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The rise of the Nazis and the importance of heeding warnings
“The idea that there’s a widespread movement to learn from history or to understand it meaningfully is false.” Laurence Rees explains to Danny Bird how studying the history of the Nazi regime yields warnings – but that frighteningly few people are interested in learning from the past
Danny Bird: The subtitle of your book is ‘Twelve Warnings from History’. What prompted you to write this now? Laurence Rees: My interest has always been in mentalities: why people think the way they do, how they justify their actions, and what makes them believe they are right. This focus has shaped my career much more than, say, an interest in military history. Though I respect such pursuits, my background in documentary journalism has always pushed me toward understanding people’s decisions: why do people think what they do? I’ve been fascinated by these questions since the 1990s. Over time I began delving deeper into psychology and neuroscience to better understand mentalities, particularly those of the Nazis. This new exploration wasn’t driven by a sense that the world needed my book; rather, it grew from a broader interest in the human condition. That condition remains relevant regardless of current events. My 1997 BBC documentary The Nazis: A Warning from History drew on the German philosopher Karl Jaspers’ injunction: “That which has happened is a warning.” I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of history as a source of warnings, not lessons. Lessons suggest rigid rules – such as the claim that Winston Churchill’s opposition to Adolf Hitler proves that appeasement is always wrong. Yet Churchill appeased Stalin, so are there in fact occasions where appeasement is permissible? Read more | Did appeasement cause the Second World War? Warnings, however, are clearer. They function like a doctor’s advice that if you keep smoking, you’re more likely to develop lung cancer. It’s not a certainty, but it’s a valuable caution. This approach has guided my study of history – seeking warnings that can illuminate the human condition and help us navigate the present. When trying to understand the mentality of past eras, are eyewitness testimonies more helpful than archive research? I wouldn’t say that one approach is necessarily more valuable than the other. Having started in television, I always wanted to make history documentaries. I never aspired to be an academic historian but was inspired by shows such as The World at War [1973]. In documentary-making, there’s a clear divide between talking to people who experienced events first-hand and dealing with the more distant past. That divide fascinates me. I’ve always been particularly interested in talking to people with direct connections to history. One of the first films I made, many years ago, was about Rasputin. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were the first foreigners to visit his home village in western Siberia. There we met two incredibly old women who had known Rasputin as a young man. One of them vividly described him as a nightmare – always drunk. That kind of personal connection brings history to life in a way other sources can’t. The Second World War holds a particular resonance for me. My father was in the RAF, and my uncle, whom I never met, was killed while serving on a convoy ship sunk by a U-boat. This gave me a visceral connection to that period. Over the years, I’ve talked to people who met Hitler, survivors of Auschwitz, and others with direct links to pivotal moments in history. That immediacy and connection makes the subject deeply compelling for me. Though I wouldn’t claim that oral history is more important than other sources, it’s the excitement of those personal connections that drove me to dedicate 35 years to this work. But ultimately, as a historian, you’ve got to be sceptical about every source, haven’t you? In the book, you recount a conversation with a former member of the Waffen-SS in the early 1990s. Can you tell us more? While researching a documentary in Austria, I met someone who had served in the Waffen-SS and remained committed to the Nazi regime. It was my first encounter with someone like that – and it was extraordinary. After the war, he had become a senior executive at a German car company; he was retired when we met but still sharp and articulate. When we discussed the war, he expressed shocking views: lamenting that Britain and Germany hadn’t teamed up to rule the world, blaming Winston Churchill for the conflict, praising the Third Reich as a “golden era”, and describing the Jews murdered during the Holocaust as a problem that had to be dealt with “one way or the other”. His perspective was a complete fantasy – a revisionist view of history. What struck me was the duality: here was a successful businessman who seemed outwardly ordinary but still held such abhorrent beliefs. It challenged my assumptions about what a former committed Nazi might be like. He wasn’t monstrous in appearance or demeanour, yet his views were chilling. That encounter began a journey towards understanding how someone could maintain these beliefs even long after the war and the full exposure of its crimes. Do you see parallels between the Nazi regime’s use of manipulation and entertainment as tools of power and that of present-day political movements? Yes – all over the place. But in the book I’m careful not to say: “This is what X, Y or Z is doing.” That’s deliberate. The examples I use, including Mao and Stalin, are historical figures whom you can clearly examine. I did this for two reasons. First, I’m writing a history book occasionally informed by psychology, not a modern political treatise. I’ve spent years trying to understand the Second World War and the Nazis, and I’m still learning. Who am I to claim expertise on current political situations or to draw exact parallels? Second, I believe it’s more powerful if readers make those connections themselves. In my experience with films and books, it’s more profound when someone reads something and thinks: “This reminds me of X or Y.” Some readers have told me that the book made them think differently about modern events. That’s more impactful than me spelling it out for them. My goal was to provide a framework – a set of templates – to help people think critically about the world today. Your book contains a chilling chapter on how the Nazis targeted young people. What made young minds particularly susceptible to Nazi ideology? I’ve loved working on this book, particularly because of what I’ve learned about neuroscience. One highlight was interviewing Professor Robert Sapolsky from Stanford – someone I’ve admired for years. His undergraduate lectures on neuroscience, available online, are brilliant, and I highly recommend them. Sapolsky shared a fascinating insight that I hadn’t considered before: targeting individuals under the age of 25 is enormously effective – something that dictators have understood well. This is because of how the brain develops, specifically the prefrontal cortex – the part responsible for impulse control and long-term reasoning. Until around the age of 25, this area isn’t fully developed, which explains why younger people are more prone to risk-taking, idealism and even fanaticism. Sapolsky illustrated this using the example of explaining social nuances to a young child – for instance, asking them to pretend to be surprised about receiving a duplicate gift they already own. The subtleties are often too complex for the young brain to compute. This immaturity in the prefrontal cortex also explains why younger people are more easily drawn to highly emotive causes, whether positive or destructive. As Sapolsky puts it, those under 25 are in the ideal period of life for fostering fanaticism. It’s when individuals are most likely to become either fascists or saints. This developmental window has been historically exploited by regimes ranging from the Nazis to Mao’s during the Cultural Revolution, which relied heavily on student fervour. How crucial was the support of the wider German population to the Nazi regime? As early as 1933, Goebbels called for the “mobilisation of the mind”. By this, he meant influencing the majority of Germans who hadn’t voted for the Nazis. Even in the highly pressurised 1933 election, after Hitler became chancellor, a majority of Germans did not vote for them. It was only later, under the pressure of plebiscites and Nazi rule, that large numbers began voting in favour. Goebbels understood the importance of winning over those who hadn’t supported the Nazis, and worked to do so. After setbacks such as Stalingrad in 1943 and Mussolini’s downfall in Italy, terror came to the forefront, and Goebbels noted approvingly in his diary how Himmler executed deserters and those who spoke out against the regime. But terror had limited success, and Goebbels believed it was less effective than fostering the Volksgemeinschaft, or ‘people’s community’ – the idea that everyone was united in a shared national purpose as defined by the Nazis. Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, how did the leading Nazis attempt to rationalise the regime’s crimes – and their own part in them? The responses of individual Nazis to their actions varied. Some accepted responsibility, while others denied or deflected blame. A common excuse was ignorance: many claimed that they were unaware of the atrocities, believing that Auschwitz was merely a camp or that Jews were being sent east to work. Another approach was deflection, akin to modern ‘whataboutism’. When confronted with the Holocaust they voiced a series of blatantly false equivalences, such as the firebombing of Hamburg or colonial injustices, dismissing the charges as ‘victor’s justice’. This allowed them to label the Allies as hypocrites, reinforcing a belief in their victimhood. This sense of hypocrisy was rooted in three key events that took place in 1938. First, Germany’s annexation of Austria in March led to widespread persecution of Austrian Jews. Then, in November, Kristallnacht escalated antisemitic violence, including the destruction of synagogues, mass arrests and killings. In between those events, in July, the Évian Conference exposed the international community’s indifference. Convened by US president Franklin D Roosevelt to address the Jewish refugee crisis, it was largely symbolic, with countries offering little action. Hitler’s reaction was to lambast democratic nations as hypocrites. He offered to help Jews leave Germany if other nations agreed to take them – but no country accepted his offer. This deepened Nazi contempt for the west, seeing it as morally duplicitous. Psychological research shows that hypocrisy is often more reviled than outright dishonesty. And the Nazis invoked this global hypocrisy to justify their actions. After the war, many former Nazis clung to this narrative, framing themselves as victims of a hypocritical world order. That sentiment was also linked to colonialism. Nazis pointed to Britain and argued: “You condemn us for wanting an empire while refusing to relinquish your own.” That sense of double standards became a coping mechanism, allowing many to rationalise their complicity or continue justifying their actions long after the war ended. It allowed former Nazis to deflect responsibility and maintain a belief in their innocence despite the overwhelming evidence of their atrocities.. Did Allied prosecutors analyse the psychological motives behind Nazi leaders’ actions and attempt to define a distinct ‘Nazi personality type’? Yes. [During the Nuremberg Trials] psychologists conducted Rorschach tests [using inkblots] with former Nazis. What stood out was how differently various psychologists interpreted the results. One concluded that the subjects were murderous SS ‘robots’, aligning with a view that some found comforting. Another disagreed, arguing that they were simply a collection of individuals, and couldn’t be defined by such a reductive label. Recent literature emphasises that, though culture shapes us as individuals, there’s a vast range of personalities and behaviours within any group. It’s overly simplistic to attribute robotic tendencies to human beings. Returning to Karl Jaspers’ warning to posterity, do you think that each new generation is truly capable of grasping this idea – especially as the Second World War recedes further into the distant past? No, I don’t believe they are. Someone once asked me if I was pleased with the impact of my work on The Nazis: A Warning from History. I thought: are you kidding? Hardly anyone seems to take these warnings seriously. We have a massive problem in that most people in the UK stop studying history in their mid-teens. This creates a fundamentally historically illiterate population. Before I produced the documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis and ‘The Final Solution’ in 2005, we conducted a poll. It revealed that most people didn’t even know what the word ‘Auschwitz’ meant, let alone hold a view on it. The idea that there’s a widespread movement to learn from history or to understand it meaningfully is false. Only small numbers of people engage with it seriously. I’ve enjoyed doing this work, but I honestly don’t know if it’s done much good. I wish it were otherwise. Even when people engage with history, it’s often misrepresented – like the focus on Churchill standing against Hitler, while overlooking his willingness to forge an alliance with Stalin. During one interview I gave, someone said they felt more depressed after talking to me. I could only apologise! Does focusing so much on Nazi Germany as a cautionary tale risk reducing it to a cliché, oversimplifying the complexities of how a society descended into