Michael’s Reviews > The Third Reich: A New History > Status Update

‘Our lives may be more boring than those who lived in apocalyptic times, but being bored is greatly preferable to being prematurely dead because of some ideological fantasy.’

‘In this sense, the lower register, the more pragmatic ambitions, the talk of taxes, markets, education, health and welfare, evident in the political cultures of Europe and North America, constitute progress, even though we as yet lack historians with the gift of conveying its many remarkable Jamesian virtues.’

‘This is one of the many ways in which epistemological advances in the study of history have led to greater insights regarding this very subject than his been achieved by an approach based on the mere accumulation of archival “facts”, especially when those “facts” have been accumulated for narrowly forensic purposes, which explain little about the metaphysical motives behind the Nazi project.’

The dénouement is a discussion of Nazi Germany from the perspective of today; what it means for Germans, what it means for us.

‘as the quiet migration of Nazi secret policemen, engineers and “Sovietologists” into Western and Eastern intelligence agencies and other government services independently established.’

‘By some irony, the most compromised individuals were to be dealt with last, which meant that their hearings coincided with a skills shortage in the economy, and the onset of the Cold War, in which even the dirtiest of hands were needed, […]

‘In other words, in the Soviet-occupied zone, denazification was in line with the complacent, prejudiced and simplistic assumptions underlying orthodox Marxist analysis of the roots of “fascism”.’

‘Denazification was most radically pursued in the Soviet zone, where it was simultaneously used as an instrument of socio-economic restructuring, to consolidate a Marxist–Leninist–Stalinist dictatorship. Nazis were those who had enjoyed power, wealth and influence in the preceding twelve years, a blanket category joined by anyone politically opposed to a Marxist–Leninist society.’

‘Weariness also set in regarding the constant diet of depravity and horror, against which human psychological defence mechanisms rebelled. This mood spread to some of the Allied nations, where public opinion began to turn against trying German generals, who had captured innocent imaginations on the Allied side during the conflict.’

‘Taken together, it is doubtful whether these trials had a wider didactic effect. Trials conducted by the Allies were open to the charge of “victors’ justice”. however unwarranted this was in practice. The German Churches played a conspicuous role in pleading on behalf of the accused, at a time when they said little or nothing about the Nazis’ enormous numbers of victims.’