"To begin with: this book is not what expected or hoped for. In my life as a reviewer and student of the Third Reich, I am often asked for a book that will serve as an introduction for interested individuals with no training in history, who want something better than the History Channel or William Shirer. This book is not that. Burleigh is not a popular history writer, and this book is no introduction. At several points, he says “much has already been written about� an aspect or that “there is no point in going over the basic details of so well-worn a topic.� In other words, you need to have some background before you approach this text. Sorry, everyone, I guess you have to stick with Shirer for now.

That said, the book is definitely worthwhile for those who have that background. This is not least because he does engage with academic historical debates, and does so from a unique and often fascinating perspective. I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of it, but that’s precisely what makes it challenging and useful for me. Burleigh is sometimes described as a “right wing� historian, a term that has been tarnished by the likes of Niall Ferguson and Glenn Beck, but he is a genuinely responsible academic, and he makes his arguments for the most part without resorting to rancor or misinformation. These two paragraphs represent the bulk of my review for those who interested in assessing whether or not to read the book. What follows is a detailed analysis of his arguments, based on the notes I made while reading.

His theoretical approach is discussed in the Introduction. Perhaps most significantly, he identifies as a proponent of the concept of “totalitarianism� as a category more important than divisions like “Fascism� or “Left-Right� divides. . Someday, I’d like to see a use of the concept of “totalitarianism� that explains why Hitler and Stalin are more similar to each other than either one is to Oswald Mosley or Fidel Castro, but generally, what it is used for is to paint all Communists, Fascists, and other ideological authoritarians with a single, broad brush, that simplifies rather than complicates our understanding. On page 21, even Burleigh places Cuba and Stalinism together without a hint of irony. Still, in terms of understanding this category as it is used in scholarship, I have seen no better example than Burleigh, and slips such as the above are relatively rare. The other recurring theme that deserves mention is his argument that National Socialism was a “political religion,� and therefore more hostile towards Christianity than is generally recognized. In the Introduction, he posits Nazism as “a creative synthesis of both…science run riot [and] bastardized Christianity� (p.14). He ties this idea to a number of previous scholars, including Mosse, but does not develop it adequately in the rest of the text to be persuasive to me. Again, however, the presentation is interesting and the idea challenging.

The first chapter discusses the Weimar Republic and its decline and fall. His point is not to examine the complexities of the period but rather to consider the reasons it ended as it did. Burleigh does not give in to single, oversimplified “magic bullet� theories here. He gives a broad overview of political, economic, social and cultural factors that undermined Germany’s experiment in democracy, and is fair about distributing blame among rich and poor, right and left, foreign and domestic sources of tension. His use of anecdotes and examples is actually quite original, and he avoids the clichés most people have seen dozens of times. Even his illustrations from Mein Kampf impressed me as being sections not frequently used, some of which I had forgotten having read years ago.

Chapter Two covers “the demise of the rule of law� and it returns to a large degree to arguments of totalitarianism. Among the issues covered are the Nazification of the judiciary and the police, the extension of secret policing and the power of the SD, and the management of the pre-war system of Concentration Camps. This is decidedly useful material, even though I found myself questioning his interpretations frequently in this section. Although the chapters can be seen as roughly chronological, the approach within chapters is more thematic. The demise of the rule of law generally is necessary to understand what came later (the Holocaust), but he discusses events from 1937 alongside those in 1933 in a manner that would be confusing for newcomers. The Reichstag Fire and Röhm purge are two subjects he discusses in terms of their effects on this process, but he does not provide enough background to be coherent to a neophyte.

Chapter Three is “New Times, New Man,� and discusses several of the more “positive� aspects of the Nazi program in action. This includes charitable work, efforts to create a classless society, educational efforts, the use of pageantry and ritual, and international relations and foreign policy. I began to notice here his dependence on the “Berichte der SOPADE� as a source for many of his anecdotes. These are reports produced for the exiled leaders of the Social Democratic Party by agents within Germany, and represent a curious source for a “right wing� author. In his bibliographic essay at the end of the book, Burleigh discusses his use of these documents: “Despite its obvious biases, which in this context are no demerit, the most detailed contemporary observations on life under the Nazi regime during the 1930s were collected as� the SOPADE. I found that they added much fresh detail to the narrative, although of course they are merely anecdotes.