authoritarianism and atrocities? Yes – but the risk is in not studying it, because that is what leads to oversimplification. Don’t you find that in life, as in history, it’s easier to hold firm views about things before knowing much about them? Years ago I interviewed Professor Akira Iriye, a Harvard expert in Japanese diplomatic history, for a Second World War educational website. I asked him about the value of studying that period, and he said that one worthwhile outcome would be to help politicians avoid making false comparisons. Not understanding history risks reducing it to clichés, such as ‘murderous Nazi robots’. For example, someone once dismissively said to me that the Nazis’ atrocities were the result of how they had been swaddled as babies. Do you think interrogating the unique context that shaped the mentality of a time and place are key when studying the past? I believe the most important line I wrote in the book is also the simplest: we must accept that we are creatures of a particular time and place. This may seem self-evident but, in my experience, it’s not. Many people say things like: “If I had been German, I would have stood up and spoken out.” This assumption shows a lack of understanding of a fundamental truth: our thoughts and actions are deeply shaped by our context – the time and place in which we live. The same applies to people of the past. To truly understand their actions, we must first understand their world. I once met someone who rejected this notion. When I mentioned the Aztecs and their belief in human sacrifice as essential for ensuring rainfall, he claimed he’d have started the equivalent of Aztec Amnesty International, advocating for human rights. I couldn’t definitively say that he wouldn’t have done it, but it seems unlikely. If you were raised in early 15th-century Mesoamerica, you would almost certainly have accepted human sacrifice as necessary. Recognising this helps us grasp the profound influence of culture and context on human behaviour. This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Timeline: the rise and fall of the Third Reich
Historian Roger Moorhouse charts the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, from the end of the First World War to the Third Reich's collapse in 1945
1918-1919: The end of the First World War and the birth of the Weimar Republic 9 November 1918: The German monarchy collapses as Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and a new republic is established under the leadership of Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). 11 November 1918: Germany signs an armistice, effectively ending World War I. January 1919: The constitution of the new German republic is drafted, establishing a democratic parliamentary system, under a presidency. However, the new republic faces immediate challenges from extremist movements on both the left and right-wings, and due to unrest in Berlin, the constituent assembly for the new republic was held in the city of Weimar – thereby giving it its name. HistoryExtra Academy | Nazi Germany This six-part video course covers everything you need to know about Nazi Germany, guided by historian, author and broadcaster Laurence Rees Find out more 1919-1923: The Weimar Republic and economic instability January 1919: The German Workers' Party (DAP), is established in Munich by railway worker Anton Drexler. It would be the precursor to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), later known as the Nazi Party. June 1919: The Treaty of Versailles is signed, officially ending the war. It imposes harsh terms on Germany, including reparations, territorial losses and a controversial “war guilt” clause, fostering widespread resentment among the German populace. September 1919: Adolf Hitler joins the DAP after attending a party meeting. February 1920: Under Hitler’s growing influence, the NSDAP presents its manifesto – the “25-Point Program” - which includes demands for the abolition of the Treaty of Versailles, the expansion of Germany’s territory, and the establishment of an authoritarian regime. July 1921: Hitler assumes leadership of the NSDAP, becoming its most prominent figure. Autumn 1923: Hyperinflation, resulting from the printing of money to finance the war, begins to seriously undermine the German economy, leading to widespread poverty and social unrest. The Weimar Republic struggles to manage these economic challenges, and extremists on both right and left, including the Nazi Party, gain increasing political traction. 8-9 November, 1923: The Beer Hall Putsch, led by Hitler and other Nazi leaders, attempts to overthrow the Weimar government. The coup fails, twenty people are killed, and Hitler is arrested and arraigned for high treason. 1924-1929: The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party February/March 1924: Hitler's trial takes place in Munich. He seizes the moment and uses it as an opportunity to spread his message. As a result, he emerges for the first time as a national political figure. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment. 1924: While in prison, in Landsberg, Hitler writes Mein Kampf, in which he outlines his ideological views, including the need for German expansion (Lebensraum) and the superiority of the Aryan race. December 1924: Thanks to a sympathetic prison administration, Hitler is released from prison after less than 9 months. With that, the Nazi Party begins to rebuild its political influence. 1925: Thanks to economic restructuring and political stabilisation, the Weimar Republic begins to flourish. The extremist parties lose their support. 1927: The ban on Hitler making public speeches, which had been in place in most of the country since 1925, is finally lifted. May 1928: In Reichstag (German parliament) elections, the Nazi Party gains only 2.6% of the national vote, confirming Hitler’s position of obscurity on the fringes of German political life. October 1929: The Wall Street Crash triggers the Great Depression, which devastates the global economy, pulling the plug on Germany’s fragile economic recovery. Unemployment rises sharply, leading to widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and a resurgence of political unrest from both extremes. 1930-1933: The Nazis gain power 1930: The Nazi Party, under Hitler’s leadership, begins to gain significant support, particularly among the working class and rural populations disillusioned with the Weimar Republic’s inability to address the economic crisis. March/April 1932: Hitler runs for president but loses to Paul von Hindenburg, the incumbent. July 1932: The Nazis become the largest party in the Reichstag, with more than 37% of the vote, but they fail to win an outright majority. Autumn 1932: A series of minority governments find themselves unable to govern effectively given the ongoing economic crisis and the political chaos in the Reichstag. January 30, 1933: Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg, after political manoeuvring and backroom deals among conservative elites, who believe they can control him. 1933-1938: Establishing the totalitarian state 27 February 1933: The Reichstag Fire occurs, and the Nazis use it as a pretext to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspends civil liberties and allows for the arrest of political opponents. March 23, 1933: The Enabling Act is passed, granting Hitler dictatorial powers. The act allows Hitler to legislate without the Reichstag’s approval, effectively ending democracy in Germany and establishing a one-party state. March 1933: Nazi Germany’s first concentration camp for political opponents is opened, at Dachau, near Munich. The camp, alongside others, is used by the Nazis to consolidate their power by eliminating political rivals, including Communists and Socialists. June 30, 1934: The Night of the Long Knives – a violent purge of the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung) at the hands of the SS (Schutzstaffel) – further consolidates Hitler’s power and allows him to eliminate all those he considered oppositional. The death toll is estimated at around 150. January 13, 1935: A referendum on the status of the Saarland returns a vote of more than 90% for the province returning to German rule, after 15 years of League of Nations administration. It is another proof of Hitler’s growing popularity. September 15, 1935: The Nuremberg Laws are enacted, stripping Jews of their German citizenship and forbidding mixed marriages. Racial discrimination is enshrined in German law. 7 March 1936: Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland, violating the Treaty of Versailles, but faces no military response from France or Britain. This bold move boosts his popularity and strengthens his hold on power. August 1936: The Olympic Games are held in Berlin further cementing Hitler’s domestic popularity and enhancing his international prestige. 12 March 1938: The Anschluss, or annexation of Austria, occurs after German forces march, unopposed, into the country. The annexation is confirmed the following month, in a spurious referendum. 30 September 1938: Hitler’s sabre-rattling forces the Munich Agreement, which forces Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland region to Nazi Germany, under the guise of protecting ethnic Germans from persecution. 9-10 November 1938: Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) occurs, in which Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany are violently attacked. Thousands of Jews are arrested, beaten and consigned to the concentration camps, marking a significant escalation of anti-Semitic persecution. 1939: The outbreak of the Second World War 23 August 1939: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, effectively dividing eastern Europe between the two and ensuring that Germany will not face a two-front war when it invades Poland. 1 September 1939: Germany invades Poland. 3 September 1939: After their ultimatums demanding that Germany halt its invasion of Poland go unanswered, Britain and France declare war on Germany. 1940-1941: The expansion of Nazi Germany April-June 1940: Nazi Germany swiftly conquers Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The Blitzkrieg tactics—fast-moving mechanized warfare—prove highly effective. 22 June 1941: Operation Barbarossa begins, when Germany invades the Soviet Union. Initially hugely successful, the invasion stalls as the harsh winter sets in and Soviet resistance grows. Autumn 1941: The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, begin mass executions of Jews and other “undesirable” elements across occupied Eastern Europe. As many as 1.5 million Jews would be killed in this way. 1942-1944: The turning of the tide October-November 1942: The Battle of El Alamein halts the German advance in the Western Desert. 8 November 1942: In Operation Torch, British and American forces land in Algeria and Morocco, marking the beginning of the end of the German campaign in North Africa. February 1943: The Battle of Stalingrad ends, as the German Sixth Army is surrounded and forced to surrender to the Soviets, marking a major turning point in the war in favour of the Allies. May 1943: After mounting losses in the fighting the convoys in the Atlantic, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of Germany’s U-boat fleet, withdraws his wolfpacks from the theatre, pending technological updates and reinforcements. He privately confesses that he has lost the Battle of the Atlantic. 9 July 1943: In Operation Husky, the Allies launch a successful invasion of Sicily, further weakening Germany’s military position and leading, later than month, to the fall of Hitler’s ally, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. 24 July 1943: The Allied bombing of Hamburg – Operation Gomorrah – begins. The heaviest aerial assault of the war to date, it will culminate in some 37,000 dead and a profound blow to German domestic morale. July-August 1943: The Battle of Kursk deals a crushing blow to German ambition on the Eastern Front. German land forces would never regain the initiative. 6 June 1944: D-Day sees Allied forces land in Normandy, which will begin the liberation of France and Western Europe. 20 July 1944: Operation Valkyrie, an assassination attempt on Hitler, is carried out by German officers, led by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. The plot’s failure leads to a harsh internal crackdown on suspected conspirators. 25 August 1944: Allied forces liberate Paris 1945: The fall of the Third Reich January 1945: The failure of the German Ardennes Offensive – the “Battle of the Bulge” – exhausts what remains of German reserves. 13-15 February 1945: The bombing of Dresden results in around 25,000 dead. 19 April 1945: Soviet victory in the Battle of the Seelow Heights, east of Berlin, opens the way to the German capital. 24 April 1945: Soviet forces complete the encirclement of Berlin. 25 April 1945: Advancing American and Soviet forces meet at Torgau on the Elbe, effectively cutting what remained of Hitler’s Germany in half. 30 April 1945: Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin as Soviet forces close in on the centre of the city. 2 May 1945: Berlin surrenders to the Soviets. 7-8 May 1945: Germany officially surrenders to the Allies – at Reims, on 7 May, and at Karlshorst, Berlin, the following day – thus marking the end of the war in Europe. 1945-1946: The Nuremberg Trials 20 November 1945: The Nuremberg Trials open, to prosecute key Nazi leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace. 16 October 1946: Ten of the twelve high-ranking Nazis that were sentenced to death at Nuremberg are executed.. The two exceptions are Martin Bormann – who was sentenced in absentia (and was already dead) – and Hermann Göring, who committed suicide in his cell the night before.
