now for the fall

In Shrier's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I'm now almost 80% done with the book, and the war has turned against the Axis. Hitler has slowly been losing the battle to his own megalomania and delusions. When he throws tens of thousands of German troops at impossible Russian positions, and his generals either suffer massive casualties or retreat, he fires his entire top level of military officers. Hitler has lost touch with reality even as far as military and geopolitics goes. Within six months after his stalemate with Britain across the English Channel, he declares war on both Soviet Russia and the United States. The insanity increases as Hitler declares that he doesn't need tactical military leaders, but Nazi ardor to finish the war.

I am really happy to have started reading this book because, like most Americans, my knowledge of WWII a regards to Germany was basically limited to the following facts

• WWII began with the bombing of pearl harbor
• The French surrendered at the first German to cross the border
• the Germans were using submarines and controlled the continent
• Nazis are all evil and are dangerously attracted to mystic early Christian relics
• HBO's Band of Brothers
• Tom Hanks leading an invasion on the beaches of Normandy to find somebody's brother
• something vague happening in north Africa, like a really good German general in dust goggles and people in fancy dress waiting around at Rick's in Casablanca being desperate and clever
• Nazis marching in lockstep
• Nazis rounding up Jews and forcing them into rail cars which left full and came back mysteriously empty
• Hitler giving an angry speech without subtitles
• We were either fighting with Russia against Germany or against Russia and Germany. Wasn't Stalin one of the bad guys? 
• Pretty much all of Germany giving Heil Hitler salutes
• Tom Cruise once disguised himself as a Nazi general and tried to kill Adolf Hitler
• Hitler blowing his brains out in some bunker in Berlin
• I think there was some kind of deal Germany had with Japan?

There's much of that which is wildly inaccurate, omitted, and vague. Hitler is one of the most hated men in history, but for most people, they don't really know why other than he started a really bloody war, was basically an amoral psychopath, and murdered millions of Jews. Fair enough reasons, but when you start to understand him, to grapple with the fact that this was a human being who was capable of love and not some demon crawled out of hell, this is a multiplication of the horror and revulsion. 

For so long, the Nazis were just this faceless thing headed by der Furher, a character of himself. It seems important that to prevent this kind of horror, which is not alien, demonic, or insane, to understand where it came from, how it operated, how it was perpetuated. To get to know the people who dreamed it up, who carried it out, who abetted it, and who fought against it.

Regardless of the sides, the story as Shrier tells it has some amazing moments, I can see them almost cinematically play out in my head:

The German ambassador to Russia receives a telegram to be read to the Soviets at once. He is an old guard German diplomat, who has been working for the past five years to improve relations with the Soviet Union in good faith. The telegram is a totally unexpected declaration of war. Once he realizes the content, deeply shaken, he destroys the cyphers and secret papers of the embassy, and with great pain and embarrassment he reads the declaration to his soviet counterpart, Molotov, who has over the years developed a friendly relationship. Molotov listens in stunned silence to the entire declaration (the Soviets weren't expecting it either) and can only ask say one thing. "It is war. Do you believe that we deserved it?"

In north Africa, the corps have been overwhelmed and beaten back. They want to surrender to the superior airpower, ships, and military of the Allies. Hitler radios them to stand their ground or die trying. Rommel's second in command decides he's had enough of Hitler's 'insanity' and stands in a clean dress uniform beside a burning tank, alone in the desert, waiting to surrender to the Allies.