Duncan Bowie on German History
Vertigo by Harald Jahner published by W H Allen \ Hitler’s People by Richard Evans published by Allen Lane
Vertigo is, in my view, the best book on the Weimar Republic. Jahner is a German journalist and academic, and the book was originally published in German. Jahner’s earlier book – Aftermath, on the early post-WW2 years, published in English in 2021, is also worth reading, though, for reasons of chronology, as I prefer not to read my history backwards, I read his new book first. Vertigo is primarily a cultural history – there are numerous studies on the politics of Weimar, the rise of Nazism and why the Social Democrats and Communists failed to stop it, all of which are exceedingly depressing, and still very relevant, but Jahner’s book is much more upbeat (as is his previous volume).
Jahner’s book relies on contemporary German records, including contemporary literature, memoirs and even poetry, with relatively little use of secondary studies, which makes his book so different and so readable. While the timespan is only 15 years – 1918 to 1933, his coverage is wide – from the impact of the military defeat on ordinary lives, the collapse of “national pride”, the hyper-inflation of the early 1920’s, the architecture of new housing, the management of traffic, the growth of a new female secretarial class, the jazz craze and clubland, changes in gender relationships, trends in literature, the press, films and art, the growth in unemployment and finally the collapse of democratic politics.
Politics and culture are, of course, interrelated, and the Nazis benefited from the perception of a decadent republic. I would perhaps have expected more on the relationship between socialist and Bohemian Berlin and the more conservative and catholic countryside – surely a critical factor in the rise of Hitler, but the study tends to focus on Berlin as the author is Berlin-centred. Nevertheless, an excellent book and one with lessons for current times.
Richard Evans has written a trilogy on Hitler’s rise to power and dictatorship, as well as numerous other studies of German and wider European history. Having recently published a biography of Eric Hobsbawm, his new volume represents a return to the Third Reich, drawing on his previous studies as well as contemporary records. He has adopted a biographical approach. The book is a study of Hitler’s supporters, both the well-known and the lesser-known. The first chapter is a ninety-page study of Hitler, necessary to put the other studies in context. This is followed by studies of Goering, Goebbels, Rohm, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and Speer – all of whom have been subject to earlier biographies. Evans’s studies examine both the political trajectories and personal lives of his subjects. What comes over is how cultured and intelligent these leading Nazis, even the SA leader, were, not just a thug, and in many ways, this humanising of individuals generally perceived as evil is more concerning as it demonstrates the extent to which culture and intelligence cannot be relied upon to ensure progressive politics or even humanitarian values.
The second group of biographies – categorised somewhat oddly as “The Enforcers” includes Hess, Hitler’s original deputy; Franz von Papen, Hitler’s predecessor and then his vice chancellor; Robert Ley, head of the “Labour Front”; Julius Streicher, his race theoretician; Reinhard Heydrich, his security chief and executioner; Adolf Eichmann, who implanted the holocaust and Hans Frank, the lawyer who became administrator of occupied Poland.
This approach does, of course, lead to some duplication in relation to the chronology of events, with the 1923 Munich events appearing numerous times, given that many leading Nazis were participants. Leading figures were at times collaborators and at other times were rivals. None were, of course, rivals to Hitler ( except Rohm, who was dealt with).
The final grouping is a mixture of supporters who became instruments of Nazi policy: the Eastern Front general Ritter von Leeb; his doctor Karl Brandt who managed the programme of racial medicine and hygiene; the SS mass murderers Paul Zapp and Egon Zill, concentration camp commanders Ilse Koch and Irma Grese; the Reich Women’s leader, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink; the film maker Leni Riefenstahl (who continued making films into the early 1960’s) and finally the disillusioned supporter Luise Solnitz ( who also makes an appearance in Jahner’s book).
Perhaps inevitably, Evans leads out some key figures. For example, Gregor Strasser, the leader of the socialist anti-capitalist tendency within the early Nazi party, was murdered in June 1934, and Martin Bormann, who was Hitler’s secretary and later deputy Führer. But perhaps the focus on some lesser-known supporters, which in many ways are the more interesting chapters, necessitated this. The book could, of course, have been much longer, but it is a solid study as it stands.