“The reverberations lasted for generations” | Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry on the civil war of Charlemagne's grandsons
David Musgrove talks to Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry about the ninth-century civil war among Charlemagne’s grandsons, which shook the empire to its core and reshaped Europe
David Musgrove: Let’s begin with the battle of Fontenoy in AD 841. What happened there and why was it so important? Matthew Gabriele: Fontenoy is nowadays just a small village lying a little south-west of the city of Auxerre in central France. Even in the 840s, it wasn’t particularly significant. But it was there that a civil war erupted between the grandsons of Charlemagne, who were fighting about the fate of the Carolingian empire. After the death of their father, Louis the Pious, on 20 June 840, the three surviving brothers gathered at Fontenoy. Lothar, the eldest and the Frankish co-emperor, was trying to stitch the partitioned empire back together; his younger brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, had their own claims. Lothar was joined by his nephew, Pepin II of Aquitaine, the son of another brother, also Pepin, who had died in 838. The three brothers and their nephew basically argued about the form that the empire should take. Should it be coherent and unified under Lothar, or would Charles and Louis be able to function as independent kings in their own domains? This dispute boiled over into a massive, bloody battle fought on 25 June 841. For most medieval battles, we have just a sense of where and when they were fought. For this clash, though, we have very specific details of the day and the time when the battle started, as well as the location. That’s because – as we argue at the start of our new book – it was so horrifying for everybody involved. It shook the empire and its participants to their core, creating reverberations that lasted for generations. What’s the backstory to the dispute? Matthew Gabriele: The Franks rose to power in the fifth and sixth centuries when, after interacting with the Romans for a long time, they were finally able to establish their own realm. The resulting empire was ruled for several centuries by a dynasty called the Merovingians. They were supplanted in 751 in a coup d’état by high nobles who started a new dynasty that, over time, came to be named for one of their progenitors, Charles Martel – Charles being Carolus in Latin, hence the dynastic name ‘Carolingian’. The apogee of that empire came under Charlemagne, who ruled for a substantial length of time, taking power in 768 and dying in 814. He expanded the Frankish empire to encompass most of western and central Europe, from Denmark in the north down to central Italy, across the Pyrenees into Catalonia and east into Saxony. Read more | The legacy of Charlemagne: how the king of the Franks continues to cast a shadow over Europe But what’s really interesting to us is how quickly it fell apart – within just two generations. This myth of unity that the Franks constructed for themselves – this great empire that Charlemagne had created – was built, as we say in the book, on a foundation of lies. They weren’t just lies that the Franks told to other people, but lies they told themselves about their place in the world and the way that their empire was organised. What we find so interesting is not just the things that happened but also the stories these people told themselves about those events. How did tensions escalate after Charlemagne’s death? David M Perry: Charlemagne had a lot of sons, and Louis was the only legitimate one who happened to survive. He had to work hard to build loyalty across his dad’s empire – it was not just handed to him. Some of that was done through persuasion and gifts, but some of it was achieved through violence and torture – in particular, the blinding of his nephew, Bernard of Italy, who then died. That caused great upset and upheaval in the court. Louis tried to kick out the old guard and bring in the new. However, it turned out that the nobles comprising the old guard were still very powerful – and not super-thrilled about being kicked out. So there were these tensions right from the start. Then Louis remarried, taking as his wife a younger woman. The old guard weren’t thrilled with that, either, because she brought in her own power centres. So Louis’ was not a stable reign, suffering from various internal problems, but it was also a moment at which the Franks started losing battles on the edges of the empire. And that was a whole other crisis of legitimacy. Matthew Gabriele: The stability and greatness of Charlemagne is often contrasted with the instability and fecklessness of Louis the Pious. But if you look at Charlemagne, he actually had a lot of problems governing, too. We talk about the coups of the 830s against Louis the Pious, but Charlemagne himself faced several attempted coups. One such attempt in 792 was led by his own eldest son, Pepin, known to later historians as Pepin the Hunchback, though he certainly wasn’t called that at the time. It seems baked into the way the Carolingians ruled their empires that they had to rely upon powerful nobles around them. So when these nobles got angry about their loss of status, that was a real problem for the kings. And just because only a few coups were successful, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other coups plotted and executed along the way. What were Charlemagne’s grandsons trying to achieve at Fontenoy? Matthew Gabriele: They were trying to decide the fate of the empire. Lothar was trying to beat his brothers into submission, and ideally to restore the empire as it had been under his father and his grandfather. Charles and Louis wanted something different: they wanted their own functional kingdoms within the empire. They wanted to be free from the meddling of the emperor in their lands – Charles the Bald’s realm lying to the west, Louis the German’s to the east – and the right to act as independent Carolingians. They had, they argued, the same blood as Lothar’s flowing through their veins. Looking back, this event became – especially for 19th-century historians – the moment that made France and Germany. It was seen as the final division of Charlemagne’s empire, and the birthplace of the modern state. But today it seems clear that the debate was much more nuanced. Nobody was arguing that Lothar shouldn’t be emperor, they were just arguing about what his role should be there. It was an argument that was so important that they were willing to kill each other: brothers fought against brothers, and cousins, uncles and nephews were divided between the armies. These armies were camped across a field from each other, almost literally staring at each other. From all available sources, it seems that they exchanged emissaries, and decided that they would fight at 8 o’clock the following morning: Saturday 25 June 841. How did the battle play out? David M Perry: Lothar had a well-equipped army and probably slightly larger numbers of men, supported by Pepin’s forces. Charles the Bald had a quite large army, drawn from all over the Frankish heartland. Louis had a smaller army, but it was battle-hardened. Pepin and Charles met in the middle, Louis and Lothar met on the left, and there was a third division led by major nobles on the right. We know little about what actually happened in the battle, but it’s clear that Lothar’s forces engaged Louis and were beaten back, and then Pepin’s forces in the centre collapsed. After that, there was a pursuit that resulted in horrific killing, but Lothar got away. He headed north-east to Aachen with the imperial treasury – and, once there, he spent wildly. He launched a rumour campaign saying that one of his brothers was wounded and the other was dead, neither of which was true, and he immediately started rebuilding political support. This went on for some time. Eventually, Louis and Charles once again brought their armies together – and now they had clear military superiority, there was no dividing them again. So they brought Lothar to the negotiating table. That brings us to the Treaty of Verdun in 843. What happened then? David M Perry: I remember very clearly learning about the Treaty of Verdun while I was an undergraduate in my first medieval history class – and being taught a number of things that are not correct. I believed that there was a treaty – a document, like the Treaty of Versailles – that was written in Latin, German and French, and that it showed the division of France and Germany. I don’t want to call out my undergraduate medieval history professor, because he’s the reason I’m talking to you today – he was a wonderful professor – but I remember learning these things, and they’re just not true. We have no document. There is absolutely nothing surviving from that meeting in 843 that lays out the division of the empire explicitly. The year before the treaty, Louis and Charles travelled to the city of Strasbourg and undertook a public oath-taking. That was the moment when they came together and really made it clear they were going to sit down and talk until they reached an agreement – and where they confirmed their opposition to Lothar ruling the entire empire. As a result, Louis and Charles brought Lothar to the negotiating table, where they agreed that they would split up the empire into three parts. Then they had the problem that no one knew exactly how big the empire was, so they sent out nobles to do the accounting. Nine months later they met in Verdun, really just because it’s a convenient place where those nobles could come together. We can figure out exactly how the empire was divided up only by looking at what happened over the next couple of years – where the brothers went, and which allies got which bits of land. How did this civil war make medieval Europe? Matthew Gabriele: The nostalgia for Charlemagne’s empire animated the vast majority of continental European history through to the 15th or 16th century. The kings of France as they emerged, the emperors in what is now Germany, the rulers of Italy, even the Christian Iberian rulers, all tried to tie themselves in some ways – and in many ways it was accurate – back to the Carolingians through some bloodline that emerged there. In the 830s and 840s, there were just too many Carolingians. Whereas there had only been one Charlemagne, and then only one Louis the Pious, after that, there were too many legitimate children of Louis, and then their children, and then their children, all of whom had potential to rule. That tension, I think, was ultimately part of the problem that led to the civil war. But then, in the centuries thereafter, there was a dream of empire – and especially the dream of a sense of election, of being God’s chosen people – that never disappeared. This view guides many of the actions that these men’s descendants took, including the push for the kingdom of France to expand beyond the Île de France and to reunite with the Carolingian bloodline. Read more | Books interview with Janet Nelson: "The only way this huge regime could work was by Charlemagne trusting his own instincts" The desire to go on crusade in 1095, for example, was driven by the idea that these guys were all Franks and that they were fighting to reclaim Charlemagne’s claims to Jerusalem, which was another legend that evolved in the 10th and 11th centuries. These medieval realms were different from what we think of as modern nation states such as France and Germany – they were different things aiming for different ends. Those modern states have sought justification for their formation in these events of the European Middle Ages, but the reality is different. David M Perry: I just want to jump back into the oaths of Strasbourg, this famous moment on 14 February 842 for which we have a source written in Latin, but also French and German versions, because the men involved spoke all of these languages. Importantly, this was the first documented use of the French and German vernaculars. It’s not that there was a French troop and a German troop, and a linguistic divide between different peoples. The whole point is that there were a lot of languages spoken across this huge land mass, and the men involved wanted to make sure that everyone understood everything. In the Carolingian empire, people were able to speak all of these languages – that was just normal. It was a big, complicated empire, and people talked to each other. It was only 1,000 years later that this point became symbolic; a way of creating a narrative that linked the new French and German nation states and nationalistic identities back to that moment when the oaths were sworn. Looking at how people in the 19th century viewed events in the Middle Ages is something that Matt and I do a lot. We can definitely say that what they read into the situation was not what was actually happening in the ninth century. Did that mid-ninth-century civil war conclusively fracture the Carolingian empire? Matthew Gabriele: The short answer is: yes. The empire was never stitched back together, though there were attempts to do so, especially in the later ninth century and the 10th century. In the first and second generations after the battle of Fontenoy, these attempts failed because of the bad blood that was generated there. That wasn’t just because of the bloodiness of the battle itself, or the resentments on either side about who deserved what, but the way that the battle was pursued – the fact that Louis’ and Charles’s armies followed Lothar’s and cut down his men in their pursuit. It seems to have been a real massacre that people remembered for generations. Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech and David M Perry is a journalist and historian. They are the co-authors of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (HarperCollins, 2022) and Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers that Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe (Harper, 2024) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why did Hitler choose the swastika as a Nazi symbol?
By the early 1920s, the swastika, an ancient religious symbol, had been adopted by Adolf Hitler to represent the German Reich. How did it become the symbol of the Nazi party?
