Brustein, William.
The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925-1933. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
For better transparency, that subtitle should read "The
Sociological Origins of the Nazi Party," because that's what Brustein is doing. He's analyzing the data provided by NSDAP member cards, and doing so in a very narrowly sociological framework. His thesis is that the support of ordinary Germans for the Nazi Party can be explained entirely by rational economic self-interest. No need to talk about Hitler the demagogue or the German tradition of anti-Semitism--it all comes down to the Nazis' proposed economic programs.
Don't get me wrong: Brustein's data are fascinating, and I think his work does help explain why the Nazis did better among certain social groups. But I don't buy his thesis that the rise of the NSDAP can be satisfactorily explained by people making well-informed, rational, economically-motivated decisions.
Deakin, F. W.
The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism. 1962. London: Phoenix Press, 2000.
Short version: No matter what he says, Hitler is not your friend.
Slightly longer version: This is a very top-down history of the Italian involvement in World War II. It deals only with Mussolini (and Hitler) and the ministers and generals and Party bigshots. One of the blurbs describes it as "impersonal," and I would agree. Deakin's interested in untangling the incredibly snarled political knot of the end of Italian fascism. He's not interested in any of the players as people, and he's certainly not interested in the Italian workers or soldiers (or, god forbid, women) whose lives were being destroyed by the machinations of these petty tin gods.
At the same time, as long as you're willing to go on the ride he wants to take you on, this is an excellent book. Deakin is painstaking and exhaustive; he makes no excuses for anyone; and although he does not discuss ideology or the reprehensible things that the Nazis were doing in other parts of Europe, he's not trying to make them look like anything but the toxic assholes that they were. And he does an excellent job of showing how Italy was doomed by the irrational, self-deluding decisions made by Mussolini, and by the really terrifying inability of
anyone to say no to Hitler. (It's pathetic watching the German generals make puppy dog eyes at Mussolini in the hopes he can talk sense to Hitler about Russia.) It's frightening and appalling how much of World War II can be reduced to these two men, and the fact that they were both destroyed by it is very cold comfort.
Koch, H. W.
Hitler Youth: The Duped Generation. Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972.
I bought this book mostly for the pictures, which is not a decision I'm feeling bad about. Koch's
other book about the Hitler Youth provides all the history and detail, and the pictures are fascinating, revealing, and OMG creepy. Koch also offers a few more tidbits about his own experiences in the HJ, such as this comment on induction into the
Jungvolk:
This [probationary] period was concluded with a special test, combining sport, close combat, and questions of an "ideological" nature (mainly a knowledge of the history of the NSDAP) and culminating in a "test of bravery" which (as in the author's case) could take the form of having to jump in full dress and boots from the window of a first floor [American second floor] block of flats.
(Koch 78)
Not great on its own, but fantastic as supplementary material.
Overy, Richard.
Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945. New York: Viking-Penguin Books, 2001.
About half this massive book is transcripts of interrogations; the other half describes and explores the circumstances under which the interrogations were conducted in the run up to the Nuremberg trials. Fascinating particularly for the ways in and degrees to which the Nazi criminals avoided admitting their culpability (ranging from Ley's suicide to Hess' half-faked, half-genuine hysterical amnesia to Speer's calculated self-reinvention); fascinating (also infuriating and appalling) for the hypocrisy of the Allies, who were not only retroactively creating crimes to try the Nazis for, but were very carefully tailoring those crimes so as to avoid tarring themselves with the same brush. It's not that I think the Nazis shouldn't have been held accountable--because obviously I don't think that; it's the way in which the Allies deliberately rigged the game so as to hide their own questionable actions.
Both Hitler and Mussolini were convinced, near the end of World War II, that they could make a deal with England and America so as to turn and go after Stalin. And the problem is that there's a lot of ways in which that's what should have happened. Not the deal-making part, which was a bedtime story for frightened dictators, but the unconscionable double standard whereby England and America condemn the Nazis but ignore the exact same crimes being committed by the Soviets (not to mention turning over Russian POWs who are
begging to be protected from their own government, Winston Churchill, I am looking at you) . . . I don't know what the right answer would have been, or if there even was one, but that wasn't it.
Roseman, Mark.
The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
This is my very favorite kind of history, the kind that says, "here's a mysterious thing that happened, let's look at all the evidence we have and see if we can figure it out." Roseman's mysterious thing is the conference at Wannsee (notorious for being the one place where you can actually
pin down Nazi leaders talking about exterminating the Jews), and he does a wonderful job of contextualizing it and analyzing the evidence we have, and ultimately situating it persuasively in the progress of the Final Solution and the dance in the upper echelons of the Nazi government between amassing as much power for yourself as you could and sharing out the culpability to as many patsies as possible. This book is concise and elegant and I'd love to be able to write history like this.
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