Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (Allen Lane History)

This is a first class book which allows a comparative reading of the Nazi occupation of different countries of Europe. What it really shows is the difficulty of trying to see Nazi occupation as a monolith. In reality the practice pursued in the different occupied countries varied enormously- according to which German administration was dominant in the occupied country, according to Nazi stereotypes of each country and what they hoped to achieved from occupying it, according to how the population of each country responded, not forgetting that Nazi occupations generally became more severe with time. A complex history but well worth reading about.

Britain colonized India, Germany colonized Europe. Europeans didn't like the taste of their own medicine (7/18 people found this helpful)

It's easy to work out if you'll like this book. The subject is, how did Nazi Germany administer and rule the countries they conquered and annexed? If you're already rolling your eyes and struggling to keep a yawn down, then clearly this book is not for you. On the other hand, if like me, you think, "wow, what an interesting subject," then you will probably like this book, and it should fulfil your expectations with ease. I only skipped about four pages about France's art scene and underground politics, and a page at the end that waffled on about the post war economy, so it's not a dull difficult to read book.

It goes into a fair amount of detail of how each country was handled differently. Eastern countries like Russia and Poland (the Nazi's took Poland off the map and renamed it the General Government) had the law revoked for their citizens and had to endure brutal regimes due to racial hatred. Western countries were usually left to administer themselves after some political purging had taken place in the civil service, and a new Nazi sympathetic Government had been put in place. The book seems to suggest that we should be thankful for bureaucracy, as it's all the legal paperwork that stops our governments from turning on its citizens - it's the countries with weak legal bureaucrats that get away with murdering and arresting people for flimsy political reasons.

There is a lot of interesting stuff about how the Wehrmacht (German army that took commands from the political leaders but were not 100% under their thumb) and the SS (I guess you could describe them as the Nazi party's army, mainly responsible for policing and racial issues) each wanted to handle things differently. The Wehrmacht, who willingly perpetrated many atrocities, at least had generals who from time to time wanted to cooperate and be nice with the locals, but the Nazi high command would always reject it and instead insist on brutal repression. In the Eastern countries the SS had a large presence, and so the Final Solution was mainly carried out in those countries were the racial hatred was at its most pronounced.

The racial prejudices of the Nazi high command is also exposed as maybe being the main weakness in their war effort. Their refusal to work with existing governments once they took over a country created great strains on the German system that couldn't be eased by using the locals. You definitely see the pointlessness and impossibility of racial segregation, and that mass murder and forced migration were desperate but unworkable solutions that were improvised on the spot. I get the sense that they got too far into the war and that they ended up chasing their own tails following racial guidelines that they quickly realised made no sense.

It's clear that if Hitler was willing to compromise a bit here and there, and didn't automatically order his people to close their hearts to pity and beat what they wanted out of others (ie. some carrot to go with the overused stick) then Germany might have had a chance of winning. If countries could have seen something good in being under German control then they might have been happy to remain as such. As there were no benefits, just an endless list of brutally applied negatives, they had to fight back. If Hitler could have been nice from time to time, who knows what the world today would be like?

It had a great review in The Spectator's book pages (10/10 people found this helpful)

This book had a really excellent review in the London Spectator magazine dated 5th July. It made me put this book on my wishlist. One of the central theses of the book is that the Germans themselves were surprised and unprepared for the complete collapse of their Western European enemies in 1940. Thus, there were no settled policies, and given the subjective nature of racial hatred, and the competing heirarchies of SS, the Army, Civil Service and competing Gauleiters, chaos was inevitable and, ultimately, cost Germany the war. Mythical concepts of German destiny and racial hatred prevailed over military necessity and pragmatism. Mazower quotes Goebbels saying, perhaps ironically, 'If anyone asks us how you conceive the new Europe, we have to reply that we don't know.'

Eye-Opening (5/6 people found this helpful)

Brilliant! This immense and wonderful book is a revelation, not just about the extraordinary state of Nazi occupied Europe but about world politics before and after.

A superb book. (12/17 people found this helpful)

This book is a real eye-opener! I was in turn shocked and horrified by the detailed accounts of atrocities that this book reveals. That World War 2 was essentialy a 'race war' at (least as far as the Nazi's were concerned) is a fact brought home brilliantly by the author. Buy this book but don't read it at bedtime!

Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (Allen Lane History)

Mark Mazower

Reader Reviews:

Excellent (5/5 people found this helpful)

Britain colonized India, Germany colonized Europe. Europeans didn't like the taste of their own medicine (7/18 people found this helpful)

It had a great review in The Spectator's book pages (10/10 people found this helpful)

Eye-Opening (5/6 people found this helpful)

A superb book. (12/17 people found this helpful)

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