The swastika is today synonymous with Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime; a red and black symbol of the Second World War. But this hasn't always been the case – the swastika existed as a symbol long before it was adopted by the Nazis, and the symbol's story is longer and more complex than you might expect. So how and why did the Nazis use the swastika, and what is the ancient origin of the symbol made infamous by Hitler? Why did Hitler choose the swastika? When Adolf Hitler began his rise to power and looked for a symbol to encapsulate his movement, the Nazi Party and a strong future for Germany, the swastika became the clear choice. German antiquarian Heinrich Schliemann had grown obsessed with finding Troy, the lost city of Greek mythology, and in 1868 he set out with his copy of The Iliad to search the Mediterranean. Schliemann's search led him to the mysterious mound of Hisarlik on the Aegean coast of Turkey. There, during the 1870s, Schliemann unearthed layers of civilisations dating back thousands of years, and declared the oldest to be Troy. The city of legend had been found – although it turned out to be a different layer than the one Schliemann thought – as well as a cache of jewellery, bronze, silver and gold. Yet in the ancient ruins he made another fateful discovery: some 1,800 depictions of a symbol that resembled a cross with bent arms: the swastika. News of Schliemann’s sensational excavations spread far and wide, quickly followed by the swastika, which became a ubiquitous sign, visible throughout Europe and North America. At the same time, however, the swastika’s long history saw it become a favourite of German nationalists, who subscribed to a warped theory that they had descended from an ancient ‘master race’ known as the Aryans. This belief persisted into the 20th century, growing more pernicious until it appealed to Adolf Hitler, the leader of the burgeoning Nazi Party. Hitler understood the power of an image and knew it would give the Nazi ideals an historic foundation. He could not adequately reconcile his view of Germany’s Christian history with the religion’s historical Jewish connections – essentially, that Christ was himself Jewish – so the idea that Germans descended from a white master race with a tried and tested symbol had great appeal. Read more | How did the Nazi party rise to power in Germany in 1933? And what were Hitler’s motivations? And so the swastika, or hakenkreuz (hooked cross), became the emblem of the Nazi Party in 1920; Hitler himself took personal credit for designing the flag. It used the red, white and black of the old German imperial flag – a cunning move to link Germany's past with its future – but attributed new meanings to them. "In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man," wrote Hitler in his 1925 autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf. The new design became the national flag on 15 September 1935 during the mass annual rally at Nuremberg. On the same day, two race laws were passed prohibiting marriages between Germans and Jews and declaring that only those of German blood could be citizens of the Reich. And so the act of cultural, religious and social theft that was the appropriation of the swastika was complete. It ensured that the Nazi flag would be associated with evil – under which a brutal war raged, atrocities committed and some six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. What is the swastika? A cross with arms bent at right angles meant many things to many people, but had always been used as a sign of hope and positivity. It could represent good fortune or prosperity; symbolise the Sun or the infinity of creation; or, as it still does in several religions, evoke a sense of the divine and call for auspiciousness. The word swastika itself derives from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning "conducive to well-being". What is the history of the swastika? The oldest-known example of the swastika dates back some 15,000 years. Discovered in Ukraine in 1908, an ivory mammoth tusk carved into the shape of a bird includes an intricate pattern of connected swastikas on its body, which may have been used as a fertility symbol. There is no knowing how the design first came about. It may have simply been an elegant, easy-to-create geometric shape, although its inspiration possibly came from a comet in the night sky. It was also in Eastern Europe that single swastikas were carved by the Vinca culture during the Neolithic period, some 7,000 years ago, before they became widespread from the Bronze Age. The swastika symbolised the Sun to the Illyrians; became a common sight on Mesopotamian coins; appeared on vases and clothing in Greece; formed mosaic motifs in Rome, and stands in as a stylised cross in Celtic design. There are 27 swastikas on the Iron Age Battersea Shield, found in London in 1857, but the symbol had been in Britain long before that as the so-called Swastika Stone on Ilkley Moor, Yorkshire, from c2,000 BC, shows. This carving resembles the swastika’s shape, although with more curved arms and added spots. The swastika, often known as a gammadion or fylflot, continued to be used throughout Europe, occasionally being subsumed into religious iconography. Early Christian art depicts the hooked cross to represent Christ's victory over death, while a left-facing version of the swastika showed up in reference to the Norse god Thor's hammer. Still a popular symbol in medieval times, the swastika can be seen today on surviving church decorations, coats of arms and on textile fragments from the 12th century thought to be from a dress owned by a Slav princess. The monastery school a young Adolf Hitler attended, Lambach Abbey in Austria, had swastikas carved on the stone and woodwork. Yet the influence of the swastika reached much further than can be explained by the migration of peoples over the centuries. It has appeared in several cultures across northern Africa, including as window decorations in churches in modern-day Ethiopia, while also showing up in the Mayan, Aztec and Kuna civilisations of South and Central America. A number of Native American and First Nation tribes of North America, such as the Navajo, Hopi and Passamaquoddy, also adopted the symbol, which they called ‘whirling logs’. Undoubtedly the most enduring relationship with the swastika began in Asia, especially in India, among followers of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, for whom it has served as a holy symbol for millennia. To Jains, the swastika represents one of the 24 Tirthankara, or saviours, while Buddhists regard the symbol as the footprints of the Buddha. For Hindus, the right-hand svastika – a term that emerged c500 BC – is a sign of surya (the Sun) and auspiciousness, so is used to mark entrances, offerings, ceremonies, festivals and each year's account books. The left-hand version, the sauvastika, is symbolic of the night and the goddess Kali. The swastika remains as spiritually significant today, in the face of the stigma towards the symbol in the West brought on by the Nazis. How did the swastika become a Nazi symbol? Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy in the 1870s set in motion the events that transformed the swastika, a symbol of fortune and hope for thousands of years, into a hated and feared sign of fascism. He concluded it to be a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors" when he unearthed 1,800 examples, but his colleague, Emile-Louis Burnouf, thought differently. Knowing the symbol appeared in India, Burnouf studied a sacred Hindu text called the Rigveda and claimed to have found a connection between the swastika and an enigmatic ancient people, the Aryans. Supposedly, this 'master race' of white-skinned warriors constituted the peak of human civilisation, conquering lands such as India and bringing the swastika with them. The word Aryan itself derived from Sanskrit, like svastika. Pots from the sixth-century had been found in Germany with swastikas on them and scholars noted the similarities between Sanskrit and German as further proof that the Aryans had come from Germany. But the whole notion of this 'pure' race, as well as being deeply racist, was based on a misunderstanding. The Sanskrit word for Aryan (ārya) actually meant "honourable, respectable or noble" and referred to a social or linguistic distinction, not a separate ethnic group. But the theory of the Aryans’ existence grew in popularity from the mid-19th century. The unification of Germany in 1871, the same year Schliemann started work at Troy, led to a swell of uninhibited nationalism in the country and the idea that Germans descended from Aryans. To them, the discovery at Troy of their symbol, the swastika, proved they had been a dominant race. So while the swastika existed as a benign good-luck charm across Europe and North America, it simultaneously became an icon for German nationalists and anti-Semitic groups. What is the swastika a symbol of today? In the aftermath of World War II, publicly displaying the swastika was banned in Germany, where it remains illegal. Yet while reviled in the Western world, it continues to be a potent symbol with far-right and white-supremacist groups. In the US, where its use is permitted, incidents involving swastika flags and graffiti have increased in recent years, most infamously when neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. But the swastika also remains a feature of worship for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It can be seen seemingly everywhere in parts of the Indian subcontinent – from temple entrances to the front of taxis – and plays an important role in ceremonies and festivals. During Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights – the swastika is drawn with coloured sand, or rangoli, and depicted with lanterns to celebrate the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. In 2007, when German politicians attempted to introduce a swastika ban across the European Union, Hindus vehemently opposed the measure on religious grounds. Such disparate attitudes towards the swastika raises the question of whether the symbol – which for so long has been a force for good – can be reclaimed from its association with Hitler and the neo-Nazis who still display it. Would reclaiming the symbol mark the final defeat of the Third Reich and the hatred it advocated? Or is that impossible? The 20th-century corruption of the swastika came to represent so much of the horrors of Nazism that it should never be forgotten. The answer, although not a neat one, may be that there will always be two utterly conflicting interpretations of the swastika, both of which are part of our history, present and future: one representing the worst of humanity and the other symbolising the best.
