Lewis M. Weinstein's Blog, page 12
March 19, 2015
* Lew’s comments on Andreas Dorpalen’s “Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic”
Dorpalen provides excellent detail of the role played by President Hindenburg, especially in the months leading up to his appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933. The resulting image is of an old and tired man, who never liked politics to begin with, who showed no initiative to understand the implications of the choices […]
March 15, 2015
* Hubert Wolf’s chapter on the Reich Concordat is more apologetics than history
Rarely have I been so angry about a book as I now am with this one. After earlier chapters with which I had no quarrel (praised in my earlier comments previously posted) I have now read the chapter dealing with the Concordat signed by the German Reich and the Vatican in 1933. The following sequence […]
February 24, 2015
* Lew’s talk at the Key West Library … 2/24/15
I’ll be speaking today about … my novel-in-progress the blending of history & fiction the blending of historical & fictional characters how I keep track of all the research TIME FRAME my story begins in 1923 and ends in 1946 VOL I – today’s topic … begins with the Munich beer hall putsch in […]
February 8, 2015
* Lew’s comments on “Willi Münzenberg: A Political Biography” by Babette Gross
*** Willi Munzenberg was a German Communist who tried to organize resistance to Hitler from outside Germany, after he fled in the face of arrest or execution. He succeeded in offsetting Goebbels’ propaganda regarding who caused the Reichstag fire in Feb 1933 (Goebbels said it was the Communists; Munzenberg said it was the Nazis) and […]
January 25, 2015
Lew’s comments on “Burning the Reichstag” by Benjamin Hett … research for Lew’s novel-in-progress
This is a well-documented report of the facts as known and the still officially unresolved question of who lit the fire. It does seem clear that the man who was found guilty and guillotined was guilty of something, but also that he could not have been the sole perpetrator. Either it was the Nazis who […]
January 18, 2015
* Lew’s comments on “Fists of Steel”
An excellent source book on illegal German rearmament, begun immediately after their defeat in WWI and clearly aimed at rebuilding an offensive war-making capability. Consider this chilling description of a protocol for panzer attacks, developed in 1932 before Germany had the tanks to carry it out. “Guderian envisioned a panzer thrust … led by reconnaissance […]
January 5, 2015
* Lew’s comments on COVERT GERMAN REARMAMENT 1919-1939
*** A 1984 CIA research publication presents one of the great deceptions of modern times: the interwar German evasion of the disarmament provisions of the Versailles settlement. With intriguing detail the author shows how the military, political and industrial leaders of Germany cleverly, systematically, and effectively evaded armament restrictions and clandestinely rearmed Germany, transforming it […]
* Lew’s comments on Mommsen’s WEIMAR DEMOCRACY … research for Lew’s novel in progress
*** Mommsen provides outstanding detail, especially about the undermining of the Weimar Republic by those who could have made it work and thus kept Hitler from power. Democracy is always difficult, and conditions in Germany after WWI made it particularly hard to sustain the compromise and cooperation needed for a democracy to be governed well. […]
December 14, 2014
* Lew’s review of “Hjalmar Schacht: For and Against Hitler” by Edward N. Peterson … research for Lew’s novel-in-progress
*** A well-researched study of a Nazi who was tried at Nuremberg and acquitted. Schacht first gained prominence as the banker who solved the hyper-inflation problem in Germany in 1923, for which he was appointed President of the Reischbank. He was an important supporter of Hitler in the 1930-32 period before Hitler became Chancellor and was […]
December 4, 2014
* Lew’s review of UNVANQUISHED, the biography of Polish leader Josef Pilsudski
*** A magnificent biography of one of the great, unknown men of the 20th century. Josef Pilsudski was a legitimate hero from the early 1900s until his death in 1935. He fought the Russians and Germans in the early 1900s, was instrumental in creating the reformed Polish state in 1919, and ran the Polish […]