With Chapter Four, “Living in a Land with No Future,� Burleigh makes it clear that for him the study of the Third Reich is intimately bound in the study of the Holocaust, unlike many earlier writers, who treated the Holocaust as a side-issue or final chapter. This chapter focuses specifically on the rising mis-treatment of Jews as racial outsiders through the pre-War period (1933-1938). He includes quite a bit of information on Austria, which was only added to the Reich at the end of this period, but seems to have made strenuous efforts to “catch up� with and even exceed the rest of Germany in anti-Semitism. A large section discusses Kristallnacht, which Burleigh explicitly classes as a “pogrom,� and which he is at pains to demonstrate was neither “spontaneous� nor “popular,� although here his evidence is somewhat stretched, in my opinion. His discussion of Eichmann is interesting and complicated: he is a man who, yes, acted more from ambition and personal gain than from ideology, but who clearly took to sadism as an outlook and a lifestyle. He does not appear as a truly faceless bureaucrat, although it is possible to believe that there are many like him tucked away within bureaucracies, waiting their chances.

The progression toward the Holocaust is made more explicit in Chapter Five, on “Eugenics and Euthanasia.� The sections are broken down into discussions of “breeding� and “murder,� with eugenics coming in for moral as well as scientific re-evaluation. Burleigh points out that enthusiasm for eugenics was not solely a Nazi concern, many countries enacted laws or policies, or at least had doctors advocating them, which attempted to control the genetic future. However, the Nazis did take it to an extreme degree, probably helping to discredit it after the War. Euthanasia continues to be a contentious point in many countries, with “mercy killing� still an open question for many. This may be because the Nazis did not apply “mercy,� but rather made an active effort to sterilize and kill the “less useful� members of their society. Burleigh examines the response of the churches to this situation, especially relevant because of the many ecumenical hospitals involved in the programs. This subject area doesn’t lend itself well to discussion of “totalitarianism,� because what the Nazis did for eugenics, and in their approach to “euthanasia,� were unique, although in theory the discussion of the churches should open an opportunity develop the “political religion� thesis, which he mostly ignores in favor of giving more anecdotes and details.

Chapter Six, “Occupation and Collaboration in Europe,� is actually a bit of a breather after such a grim topic. Not that Burleigh argues that occupation and collaboration were pleasant for the subject countries, but it varied in intensity and generally was better than T-4. Burleigh hops around the map of Europe somewhat madly, demonstrating by contrast the difference in treatment received by east and west, on the basis of the Nazis� racial hierarchy. The extreme cases are Poland and Denmark. The Poles� fate was never intended to be much better than the Jews: their “best stock� was claimed for Germany, while intellectuals and leading nationalists were murdered outright and the Polish nation-state was wiped out of existence, politically and geographically. Denmark was permitted to choose its leadership (the local Nazi party achieving 2% of the vote at its height) and largely left to its own devices. In fact, the occupied Channel Islands seem to come off even better, since German soldiers were ordered not to pick flowers on private property, but we don’t get as much about that occupation. Collaboration is treated with refreshing complexity, neither exculpating those who legitimately committed crimes of treason against their own nation, nor expecting saintly heroism from people who were presented with very few choices.

Chapter Seven, on “German Invasion and Occupation of the Soviet Union,� looks at the most particular of these many diverse occupations. This chapter serves as a bridge from the previous consideration of occupation policies/responses to and the later explicit coverage of the Holocaust. Here, we learn of the “Commissar Order� and the capture of vast numbers of prisoners of war that strained the infrastructure of German occupation forces. We also get a clear sense of the pointlessness of the orders for “hardness� and “brutality.� In the end, Germany got little economic benefit from the areas it took from the USSR, and actually had to import supplies to some of them. Burleigh’s emphasis is not a chronological examination of the military maneuvers, but in this chapter we get more discussion of generals and battles than in most others. The siege of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk are given especial attention. Of course, much of Burleigh’s point is to compare the two totalitarian powers � to neither’s benefit. Stalin’s sluggish reaction to the invasion, his expectation to be removed from power, and his own brutal and violent orders are all given coverage.

