HITLER: NEMESIS, 1936-1945
By Ian Kershaw
Nemesis is the second part of a massive new biography of Adolf
Hitler. Together, the two-volume set totals over 2,000 pages and weighs a little
over seven pounds. The word "definitive" comes to mind, with
"exhaustive" not too far behind.
But not "best."
The best biography of Hitler available, and a great book in its own right, is
Joachim Fest’s Hitler. In Fest’s account Hitler is described as an
"unperson": an uninteresting intellect and personality who
nevertheless embodied many of the hopes and anxieties of his age. What Hitler
possessed was a "social character," something impossible to
communicate without the depth of understanding that Fest brought to his work.
But even with this understanding, which British historian Ian Kershaw to some
degree shares, writing the biography of an unperson is a terrific challenge.
Making things even harder is the fact that the private Hitler was an almost
invisible man. One can search the record in vain for revealing anecdotes. His
conversation is remarkably of a piece with his public pronouncements, and not a
single personal letter written by him survives. After he came to power he
insisted upon becoming his image, and eradicating any evidence of himself as an
individual.
The resulting gaps have invited speculation. Hitler’s insistence that no
one learn about his family origins - "Nobody must know where I come
from" - has been taken as evidence that there was some dark secret to his
birth, perhaps even a Jewish ancestor. The way he never allowed himself to be
seen in public, or even semi-public, with his longtime partner Eva Braun has
provoked comment on his abnormal sexuality, or total lack thereof.
For the most part, Kershaw avoids the personal and the speculative. (Readers
who are interested in these aspects of the story should check out Ron Rosenbaum’s
Explaining Hitler.) Indeed, he has almost nothing
at all to say about Hitler’s
private life. His focus instead is primarily on the political, with a
good deal of attention to military events as well.
In other words, it is as much a biography of the Third Reich as it is of
Hitler, though of course the overlap is almost total anyway. Kershaw’s
characterization of the Nazi bureaucratic anarchy is distilled into an
oft-repeated slogan: "Working towards the Fuhrer." What this refers to
is the way in which radical actions were often instigated from below, not as the
result of express directives, but because they were felt to be in line with
Hitler’s broadly defined aims. Thus "initiatives were taken, pressure
created, legislation instigated . . . without the dictator necessarily having to
dictate." Hitler the Unperson ruled one of the most repressive totalitarian
regimes in history with a conspicuously invisible hand.
"Working towards the Fuhrer" is especially useful in explaining why
there is no hard evidence or paper trail linking Hitler to the Holocaust.
Nowhere in the historical record is there any indication, even in informal
discussions, of his involvement in the extermination of the Jews. This has led
some historians to question how much he was involved in or even knew about
the Final Solution. What Kershaw shows is that such explicit direction was
rarely the form Nazi policy took. Hitler’s role, though more indirect than
overt, was nevertheless "decisive and indispensable."
Kershaw is at this best with this sort of analysis. As a storyteller he is
not as sure. His writing is lucid, but has a cluttered feel to it because of his
penchant for long sentences stuffed with subordinate clauses. And while Hitler’s
identity always came second to his image, Kershaw’s focus on the political
rather than the personal means that Hitler’s final days in the bunker are
poorly evoked. For a political historian this is understandable, but it is
disappointing biography.
Hitler was not a great man, but his biography, even aside from its enormous
historical importance, is a fascinating story of rise and fall. How did a
naturally lazy, friendless, minimally educated homeless man take over Europe? And how did such an advanced society
allow itself to be seduced and then destroyed by its own capacity for senseless barbarity?
It was not, as Hitler liked to see it, a triumph and then failure of the will.
But it was also more than the operation of impersonal historical forces.
Was it fate - a force that Hitler himself frequently adverted to,
especially during the years of his collapse? The titles of Kershaw’s two
volumes - Hubris and Nemesis - obviously suggest the workings
of fate and the shape of tragedy. Tragedy, however, requires a kind of stature
that Hitler, even in his bad eminence, never attained. Hitler the unperson was a
celebrity, an ultimately flimsy projection of society’s anxiety and despair,
its nightmares and its dreams. This was the tragedy of an image. It was not a
personal or even a national tragedy so much as one that belonged to an age.
Notes:
Review first published February 24, 2001.
BACK
