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I resolved to read this book (in form of 60 hours of audibook - it took a while!) as a cautionary tale, and in an effort to understand the forces that enabled WW2, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, since i consider this period to be an important section of general knowledge. The book provides an engaging narrative and a relatively complete account of some of the most important events. If I had to complain about something it would be that the book does not end up painting a complete picture and leaves many of my questions unanswered. For instance, it is one thing to state that this or that event happened on some date. This is an “easy” task of collecting, indexing and then regurgitating historical documents and records. It is entirely another to explain why an event happened rather than any other event, and why or how it came about in the context. This latter task is much harder - it is one of interpretation, summary, knowledge and insight. Ultimately, I felt that while the book was filled with well-researched instances of the former, insights of the latter form were unfortunately more scarce. That being said, overall, I still consider the book well worth reading. A few highlights/thoughts that caught my attention follow. The philosophical underpinnings. Several early chapters are devoted to studying Hitler’s background and ideology, which of course directly influence how future events transpire. In particular it seems he has developed most of his views early during his bohemian lifestyle in Austria and then kept them largely fixed thereafter. The chief ideas are those of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism (the belief that the strong should see their wealth and power increase over the weak). From these two core tenets a lot of the rest follows as a corollary. When you add a pinch of delusions about destiny and embody the whole in a persuasive and eloquent rhetoric in a time of disillusionment and general social/political unrest you start to get a potent mix. The support of the people. One of my biggest questions going into the book was how a regular German person has interpreted all the events leading up to and during the war. It was clear that Hitler had in fact amassed wide support. Did no-one go “So hold on… all Jews are categorically unworthy people and responsible for everything bad in this country?”, or “Wait a second, why are we bullying the neighboring countries and invading them again?”, and then much later “Wait, why am I wielding this weapon and why do I have to shoot these other random people again, instead of hanging out at home with my wife/children?”. I don’t think these questions were adequately explored in the book. Indeed, my most favorite parts (though there were few) were those where the author provides personal comments and anecdotes to the general atmosphere, which he had himself witnessed. My best explanation is that early on while Hitler was rising to power he relied mostly on his strong rhetoric skills and the hard times that have befallen the country in that time. It also seems that things genuinely seemed to improve during that time with respect to unemployment rates, etc. And once he came to full power it became clear that the trap has been sprung. The book is filled with references to pervasive propaganda, and the author himself confesses to have been influenced by it. Then the freedom of the press was given up, which enabled the regime to twist events in their favor. Lastly, even if some eventually did suspect that things went awry, there was no recourse. People were set against each other and if anyone got accused of anything undesirable they would quickly get shipped off to a concentration camp. The image one gets in the end is that the people were simultaneously brainwashed with propaganda, lied to with press, and paralyzed with fear. There were some who did try to do something, either by political means or more often by plotting an assassination. Fun fact: did you know that apparently there were on order of 30 assassination attempts made on Hitler? None of them worked out, in large part due to Hitler’s paranoia and conscious effort of constantly changing his schedule last second and generally acting unpredictably. The politics of deceit. The next question I had was how did the other countries (in particular France/England) not see this coming from miles away and why did they not intervene somehow before Germany gained so much strength and momentum? As the author points out repeatedly, Hitler had also very clearly articulated everything he would do when he came to power in Mein Kampf (which was published by then), including taking over all other countries to provide “living space” for Germans and exterminating Jews, enslaving Slavs, etc. Judging from the book it became clear that it was a combination of two things: 1. Hitler’s constant deceit and 2. Naivety of the other powers, likely due to fear of another war. As an example of deceit, I found the invasion of Poland interesting, in which Hitler looked for an “excuse” to invade, and being unable to find one his men (dressed in Polish uniforms) staged a fake attack on a German outpost. Another example was Hitler’s constant message in his speeches of how reasonable and peace loving Germany was (while plots were made to take over the whole Europe and beyond). Last example was giving an ultimatum with a lifespan of only 24 hours, which of course could not have even been discussed in time, with the intention of later being able to claim that an ultimatum was given (and leaving out the 24hr part). Therefore it turns out to be somehow quite easy to deceive a country’s citizens, to deceive other countries’ leaders, and fabricate events to provide justification for whatever. The same strategies are without a doubt used to this day to achieve all kinds of ulterior motives. The holocaust. The “New Order” chapter of the book was by far the most damaging read. We get a glimpse into exterminations at a massive scale, where people get treated as livestock or worse, and where methods are devised to most efficiently kill large batches of people. In fact, their problem was that they could not kill people fast enough. Even more disturbingly, the people involved (when interviewed afterwards) do not seem very phased about contributing to such events in retrospect. They shrug saying they “followed orders”, and have somehow managed to become indifferent towards these “lesser” people. One former concentration camp guard interviewed in his late life said he didn’t regret anything, and eventually, frustrated, simply said “we just hated them”. Simple as that. Indeed, some have grown to enjoy the whole thing. It seems childish to shrug and simple label all of these people as “evil”. Instead, there’s a lesson here about the malleable nature of a person’s morality, the power of propaganda and the strength of wanting to belong to a group. In summary, a great book with a lot of food for thought, though ultimately it provides more description than understanding. I tried my best to do the latter for myself but I probably got 50% of it wrong anyway, and I hope no historian reads any of this. 4/5. 4/5
— Andrej Karpathy
2015-09-02 on goodreads.com