Chapter Eight is on “Racial War Against the Jews,� and represents the culmination of his making understanding of the Holocaust intrinsic to the study of the Third Reich. It is here that he most explicitly addresses historical debates, and most clearly places himself within those debates. In previous chapters, there were hints in the form of notes which named Daniel Goldhagen, cited after disparaging comments about “Exterminationist� viewpoints, but in this chapter he explicitly uses the work of Christopher Browning to support a largely “Functionalist� argument. This is not to say that Burleigh (or Browning) attempts to argue that the Nazi leadership, particularly Hitler, did not begin their careers with the conscious intention of murdering as many Jews as possible, but rather that for most of the killers and their immediate superiors this was not inherent or given. For most readers, this will probably seem unimportant or simple bewildering, but for historians engaged in these debates, Burleigh’s use of Browning and other sources will be informative.
Chapter Nine, on German Resistance to Nazism is telling of Burleigh’s biases, if still worthwhile as a point of departure for future writers. Because Communism is Totalitarianism in his pantheon, Communist resistance to Nazism is disingenuous or ignorable, certainly not worthy of any respect. The Left more broadly is downplayed as well, in spite of a nod to the value of the SOPADE reports. The churches are mostly a disappointment, although he makes special note of the moral consistency of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The conservatives who ultimately did conspire against Hitler are rehabilitated from modern criticism, however, in an attempt to present a “fairer view� than “criticizing [them] ahistorically in terms of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic� (695-696). His bias is all the more clear when he says, of German aristocrats, “[f]or them, aristocracy entailed obligations, a virtually incomprehensible notion in cultures which only recognize rights� (706). None of this is as problematic as his decision to excise Sophie Scholl and the White Rose entirely from the record. While their resistance may have been ultimately symbolic, they certainly represent a more optimistic antithesis to Hitler than a bunch of anti-democratic, generally anti-Semitic army officers and intellectuals who hesitated to take a direct stance until the war was nearly over.

The final chapter, “War and Peace,� covers the final weeks of the Third Reich, its government and military, and the Allied occupation and reconciliation/retribution arrangements. Here he treats the allied bombing campaign and its ethical questions with sensitivity and consistency. He gives considered attention to the issue without letting it become “equal to� or otherwise excusing the Holocaust. This chapter also gives some information on Soviet policies, particularly the mass deportations of Germans from former-Prussian (now Polish) regions, but is mostly a fairly quick overview of the fall of the regime and the Nuremburg Trials. It wraps up the narrative well, but doesn’t try to add much to the debate."

"I have admired all the books I have read by Mr. Petropoulos, particularly because of his extensive research which means that whatever he writes is backed by more than supposition. He refuses to accept pieties and simplistic or self-serving narratives. By engaging with the complex realities of the times he writes about and helps the reader to understand, and certainly to appreciate, how difficult it was for the artists under consideration to know what the right thing to do was. Although in retrospect the path of exile, chosen, has been understood as the first choice of all the 'great' artists. For those who believe it may come as something of a shock to see various Mies van der Rohe drawings submitted for Nazi party building projects. In his case it was the Nazis refusal to employ him rather than his refusal to work for them that led his very successful and profitable exile.*

It is marvellous, fifty or more years later with the benefit not just of hind sight but the knowledge of just how brief Nazi rule was going to be, to pontificate about what others should have done.

In this book Petropoulos looks at the prominent German artists, architects, composers, film directors, painters, and writers who rejected exile, and chose to stay during Germany’s darkest period. He shows how individuals variously dealt with the regime’s public opposition to modern art. His findings explode the myth that all modern artists were anti-Nazi and all Nazis anti-modernist. This is the most rewarding part of the book, Petropoulos's subtlety and refusal to be drawn into snap or cliched views allows the reader to understand how difficult choices were. Plenty who later were stars of German emigration from Hitler attempted to stay and work for the Nazis. Understanding how to respond to a regime that you disagree with is never as easy as it seems in retrospect. Making the right decisions is difficult and those Germans opposed to the Nazis also had the difficulty of finding somewhere else to go to. Refugees were no more popular, or welcome, in the 1930's then they are now.

First rate book and even if you aren't really sure if this subject is for you I strongly recommend giving it a try. Petropoulos is an excellent writer and manages varied and complex topics with ease.

*Although not an artist Kurt Hahn founder of Gordonstoun (alma mater of the late Prince Phillip, the current king and his brothers) was always held up as a principled resister against Nazi infiltration of the school he was headmaster of in Germany. That he was quite willing to work with the Nazis and it was their refusal to have him as a collaborator that sent him to exile is only rarely acknowledged."