“We need to understand the Nazis as human beings”: Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler’s followers
Adolf Hitler and those at the top of the Nazi hierarchy are universally denounced as monstrous aberrations. But, as Sir Richard J Evans stresses, separating them from the lessons of human history is the last thing we should be doing at a moment when democracy is under attack
A little over two decades ago, the first volume of my history of the Third Reich was published. My aim was to produce a comprehensive study encompassing the origins and rise of the Nazi Party, the transformation of Germany under Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship, and the events and impacts of the Second World War. It was, of course, a major undertaking and, after the third and final volume was published in 2008, I moved on to other topics. But a commission to contribute to a nine-part television series, BBC Two’s Rise of the Nazis, shown from 2019 to 2022, prompted me to take a fresh look at the Third Reich and its crimes. What struck me forcibly, given the biographical orientation of the TV series, was that I knew relatively little about the individuals involved in Nazism and the Reich – and, specifically, very little about their personalities and motivations. For decades, German historians in particular had avoided biography, long tainted by its indirect association with the ‘great man’ approach to history – or, as they called it, personalisierende Geschichtsschreibung (‘personalising history-writing’). Read more | Fake news and Nazis: Richard J Evans on the spectre of conspiracies The rise of ‘perpetrator research’ Yet in recent years, a massive amount of new documentation and research has been published about the leading Nazis. What historians describe as ‘perpetrator research’ has been at the forefront of scholarship since the turn of the century, and has yielded innumerable fresh insights. A 12-volume edition of Hitler’s speeches before his seizure of power was completed in 2003. The final volume of the diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels appeared in 2008. The diaries of self-proclaimed Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg were published in 2015. The second volume of SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s appointments diary, discovered in an obscure Russian archive, came out in 2020. And many other sources have come to light documenting the thoughts and actions of what one might call ‘ordinary’ mass murderers, Nazi activists, SS officers and fellow travellers. These have so far formed the main focus of ‘perpetrator research’ in the 21st century. German historians have finally overcome their allergic avoidance of biography. Volker Ullrich’s two-part life of Hitler complements the classic biography by the British historian Ian Kershaw, while major studies on Goebbels, Himmler, Rosenberg, Speer, Röhm, Heydrich, Eichmann and many others at all levels of the Nazi hierarchy have been published as well. We now have almost too much biographical material to deal with, rather than too little. Key individuals in the Nazi hierarchy The time seemed ripe, therefore, to undertake a new study of Nazi perpetrators, starting with Hitler himself and going down the hierarchy to encompass representative figures from various parts of German society. The quantitative research of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s had answered the questions of what kind of people voted for the Nazis, who belonged to their movement, and who implemented Hitler’s orders. Now it was time to delve deeper into the mentalities and motivations of powerful and representative individuals. Read more | How did the Nazi party rise to power in Germany in 1933? And what were Hitler’s motivations? In addition to all this, an important new reason has emerged for turning our attention to Hitler and those who carried out his orders. For the past few years, democracy has faced a growing threat in many parts of the globe. Would-be dictators and strongmen have emerged, undermining and attacking democratic institutions in one country after another, replacing the rule of law by the arbitrariness of their own whims, muzzling the media and curbing freedom of thought. They have millions of followers who swallow their propaganda lies and seem to care little about truth, probity or general human decency. While history never repeats itself, it does, as Mark Twain is reputed to have said, sometimes rhyme. By trying to understand Hitler and the men and women who joined him in creating the Nazi dictatorship, we may perhaps help ourselves to better understand the enemies of democracy and the leaders and followers of authoritarian or populist movements and regimes in our own time. Such considerations underlie my new book, Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich. It was published in August, with the US presidential election campaign approaching its climax – an election in which many fear that democracy and its central institutions are at stake. In writing this book, I consciously took as my model the late German journalist and historian Joachim Fest’s pioneering and bestselling book The Face of the Third Reich, first published in 1970. Since Fest wrote, the amount of research published in this area has burgeoned almost beyond the manageable. So, while sticking broadly to Fest’s structure, I was able to replace his numerous (and not always convincing) psychological speculations with new and more persuasive material grounded more firmly in the historical sources. Demythologising Hitler and the Nazis What did I find? Before I could get very far, I needed to clear away a huge amount of invention and speculation. A nimbus of myth surrounded these people, starting with Hitler himself. Posterity had demonised them to such a degree that they scarcely seemed human any more. Writers repeatedly referred to the collapse of the self-styled Third Reich as the Götterdämmerung, the ‘twilight of the gods’, like Richard Wagner’s music-drama of that name. But Hitler and his followers were not gods. It would be more appropriate to apply the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s term Götzendämmerung, ‘twilight of the idols’, to the last days of Nazism. Read more | Bitter end: Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich I wanted, therefore, to demythologise Hitler and the Nazis, to understand them as human beings. This has proved controversial, not least in Germany itself, where many historians and broadcasters have expressed their fear that ‘humanising’ Hitler, Goebbels and other leading Nazis runs the risk of making them appear in an inappropriately sympathetic light. But calling these men and women monsters or psychopaths has the convenient implication (convenient for us, that is) of presenting them as not really human – in other words, not like us. Not only does this help us avoid feeling that we have anything in common with them, it also implies that nothing like Nazism can possibly happen again, because it is not really part of human history. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-541058425web-734ac75-e1731337578956.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="SS chief Heinrich Himmler (back right) with his wife Margarete, playwright Hanns Johst and propagandist Edith von Coler (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" title="SS chief Heinrich Himmler (back right) with his wife Margarete, playwright Hanns Johst and propagandist Edith von Coler (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" /> This is no help at all in defending democracy against the most violent and extreme of its enemies. To portray Hitler and the Nazis as human beings like us is really the first step in understanding their conduct, and ensuring that nothing like it happens again. Many attempts have been made to portray Hitler as a man who was personally outside humanity, rather in the way that he himself demonised the Jews and called them “bacilli” and “lice”. None of them are convincing. Too many historians have been prepared to accept his own claim that he was a “man without qualities” who had no private life because he sacrificed it in the interest of the country he led. Yet, his sex life, for example, appears to have been straightforwardly heterosexual; before spending the night with his long-term companion, the much younger Eva Braun, he took an aphrodisiac made from bull’s testicles, prepared by his doctor, Theo Morell. Hitler grew up in comfortable, middle-class circumstances, but underwent a dramatic social descent after his failure to secure a place at Vienna’s art academy, followed by the death of his parents. He was rescued from his aimless existence by service in the Bavarian army in 1914, and found his way into politics after the war ended. He could explain Germany’s defeat only through a bizarre and extreme conspiracy theory that laid the blame on a global conspiracy of Jews, who formed a tiny minority of Germany’s population. Rise of the Nazi Party Discovering and developing a talent for rabble-rousing oratory, Hitler tried at first to lead his small, fringe Nazi Party in a violent coup against the new, democratic Weimar Republic. When that failed, he combined a continued campaign of violence with a drive for votes that put him in power after the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression made the Nazis Germany’s largest political party. In collaboration with conservative elites who wanted to overthrow democracy and return to the authoritarian system of the kaiser, Hitler established a dictatorship that began to prepare for a new European war to again make Germany the continent’s leading nation. More than this, he told his followers that he would achieve “world domination” for Germany, as he proclaimed in 1930. Read more | Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis He was neither a military nor a political nor a diplomatic genius; he was a gambler whose all-or-nothing approach, aided by circumstances, initially won him success at home and abroad. This bolstered his popularity, aided by a state-enforced, overwhelming cult of personality, the like of which the world had never seen. But Germany was only a middle-sized European power, and it could never defeat the combination of three huge empires: the British, the American and the Soviet. Hitler’s drive for world power inevitably led to disaster. In the end, suicide was the only way out. He would kill himself if he failed, he said, but “we’ll take a world with us”. The result was the most destructive war in history, and the deliberate murder of 6 million European Jews. Hitler was a fantasist from start to finish. Read more | Laurence Rees on the perpetrators of the Holocaust: “What they told us was, at the time, they felt it was the right thing to do” Why did so many Germans follow this man and stick with him to the end, as most of them did? In an effort to answer this question, I turned to his paladins – men such as Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda chief; Hermann Göring, his second-in-command; and Heinrich Himmler, his police chief. Many historians have tried to write them off as psychopaths or people from the margins of society. A Hollywood film made in 1944 to inform American troops going to fight in Europe – The Hitler Gang, directed by John Farrow and shot in the style of a 1930s gangster movie – portrayed them as a gang of criminals. Inside Hitler’s inner circle Snobs such as Joachim Fest dismissed the Nazi leaders, including Hitler himself, as “petty-bourgeois”. In reality, however, almost all of them came from a solidly middle-class background. Not one leading Nazi was working class, and none of them had ever been a socialist or a communist. They were all brought up in a conventionally conservative, German nationalist milieu. Many of them, though, had suffered a drastic social decline. Having been an air ace in the First World War, Göring then had to eke out a living as a commercial pilot and stunt flier. The comfortable existence of Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the son of a successful military officer, was abruptly ended when his father was dishonourably discharged for criticising the kaiser. Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg lost everything when his privileged position as a Baltic German was lost when the tsarist regime that sustained it was overthrown, followed by the triumph of Estonian independence. Stormtrooper leader Ernst Röhm was not a revolutionary thug but a friend of the Bavarian royal family and a professional army officer whose vision of Germany’s military future eventually alienated the generals and led to his execution on Hitler’s orders in 1934. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/BAL3405249web-0d82adb-e1731337683113.