Summary
Title: The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation
Author: Ian Kershaw
Publisher: Hodder Arnold
ISBN: 0340760281
Pro:
• Very engaging introduction to some of the more interesting debates about Nazi Germany
Con:
• Aimed at a more educated or informed audience
Description:
• Analysis of major debates over the nature and development of the Nazi government
• Explains each perspective, describes their strengths and weaknesses, then offers Kershaw’s conclusions
• Demonstrates that not everything in history is cut and dried
Book Review
History is not an exact science. It might be assumed by some that so long as we have access to the facts, then we also know what happened and there isn’t any controversy. Simply knowing what happened, though, isn’t the same as knowing why and how it happened — and very often, knowing the how and why can be more important than merely knowing the what. This is where we run into serious problems when trying to understand the Nazi era: there are so many fundamental issues where we really don’t know the hows or whys.
When the evidence doesn’t lead to a single, unambiguous conclusion, we are left with historians’ interpretations — interpretations which depend upon the historians’ perspectives, assumptions, interests, and so forth. Some are stronger than others, but all can offer us some interesting insights on the issue. This is especially true about the Nazi era where there are so many difficult questions to deal with. For people interested in learning more, you can’t really do better than to start with Ian Kershaw’s The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. Ian Kershaw is one of the foremost scholars of Nazi Germany — almost anything he writes on the subject is bound to be not only informative, but also highly readable and engaging. This is also largely true about The Nazi Dictatorship.
Given what it’s about, it is at times a bit more technical than many of this other books and thus appears to be aimed more at students in an academic setting than the average reader. It would certainly be a perfect book for those studying not just Nazi Germany, but also historiography and problems of historical interpretation generally; however, I think that the average reader can still get a lot out of this if they read closely.
In each chapter, Kershaw takes one major question about the nature of Nazi Germany, explores both sides, and then gives his opinion on where the strongest evidence lies. Was Hitler really the “master” of the Third Reich, driving all of its policies through the force of his personal will, or was he a “weak dictator” who at best aimed Germany in general directions and allowed his subordinates to make policy? Did Hitler always intend to launch the Holocaust and murder every Jew he could locate, or was he just more generally concerned with getting rid of them and simply stumbled into genocide? Was the goal of Hitler and the Third Reich to conquer the entire world, or would they have been content with Europe?
Each of these and the other questions aren’t mere historical curiosities: how we answer them will determine how we approach and what we think of Nazi Germany overall. Should we, for example, attribute less moral blame to Hitler if he merely stumbled into genocide as opposed to having planned it since World War 1? Should we pay less attention to Hitler as the defining figure of the Third Reich if he was more a “weak dictator” and policies were determined by subordinates?
These aren’t just historical questions, they are moral questions as well. That, in fact, is the problem with doing history about Nazi Germany: unlike any other era in history, this isn’t a period where one can be a neutral observer. Perfect neutrality may not be possible, but here even attempting neutrality can be seen as a moral failing because it would entail not condemning the Nazis and the Holocaust. These historical problems with the Third Reich are thus also moral problems too, calling into question how we morally judge history and how those judgments impact our reading of the historical record.
