the vast territory and peoples it acquired through aggressive war. Impressive detail lends a strong authoritative flavor but makes for slow reading. The content, of course, is depressing given the losses and horrors inflicted on the conquered peoples. Not something you will be able sit down and absorb in one reading. Nor would you want to.
I would like to add, however, that after poring through 596 pages of an otherwise erudite and well-documented text, I came upon an odd section entitled, "The Jewish Question" From Europe to the Middle East." Unless I'm misreading him, the author seems to be drawing a deep philosophical link between the post-war Zionist movement (including the establishment of Israel) and what he perceives to be as racist and Nazi precursors. I find this to be an unwise, unwarranted and disturbing correlation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The ultimate cost of fear and terror
Comment: Aztecs.
Aztecs ruled a vast empire in the heart of Mexico by the fear imposed by cutting the living hearts from their victims, then rolling the bodies down the long blood-spattered steps of their pyramids. The Nazi terror didn't use pyramids; but, they made death a public and frequent spectacle. Both used pure terror without morals, mercy or meaning; both were crushed when their victims rebelled.
Aztecs used terror to worship their gods; Nazis used terror to offset their well-deserved inferiority complex produced by dfefeat in World War I. Endless terror is the cruelty used to crush slave revolts.
In defeating the Aztecs, Native Americans became victims of the Spanish who reduced the population by 90 percent within a century. The Spanish balanced the cost of feeding slaves against the price of new slaves; Nazis used similar accounting in their "labour" camps, and might have inflicted a similar fate on Eastern Europe had they been given a century to rule.
In both cases, terror was imposed by brutal armies who had utter contempt for the defeated. For the Nazis, killing was proof of the triumph of the will; for Aztecs, it was a pious religious rite. In early Newfoundland, extermination of the Beothuk people was "better sport" than killing deer. In every case, elimination of "trash" people was considered a virtue.
As John Lukacs writes in his superb 'Five Days in London: May 1940', "Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now. The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler."
Mazower explains the fate of mankind had Churchill failed. Sadly, the "right to kill" is often used by the Hitler's of the world who assume they have moral superiority over the lives and ethics of others. Thus, a "just" society executes murderers and other evildoers. "Exceptional" societies claim a right to impose their ideologies and morals at the point of a gun. Al Qaeda claims holy piety and thus a moral right to kill "unbelievers".
This book describes the impact of soldiers who wore 'Gott mit uns' on their belt buckles but felt no remose at wholesale slaughters of those their leaders deemed "trash". They were supported by millions of civilians, at least until they began to lose the war; and even now, by Americans such as Patrick Buchanan in his latest book.
Is it not a Christian ethic -- and a fundamental moral value of all religions -- to show mercy to the weak, the poor, the halt and the lame? Sadly, some want to kick the Underdogs out to make room for the "exceptional" superiors.
Who are the Underdogs? Take a look at 'The Underdogs' by Mariano Azuela, a reprinted classic from 1915 which vividly describes the wrath of those who finally rebel against brutal overlords.
Mazower describes a society based on fear and terror, a policy used for thousands of years though it has never achieved peace, progress, prosperity or innovation. In contrast to the ideology of terror, perhaps the only surprise is the relative mercy shown to the defeated Nazis.
Somehow, leaders must learn that force, repression, fear and terror doesn't work. Somehow, as weapons, authority, religion and globalisation become more pervasive and deadly, people must learn the merits of decency. As Mexican President Benito Juarez once said, "Peace is respect for the rights of others." Yet even he refused clemency to his defeated enemy, the Emperor Maximilian.
Will we ever learn?
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