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Hermann Göring, pictured while a pilot during the First World War. He was one of many high-level Nazis who had suffered social decline (Photo by Granger/Bridgeman Images)" title="Hermann Göring, pictured while a pilot during the First World War. He was one of many high-level Nazis who had suffered social decline (Photo by Granger/Bridgeman Images)" /> Hitler’s endlessly repeated narrative of Germany’s decline and fall from 1918 onwards, and his promise to reverse the country’s fortunes, held a visceral appeal to such men, who saw in it a parallel to their own fall and rise. Once in power, their subservience to him brought huge rewards in terms of status and power, and in the very concrete form of major additions to their personal fortune. Those who formulated policy were not, of course, largely the same people who executed it. I therefore studied the leading Nazis who did so – all, of course, within the broad lines laid down by Hitler. Again, several of them found in Nazism a solution to their personal crises. Those crises included leading SS man Reinhard Heydrich’s dishonourable discharge from the navy, and the family catastrophe that befell the young Robert Ley – subsequently head of the vast German Labour Front under Hitler – when his father was imprisoned for burning down the family farm in order to claim the insurance. What was interesting about many of them was the central role that various aspects of Nazi ideology played in their allegiance, from the arch-antisemite Julius Streicher’s espousal of nature and folklore to Ley’s stress on its promise of social equality (this was, no doubt, partly for personal reasons – Ley’s family had lost its position). Hitler’s original vice-chancellor, Franz von Papen, a Catholic aristocrat, was motivated by the Catholic authoritarianism and fear of communism typical of the 1930s. Far from being the politically neutral bureaucrat of legend, the young Adolf Eichmann – the principal organiser of the Holocaust – was impelled towards Nazism first as a member of the Protestant minority in Catholic Austria, then as a young man enrolled in the German nationalist youth movement, and finally as a bitter opponent of the peace settlement of 1919 implemented in the Treaty of Versailles. It is striking that these and other leading Nazis were often well educated: a number of them had studied at university and some, including Goebbels and Ley, even had a PhD. Many possessed such bourgeois accomplishments as violin playing (Ribbentrop, Heydrich, Eichmann) and mastery of the piano (Röhm and Hans Frank, the ‘butcher of Poland’). The question of complicity in Nazi atrocities All of this underlined the origins of many of them in the German middle class. An explanation of their adherence to Nazism cannot be found in social marginality or deviance. Leaving aside their perpetration of horrific crimes, they cannot be described in conventional terms as ‘uncivilised’. What ran through almost all of them was a deep and committed antisemitism – a belief that Jews everywhere were, by their very nature, subversive and engaged in a vast conspiracy to undermine and destroy German and ‘Aryan’ civilisation. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/2MAP0T5web-758c9c8-e1731337751376.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Female guards pictured after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Many Holocaust perpetrators showed no remorse (Photo by Shawshots / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Female guards pictured after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Many Holocaust perpetrators showed no remorse (Photo by Shawshots / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> The final group of people I looked at comprised what one might call ordinary perpetrators. These were mainly exemplary figures, including a relatively little-known army general, Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, who was uncomfortable with antisemitic atrocities carried out in his area of command on the eastern front by the SS, but allowed them to continue anyway, and was pacified by what was in effect a massive bribe offered to him by Hitler. It is at this level, in one of the most male-supremacist states in history, that women enter the picture, from female camp guards who maltreated and murdered prisoners without compunction, to a conventionally conservative schoolteacher who denounced her brother to the Nazi authorities for anti-Nazi behaviour. Read more | The myth of the innocent bystander: conformity and complicity in Nazi Germany Some of these figures have been demonised by posterity to an extraordinary degree, as in the largely imagined sexual deviance of women like the camp guard Irma Grese. Once again, it was women from a nationalist, middle-class background who proved most susceptible to Hitler’s appeal. One of the most striking facts at every level was the almost universal lack, among perpetrators, of any remorse for or even recognition of their crimes. Some, such as Goebbels, killed themselves at the end of the war. Some, including Eichmann, fled into exile. Some went underground and tried to make a new life in postwar Germany. Some, such as Nazi doctor Karl Brandt, refused to admit they had done anything wrong when brought to justice after the war. Modern-day threats to democracy and freedom Nazism, and Hitler, still retained their power over these perpetrators. It was only the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s, when West German democracy delivered prosperity – and when a new generation of democratically educated Germans reached adulthood from the late 1960s – that the retrospective hold of Hitler on many Germans was decisively weakened. What can we learn from this dismaying narrative? It’s clear that economic and political crisis and trauma can bring disillusionment to many and turn them against democracy and its institutions. Equally obvious is the fact that strong legal and political institutions, as those of the Weimar Republic were not, can provide a bulwark against attacks on freedom and legality. Propaganda, such as that expertly orchestrated by Goebbels – and above all when amplified by the state – can have a hugely persuasive effect on popular opinion as it ceaselessly pumps out lies and distortions of the truth. Modern-day real and would-be political strongmen and dictators may not want to militarise society or conquer the world as Hitler did, but they nonetheless pose a threat to all of our freedoms. We can learn a good deal about what makes them successful by understanding what brought their predecessors such popularity. This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Professor Richard J Evans explores the motivations of those who governed and supported the Third Reich
Why were so many Germans prepared to participate in the crimes of the Third Reich? It's a question that has exercised historians and the wider public for decades, and now, in his new book, Hitler's People, Professor Richard J Evans seeks to provide an answer. In this episode, he speaks to Rob Attar about what drove people – from lowly functionaries to Hitler himself – to engage in acts of mass murder. View Green Video on the source website
Dozens of nobles from across the Holy Roman Empire met for crisis talks on a summer’s day in 1184, but the proceedings ended up in the toilet. It wasn’t because they failed to resolve the dispute: they literally ended up in the toilet
The words ‘latrine’ and ‘disaster’ should give a clue as to how between 60 and 100 members of the Holy Roman Empire aristocracy succumbed to a spectacularly foul demise. Gathered in 1184 in an ancient church in Erfurt, the ageing floor beneath their feet suddenly gave way, sending them plunging into the building’s noxious cesspit below. Many drowned in liquid excrement, others were fatally wounded in the fall, while several nobles were asphyxiated by the evil-smelling odour. Read more | A brief history of the toilet: wiping, washing – plus, who invented the flush? Where did the Erfurt Latrine Disaster unfold? In July 1184, King Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who was ruler of Erfurt and the future Holy Roman Emperor, convoked a ‘Hoftag’, or informal assembly. It is thought to have been within the Petersberg citadel at Erfurt (in modern-day Germany). The gathering aimed to address a dispute between the Archbishop of Mainz, Conrad of Wittelsbach, and Ludwig III, Landgrave of Thuringia. The precise origins of the two men’s bitterness have been lost to history, but land disputes were common gripes. This was also a time of political tensions among the empire’s patchwork of bishoprics, princedoms and myriad city-states. Determined to mediate and resolve the feud, Henry summoned dozens of aristocrats and high-ranking officials from across the empire to attend a meeting. What happened at the meeting that led to the disaster? The Hoftag commenced on the morning of 26 July, with many delegates arriving the day before, but it was not long before disaster struck. The ancient wooden floor of the church collapsed under the combined weight of the nobles, and they were sent plummeting to the floor below. Here was the building’s foetid cesspit. Medieval latrines, primitive and often perilously constructed, were a far cry from the luxuries of modern sanitation, often amounting to nothing more than large pits where sewage was gathered. Erfurt was about to give a stark lesson in the dangers of such basic facilities. Listen | The HistoryExtra podcast series: Toilets Through Time Revolting and tragic in equal measure, an estimated 60 to 100 nobles perished: either crushed by the falling woodwork, drowned in the horrific contents of the latrine, or asphyxiated by the unholy fumes emitted by the rotting sewage. Yet in spite of the huge death toll, all the key players in the dispute miraculously survived. King Henry and Archbishop Conrad escaped death by clinging to iron window railings. What happened to the survivors of the Erfurt Latrine Disaster? The odorous catastrophe did not hinder King Henry’s political ascent. In the years following the Erfurt Latrine Disaster, his influence continued to grow until he became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1191. He led the so-called German Crusade of 1197; held the king of England, Richard the Lionheart, to ransom; and expanded his realm to include Sicily. Henry’s survival that day ensured that his reign dramatically reshaped politics in Europe. This might have taken a different turn had he perished in Erfurt’s cesspit. Was the original dispute resolved? Due to the shocking events that ensued, all thoughts of brokering a peace between the two feuding nobles were forgotten. It appears the enmity between Ludwig III and Archbishop Conrad may have persisted, but there is no evidence either way. Why is the Erfurt Latrine Disaster remembered? By combining those words ‘latrine’ and disaster’, the catastrophe has held a macabre and darkly humorous hold over posterity. Hygiene was never a priority in this period, but the Erfurt Latrine Disaster stands as one of medieval Europe’s most bizarre and stomach-turning incidents. It underscored the precariousness of medieval architecture and sanitation, revealing that even the most powerful individuals were not immune to the hazards of the era. For us today, it also serves as a notorious reminder that unforeseen events that seemingly have little bearing on the wider geopolitical landscape can have a dramatic impact on history. Toilets through time Member exclusive | What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet? Why was the devil thought to lurk in medieval privies? And did constipation turn Henry VIII into a tyrant? In this four-part mini-series, David Musgrove heads down the u-bend in the company of leading historical experts to see what we can learn from the most universal of all experiences: going to the loo. Listen to all episodes now
Operation Bagration 1944: the perfect victory on the Eastern Front
Iain MacGregor tells the story of the Operation Bagration, a large-scale Soviet offensive against Nazi Germany launched in support of the Normandy Landings...
The 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy – D-Day, on 6 June 1944 – was commemorated earlier this month. It was an epic operation in men, machines, and planning. But the beginning of the great assault on Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europe’ was not just a military success, it had been one supported with subterfuge on a grand scale. To confuse German military intelligence, fake armies, radio communications and orders of battle were created to convince Hitler that the allies were planning to cross the English Channel to attack the Pas-de-Calais. Operation ‘Fortitude’ would deceive and force him to divert precious German units guarding Normandy prior to D-Day. While all eyes were on the battle in France, another bigger assault on the Third Reich began, just over two weeks after D-Day. It was the offensive Joseph Stalin had promised to Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943; a spectacular assault on the eastern front that would destroy all hopes Hitler had of keeping the Red Army at bay in 1944. The so-called Operation Bagration would see the Red Army race across eastern Europe. Within a matter of weeks, Soviet tanks were positioned outside the gates of Warsaw. Historically, it was a pivotal moment in the Second World War that all but guaranteed Nazi defeat in the ruins of Berlin ten months later. The build up Since Adolf Hitler’s gamble to launch the greatest land invasion in history on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), the fighting on the eastern front had been brutal – almost a war of extermination. Hitler’s grand plans of conquest had been stopped by the Russian winter and the limitless supply of fresh Soviet troops that would replace each titanic defeat the Germans enjoyed in the first year of the war. Though several million Red Army troops had been killed or captured – and millions more civilians killed or imprisoned under German occupation – by the summer of 1944, the tide had turned in Joseph Stalin’s favour. Read more | The battle of Stalingrad: a German officer's account of WW2's bloodiest battle The cataclysmic Axis surrender at Stalingrad in southern Russia in early 1943 had been followed almost five months later by a second defeat at the great tank battle of Kursk. The Soviet counter offensive after their victory at Kursk drove the German Wehrmacht back several hundred kilometres over the following months. All along the 1,500-mile eastern front, Germany and her allies had attempted to stabilise their positions: Army Group North had protected the path towards the Baltic states and eastern Prussia; Army Group Centre, the biggest formation numbering over several hundred thousand men, had been set up to guard Belarus against any threat into central Europe; but it was Army Group South that had suffered the biggest reverse, driven further back into Ukraine, and thus leaving a salient which the advancing Soviet assault occupied. Strategically, the Wehrmacht expected the summer offensive would come from the south, where they were weakest and thus sent what spare divisions it could, including armour, to beef up its defences. Army Group Centre, commanded by Field Marshal Ernst Busch, defending a geographical 600-mile-long line above it, was thought to be secure behind extensive fortifications and in-depth minefields. The Soviet military command (Stavka), however, ignored such logic, and instead pinpointed this formation for attack and the destruction of the four German formations occupying it: the 3rd Panzer Army, the 2nd, 4th and 9th armies. Read more | How to win a 20th century battle By the summer of 1944, the Red Army had perfected the art of strategic deception, or maskirovka. It had proved highly successful at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 (Operation Uranus) and was enhanced at the battle of Kursk in 1943. In both cases, the Soviets had hidden the build-up of fresh armies and armoured divisions, as well as vast lines of defences to trap advancing German columns. It had inflicted devastating losses on Hitler’s forces and tipped the balance in the east. Ahead of Operation Bagration, General Reinhard Gehlen, the head of German army intelligence in the east, had analysed what he thought was in front of Army Group Centre that summer and reassured them the main thrust of the Red Army would come from the south in Ukraine. Just as the Germans had fallen for the allied ruse to attack the Pas-de-Calais to begin the landings in France, the Soviets duped Gehlen into believing further offensives would be conducted from Ukraine. The salient the Soviets occupied was instead a perfect launch pad, and the topography of the flat terrain enabled mobile armies to move at speed. The Red Army was also, by now, virtually motorised, thanks to American Lend Lease supplies of trucks, jeeps, and tanks. It was the Germans who resembled the horse-drawn columns of the First World War – although what they lacked in vehicles and tanks, they made up for with professionalism. The Red Army was still ostensibly a militia force, with the bulk of their troops learning the art of war on the job (hence the continuing heavy losses). Across the whole of the conflict, the Red Army would be rebuilt five times over. General Gehlen held the view that any major offensive would come from the south, with the weight of German armour and aircraft allocated to this sector. Hitler had dismissed Field Marshal Busch’s requests for his units to withdraw back to the Dnieper River, to shorten their lines, deny the Soviets the salient in the south, and offer more strength in depth. Hitler’s confidence to remain lay in Army Group Centre’s formidable layers of defences it had constructed and the rigidity of his tactics in not giving up any ground to the enemy. He pointed to its southern flank right, protected he believed, by the swampy wooded Pripyat Marshes, where mobile warfare would be difficult. Any threat towards Army Group Centre was therefore judged to be a feint to mask the real campaign from the direction of Ukraine. Preparation and deception To reinforce German opinion, every effort was made by Soviet forces to make it appear as if the southern front was indeed the main point of attack. In Belarus, Red Army units could be seen by German observers digging trenches and constructing fortifications along their front. The Stavka had imposed complete radio silence with Soviet radio stations close to the frontline shut down. As the allies had done with Operation Fortitude, in the Baltic to the north, and in southern Russia, the Red Army built entire dummy armies of fake tanks and artillery parks. Despite Soviet air superiority German air reconnaissance managed to gain entry to their aerospace and photograph the fake forces. It was part of the plan, as Soviet anti-aircraft units fired live rounds to convince the German pilots what they could detect was real. It worked. Hitler ordered fresh armour and infantry formations north and south to shore up potential threatened positions, further weakening Army Group Centre’s resources. Over one hundred thousand troops, one third of its artillery and more than three quarters of its armour was now moved to the south. Of the 4,740 tanks and assault guns situated along the eastern front, only 533 were left with Army Group Centre, approximately eleven percent of the total. It would be a fateful decision. Take the quiz | WW2 history quiz: how much do you know? Deception was one success; internal security was another. From the top-down, information as to the summer offensive was watertight. Stalin intrusted just four commanders with the plans in full: Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the chief of staff Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, his deputy General Alexei Antonov, and the chief of operations General Konstantin Rokossovsky. Each was forbidden to discuss the coming operation by telegram, telephone, or simple correspondence. Stalin stipulated no date be confirmed for the offensive with senior staff invited in small groups to headquarters for briefings; all were on a need-to-know basis for their respective areas. Very few knew the bigger goal – to annihilate Army Group Centre as quickly as possible, break the eastern front wide open and pour into central Europe. Four army groups were designated for the operation: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Byelorussian Fronts and the 1st Baltic Front (their strength equivalent to a western army group). As they had perfected at Stalingrad and then Kursk, under cover of darkness, and in great secrecy, hundreds of thousands of men, a million tonnes of supplies and three-hundred-thousand tonnes of oil were moved into place. The vast lines of railway wagons taking men and machinery to their assembly areas, were taken by drivers who had no idea what their destination was. Any passengers who had ideas to get out of their carriages when the trains had periodical stops were quickly placed under arrest by Red Army military police guarding every station. To the south of Army Group Centre were the vast swamps of the Pripyat Marshes. The German intelligence had concluded these marshes were impenetrable to vehicles, but Soviet engineers set about constructing platforms and wooden causeways for their armour to navigate onto dry land. The sudden appearance of T-34 tanks out of this watery wilderness, like German panzers sweeping out of the Ardennes Forest in 1940, would be a critical feature of the battle to come in terms of breaking the enemy’s morale and willingness to fight. The battle begins By early June the offensive had been codenamed ‘Bagration’, in honour of the Georgian General Pyotr Bagration. He had died a hero defending Moscow against Napoleon at the battle of Borodino in 1812. The eventual start date, just over two weeks after the allied landings on the Normandy coastline, was laced with historical symbolism. It would be three years to the day that Hitler had first launched his surprise attack against the people of the Soviet Union to start the war. Many millions of men, women, the elderly, and children had died up until this point. Thousands of their cities, towns and villages had been reduced to rubble, their centres of culture reduced to ashes, and their way of life wiped away. Operation Bagration would repay all that had gone before. Army Group Centre – comprising of 849,000 men in 38 divisions (of which only 482,000 were combat formations) – were about to be struck by a juggernaut of steel. Four army groups: two led by Zhukov and two by Vassilevsky, whose combined strength broke down to 118 rifle divisions, eight tank and mechanised corps, six Cossack cavalry divisions, 13 artillery divisions, and 14 air defence divisions. Read more | Why did WW2 happen? Their 1.7 million men under arms was roughly double that of Army Group Centre. Crucially, Soviet armour and artillery would overwhelm German defnces. The combined strength of Soviet armoured units contained 2,715 tanks and 1,355 assault guns, giving them a ratio advantage of six to one. Soviet tank crews had the added firepower of the longer ranged T-34/85 as well as taking delivery of Lend Lease M4 Sherman tanks. The Soviets had built up their artillery parks, which now fielded 10,563 pieces, 2,306 rocket launchers, and 4,230 anti-tank guns. Overwhelming Soviet air forces would clear the skies above the battlefield, with their squadrons enjoying a seven to one numerical advantage over the Luftwaffe. On the eve of the offensive, Red Army sapper units, including T-34 tanks with anti-mine clearing attachments, sweeped away lanes within the layers of German minefields, allowing shock troops to infiltrate and eliminate enemy lookouts in their forward observation posts. Meanwhile, and mirroring the French resistance in Normandy, Soviet partisans destroyed the German rail network behind their lines while, from the air, waves of Soviet bombers appeared along the front to decimate enemy bases, communication centres, and supply dumps. Then the Soviet artillery and regiments of Katyusha rockets opened all along the frontline, tearing great holes in the German defences. The survivors, that were determined to defend their positions, soon heard the familiar clanking of Russian tank tracks as a tidal wave of armour now struck. All Soviet forces were under the directive to maintain momentum of the advance. Using the German tactics of strike and mobility against them, Red Army columns would engage, whilst others sped round the flanks of German pockets of resistance, to envelope and destroy. They would employ for the first time a new tactic known as the ‘rolling double-barrage.’ Where German forward and rear defensive positions would be simultaneously suppressed by artillery and air strikes to suppress what anti-tank defences remained intact. A more daunting tactic now employed for the first time by Soviet mechanised units was deep penetration into the enemy’s rearmost positions. Bagration would not be a classic frontal offensive whose momentum would be blunted by German counterattacks. This time, they would not let the enemy pause for breath. They would simply overrun and outgun him. From retreat to rout To add to the confusion of many desperate German frontline commanders contending with the sudden breakthroughs all along their lines, to the south, emerging from the Pripyat Marshes was Marshal Rokossovsky’s first Belorussian Front. What was once a retreat soon turned into a rout. Such was the destruction of rear echelon units and communications centres that German units now fought for their survival rather than in a coordinated front. Troops trains carrying the wounded to the west were overtaken and destroyed by Soviet tank formations. Soviet ground-attack aircraft roamed at will over the disintegrating front to pick off fleeing enemy units or those trying to make a stand. Field Marshal Busch’s attempts to persuade Hitler to allow a coordinated retreat ended in his sacking on the 28 June to be replaced by Field Marshal Model. A commander willing to not only obey the Fuhrer, but even outshine him in the failed doctrine of fight to the last bullet. Like the orders he had given to the doomed Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942, Hitler issued directives that the four principal cities in the path of the Soviet advance should be held as special fortified pockets, or ‘Fester Platz’. All would be encircled and captured as tens of thousands of Germans were decimated, and the survivors marched into captivity. By 3 July, the city of Minsk fell along with what remained of the German Fourth Army. Despite his repeated requests, Field Marshal Model lacked sufficient reinforcements to remedy the situation. The problem worsened on 13 July, when the Soviet Southern Front unleashed its own campaign towards Lvov, the gateway to central Europe. The offensive’s objectives were now all but won. Some 300,000 German soldiers were killed or captured. The battered remnants of Army Group Centre now fought a hap-hazard retreat westwards in the hope of establishing a new defensive line along the River Vistula in Poland. The Red Army had pushed relentlessly westwards 500 kilometres (300 miles) in just six weeks since Bagration had started. The allies slogging their way through the bocage of Normandy against far lesser German forces paled in comparison, according to Soviet propagandists who made sure they knew of it. On 17 July, Stalin’s press corps recorded the incredible sight of 19 captured German generals leading the 57,000 men who had been taken in Minsk, through the streets of Moscow. They were marching solemnly into captivity, but not before the thousands of Muscovites lining the streets had baited and mocked them. The spectacle completed by the perfect metaphor of dozens of trucks following in the column’s wake to spray the street with disinfectant. Next stop: Berlin... Iain MacGregor is a publisher and author of history, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has specialised in World War Two and the war on the Eastern Front for many years. His latest book is The Lighthouse of Stalingrad (Constable).
From the USA's 'good war' to Britain's 'great hurrah': how is D-Day remembered around the world?
On 6 June 1944 a massive Allied invasion force descended on Normandy in France. In recent decades, ‘D-Day’, as this event is commonly known, has been the subject of persistent commemoration, with major anniversaries – like the 50th in 1994 and the 75th in 2019 – marked with televised international ceremonies. But does everyone commemorate D-Day the same way? Or does the memory of the Allied invasion look different depending on exactly who is doing the remembering?
This June, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, there will be ceremonies in Normandy and heads of state will deliver speeches. And while these speeches will undoubtedly emphasise Western unity, they will also reveal that over the years D-Day has come to mean different things to different nations over the years... D-Day in the United States: a good war D-Day looms especially large in American memory of the Second World War. American forces played a key role on 6 June and when news of the landings broke back home President Roosevelt took to the radio to lead the nation in solemn prayer. In later years, Cold War tensions only further consolidated American commitment to D-Day. Here was an eminently ‘useable’ story of freedom versus tyranny. This was certainly the subtext to the popular Hollywood film The Longest Day (1962), which depicts an American-led armada descending on the French coastline in a heroic quest to bring liberation to the oppressed. American interest in the legacy of D-Day further intensified in the late 20th century. President Ronald Reagan gave a celebrated speech during the 40th D-Day anniversary in 1984. Speaking from Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, scene of a fierce D-Day battle involving American Army Rangers, Reagan recalled the landings as a heroic endeavour in which “the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history”. In the 1990s, the D-Day histories of Stephen Ambrose – which often focused on the valour of ordinary American soldiers – sold in enormous numbers and Stephen Spielberg’s blockbuster Saving Private Ryan (1998) met with critical and commercial acclaim. In 2000 a National D-Day Museum was opened in New Orleans (since re-named the National World War II Museum), followed a year later by the dedication in Bedford, Virginia, of a National D-Day Memorial. Today, 6 June’s position in the American memory of the Second World War remains unrivalled. It is remembered as the battle which perfectly encapsulates the moral clarity of America’s ‘Good War’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/06/GettyImages-2431133-4c9b04e.jpg" width="1024" height="681" alt="US president Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy on the 40th anniversary of the Normandy Landings. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)" title="US president Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy on the 40th anniversary of the Normandy Landings. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)" /> D-Day in Great Britain: a last hurrah D-Day has similarly drawn engaged interest in Britain. British leaders were key architects of the Normandy operation; its troops took charge of two of the five invasion beaches (Gold and Sword), and on 6 June itself the Royal Navy provided the vast majority of the warships. Little wonder that the first D-Day Museum established in Normandy was built in the British invasion sector (at Arromanches). It was opened by the French president, René Coty in 1954. A national D-Day Museum followed in Portsmouth in 1984. But when compared to its American ally, British memory of D-Day has also often had a more elegiac tone, something apparent in British films. Take, for instance, the rather enigmatic Overlord (1975) as well as the more recent production The Great Escaper (2023). Both tell stories of D-Day that linger on loss rather than celebrating victory. Why is this? Read more | The women's work that made D-Day a success By September 1944 the balance of power in the Anglo-American alliance (in terms of boots on the ground in France) had shifted very firmly to the United States, and this imbalance would only grow into 1945. Herein lies the significance of D-Day to the British. It is remembered as a last hurrah, the redemption of Dunkirk, and a final moment of parity with their American allies (who were soon to be a superpower). It continues to draw national attention as such. In June 2021, a new British D-Day Memorial was unveiled in Normandy at Ver-sur-Mer. D-Day in Canada: overlooked and overshadowed Although the Americans and British often get the lion’s share of the attention, Canadian soldiers also played a crucial role on 6 June. Tasked with landing at Juno Beach (one of the five invasion beaches, sandwiched between the British at Gold and Sword), they are commemorated in a dedicated museum at Courseulles-sur-Mer as well as in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at nearby Beny-sur-Mer. In recent years, too, Canadian prime ministers have been regular attendees at the major anniversaries, and a docudrama telling the Canadian story of D-Day – Storming Juno – was released in 2010. Nonetheless, the nation’s important role on D-Day (and at Dieppe, in 1942) is still often overshadowed by the enormous sacrifices made in the First World War by the Canadian Expeditionary Force. In short, it is Vimy Ridge on the Western Front (scene of a battle involving Canadian forces in April 1917), not Juno Beach in Normandy, which looms most prominently in Canadian memory. D-Day in France: liberation at last For the French, D-Day – or le débarquement (the landing) – occupies a complex place in national memory. It is recognised as the necessary preamble to national rebirth after four years of Nazi occupation and as such returning Allied veterans have long been given a hero’s welcome. But it is also remembered for the destruction it brought with it – the city of Caen was almost entirely obliterated during the fighting in the summer of 1944. Unlike the British, Canadians, and Americans, and although Free French troops were involved in the landings, D-Day also casts the French in a more passive role: the recipients of liberation. As a result, the French State has on occasion kept some distance from the annual commemorations. In 1964, President Charles de Gaulle – the famed wartime leader of the Free French – even refused to attend the 20th anniversary events in Normandy (his relationship with the Americans and British was often strained). More recently, though, the French have fully embraced the major anniversaries as invaluable opportunities for international diplomacy. This will again be apparent during this year’s commemorations, as too will be the esteem in which Allied veterans are held by the people of Normandy. D-Day in Germany: a blessing in disguise Despite being a key Western ally (and a member of NATO since 1955), D-Day anniversaries have understandably proved rather awkward for German leaders. Things began to change though following German reunification (1990) and the end of the Cold War (1991), with historians Gunter Bischof and Michael Maier suggesting that German media now began seeing in D-Day a “blessing in disguise” – the beginning of German liberation from Nazism. Even so, it was not until 2004 that a German Chancellor – Gerhard Schroeder – was invited to attend the official commemorations in Normandy. Today, D-Day is remembered in Germany as the fire from which the phoenix of a prosperous and progressive democracy later took flight. D-Day in Russia: long overdue Russian memory of the Normandy landings is distinct in several ways. As historian Olga Kucherenko has explained, it all comes down to a matter of perspective: when seen from the embattled Soviet Union, D-Day appears as welcome but long overdue (the Western allies had been promising to open a second front against Nazi Germany since 1942). In later years, Cold War tensions only further distanced Russians from D-Day, with the memory of the Allied invasion often seen from Moscow as something exploited by Western leaders to score propaganda points. By the 1990s, though, the world was very different. The Cold War was over and the new agenda was to integrate Russia into the international order. In 2004 – the 60th anniversary – President Putin was invited to the commemorations in Normandy. He also attended in 2014. There will be no such invitation this year (and nor was there one in 2019, the 75th anniversary), with the Russian invasion of Ukraine recently returning East-West tensions to the fore. Putin will no doubt declare indifference and focus instead on a key and on-going domestic policy: commemorating the heroism of the Soviet Red Army in the Great Patriotic War (as the Second World War is known in Russia). Dr Sam Edwards is a historian of war, memory, and of transatlantic relations
"Hitler slept through D-Day", plus four other facts about the Normandy Landings you might not know...
HistoryExtra Academy D-Day and the Normandy Campaign course
Historian and broadcaster Taylor Downing shares five surprising facts about the biggest amphibious landing in military history
Planning for D-Day started earlier than you might imagine At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt made the decision to set up a unit to start planning for an invasion of northern Europe. Major-General Sir Frederick Morgan was put in charge. Bright, able to consider unorthodox ideas, Morgan also had experience of working with Americans on the invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch. Initially, he had only a team of five to start planning for the biggest amphibious operation in history. But this rapidly expanded and General Ray Barker joined to represent the US in this combined operation. They were given offices in a corner of Norfolk Square in London’s West End, which were soon packed with British and American planners. Read more | Churchill and D-Day: did the prime minister oppose the Normandy landings? They had to decide ‘where’ and ‘how’ an invasion would take place – the ‘when’ had been agreed at Casablanca, spring 1944. They studied thousands of postcards sent in of coastal scenes from Bergen in Norway to Bordeaux in south-west France. A team of photo-interpreters was sent from RAF Medmenham to study a growing mass of aerial photos, not just to pinpoint German defences but to assess the steepness of beaches and the shoreline’s ability to support armoured vehicles. Many areas were quickly ruled out – Norway was too rugged; the dunes on the Danish and Dutch beaches were too difficult to cross; and south-west France was beyond fighter cover. The choice soon came down to two possible landing zones: the Pas-de-Calais and Normandy. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved people built Hitler's defensive Atlantic Wall The Germans knew an Anglo-American invasion would eventually come, but they did not know where or when. Building defensive fortifications along the French Channel coast began in 1942. It was a vast building operation to construct major defences from Norway to south-west France. Much of the construction work was carried out by the Todt Organisation, created to build the German Autobahn in the 1930s. It was led at this time by Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, and consisted of skilled and well-paid engineers, supported by teams of volunteers backed by hundreds of thousands of enslaved labourers who worked under appalling conditions. Read more | D-Day: why the training was deadlier than the assault About two million workers laboured on the Atlantic Wall. Some 15,000 strong points were planned, ranging from deep bunkers to huge gun batteries. Approximately 17 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million tons of steel went into its construction. When Hitler appointed Field Marshall Rommel to oversee the defence of France and the Low Countries in late 1943, he inspected the wall but was not impressed. Rommel ordered the laying of 5 million mines along stretches of coast where landings might take place, supported by thousands of beach defences and inland barriers to prevent gliders from landing. Nazi propaganda claimed the Atlantic Wall was impregnable. But it was breached in just a few hours on the morning of D-Day. A phantom army group was created to fool the Germans In discussing plans for D-Day, Churchill told Stalin "In wartime, truth is so precious it should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies". From the beginning, the planners came up with a variety of schemes to deceive the Germans as to where and when the invasion would come. But when Monty’s deception planner, Lieutenant-Colonel David Strangeways, arrived in January 1944, he upset the applecart and insisted on an ambitious rethink. The decision was made to invent an entire army group in south-east England called the First US Army Group, which would appear to prepare for an invasion across the shortest stretch of Channel, at the Pas-de-Calais. Some real units were supposedly allocated to it, but many pretend divisions were added to its order of battle. Radio operators started sending out the radio traffic a vast emerging army would generate. Dummy tanks, landing craft and an entire phoney fuel depot were placed in the south-east and a few German reconnaissance aircraft were allowed to photograph the troops and equipment that appeared to be gathering. As a final coup de theatre, a high-profile commander, General George S Patton, was put in command. A natural showman, Patton toured his ‘facilities’ and was photographed showing VIPs around. German Intelligence was soon convinced that a vast army of nearly a quarter of a million men were assembling in south-east England, training to invade along the Pas-de-Calais. The first paratrooper to jump into occupied France landed in a greenhouse Private Robert Murphy of the 505th Parachute Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division was the very first of the Pathfinders to jump into occupied France, at about 11.30pm on the night of 5 June. He and his team had to set up a Eureka radar beacon to direct the main force to its Drop Zone, which was to be centred on St Mere Eglise. Murphy landed in a greenhouse in what turned out to be the garden of the 60-year-old village school mistress. She went to her back door to see what all the commotion was about and was terrified to see a figure with a blackened face in a uniform she had never seen before clambering out of the shattered greenhouse. Murphy looked at her, paused, put a finger to his lips in a gesture of ‘silence’ and disappeared into the night. About 90 minutes later, the main drop took place and a fierce battle ensued around the church. The elite paratroopers soon overwhelmed the defenders and St Mere Eglise was the first French village to be liberated in the early hours of D-Day. Hitler slept through D-Day In the run-up to D-Day, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and General Geyr von Schweppenburg, commander of armoured forces, argued bitterly about who should control the panzer reserves. Rommel wanted them stationed near the likely landing beaches, arguing that the first 24 hours would be critical in throwing the Allies back into the sea. Schweppenburg wanted them well inland, so he could move in after the Allies had landed and defeat them. The bizarre resolution was that Hitler took control of the panzer reserve and only the Führer could give the order for them to deploy. On the morning of D-Day, Hitler, in his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, slept until 11am – his aides did not want to wake him as he had been up until 3am. He still did not give orders to deploy the panzers but instead went to a reception in Salzburg for the newly installed Hungarian prime minister. Also, fooled by the Allied deception operation, he thought the Normandy invasion might be a feint and the real invasion was still to come in the Pas-de-Calais. Finally, at 4pm he gave the order to move two panzer reserve divisions. By this time it was too late for them to get to Normandy and have any influence on the outcome of the ‘Longest Day’: 155,000 men and their equipment were safely ashore. Taylor Downing is an author, historian and broadcaster. His latest book, The Army that Never Was: D-Day and the Great Deception, is on sale now, published by Icon Books. Taylor is also leading our HistoryExtra Academy course on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign. Visit the course page to find out more Discover more content from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy course on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign HistoryExtra Academy video lecture: Deceiving the Nazis – watching time 14 mins The road to D-Day: getting ready for action – reading time 6 mins D-Day: why the training was deadlier than the assault – reading time 11 mins The Allies’ big idea: the largest air battle of the Second World War – reading time 9 mins