Revisiting Books Long Since Read 24 - Anthony Read

The Devil’s Disciples: The Lives and Times of Hitler’s Inner Circle, Anthony Read (Pimlico, 2004)

I have already written in these pages that it would seem likely that my fascination with the topic of evil began with my viewing of the wonderful 1970s series called The World at War, an excellent documentary series in 26 parts on World War 2. It was narrated by the famous actor Sir Laurence Olivier and directed by at least six different directors and was a marvellous collaborative exercise between the BBC and The Imperial War Museum. The list of those interviewed was enormous and so this series of documentaries is a magnum opus of historical research. The newsreel was moving and all too real, while the episode dealing with the evil of the concentration camps was possibly far too disturbing and had a lasting effect on my young mind. I was then 15 years old and was bowled over by the depths of man’s depravity and the extent of his inhumanity to his fellow man – in the words of the famous American war poet, Randal Jarrell, “Man is a wolf to man.”

Also, I was transfixed by the mesmeric effect of the inimitable voice of Laurence Olivier as the narrator. Then, one episode had the famous, even infamous quotation from the wonderful German Romantic writer Heinrich Heine: In his 1821 play, Almansor, this German writer, referred to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, during the Spanish Inquisition — famously wrote: "Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings." ("Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.") One century later, Heine's own books were among the thousands of volumes that were torched by the Nazis in Berlin's Opernplatz in an outburst that did, in fact, foreshadow the blazing ovens of the Holocaust.

In Anthony Read’s excellent history, The Devil’s Disciples: The Lives and Times of Hitler’s Inner Circle, (Pimlico, 2004) we get a rather comprehensive insight into the minds of Hitler’s henchmen. At the end of the Prologue we read that Hermann Goering, the cleverest and most suave and polished of the dictator’s followers and the highest ranking, revealed to an American psychiatrist at Nuremberg, Dr Douglas M Kelley, that “his basic motive had been that single, driving ambition – to achieve for Hermann Goering supreme command of the Third Reich.” (pp. 9-10). Goering let nothing or no one stand in the way of his objective, admitting also to Kelley, the reason why he had murdered a close and former friend in the Nazi Party – “But he was in my way…” (p. 10).

Journalist and historian Anthony Read

Like other dictators, Hitler could not have walked his long political road without leaning on the arms of the collaborators whom Read puts at the centre of his book. He turns Goering, Goebbels, Roehm, Himmler, Heydrich and Ribbentrop into principal characters in the German inter-war tragedy. Hitler comes into the chapters only as someone whom they consulted, advised and - just very occasionally - criticised. Read concentrates on their early background and entry into politics as well as the jobs they discharged in the Third Reich. If he has a unifying theme, it is that the Nazi elite consisted of dynamic, ruthless politicians who had talents that could have made them successful in other arenas if they had so chosen. However, behind it all, they were quite weak individuals, too as I shall reveal below.

Anthony Read reveals that practically all the leaders of the Third Reich cut pathetic figures at ASHCAN where they were first kept immediately after capture – Arthur Seyss-Inquart arrived limping and with very thick spectacles; Hans Frank in an ambulance after slashing his wrists and throat while Goering was the only one to retain his suavity and composure and in the words of Britain’s judge at Nuremberg, Sir Norman Birkett, he possessed “immense ability and knowledge,” and “was suave, shrewd, adroit, capable, resourceful… and full of self-confidence …” (p. 9)

Hitler was a canny leader who rewarded his more prominent henchmen handsomely.  He was adroit at playing Goering off against Goebbels and vice versa. Goebbels who was very well educated and quite sophisticated got hold of homes, property and - despite Hitler's distaste - a succession of film-star mistresses on a gargantuan scale. Goering acquired more paintings by old masters than anyone since the popes of the 16th century. Hitler regularly played the two men off against each other and their rivalry served only to conserve Hitler's dominance over them.

As we read about the miserable wretches that these so-called upper echelons of Hitler’s Third Reich finally turned out to be at Nuremberg – pathetic, cowardly and lacking in self-confidence – one is quickly reminded of Hannah Arendt’s beautifully apt phrase, which she used when commenting on the Eichmann trial, “the banality of evil.” In other words, we are astounded that such pathetic figures of men - for the Nazis were almost all totally men who believed in keeping women firmly in their place – had managed to wreak such havoc on the world in general and to have attempted the total extermination of one particular race and many minorities. One is inclined to go along with Arendt that evil can be indeed so banal. It often appears that the Nazis were the “accountants of death and torture” if I may coin my own phrase, insofar as they kept meticulous accounts of those whom they imprisoned and subjected to the most horrific punishments and even scientific experiments. I am always taken aback by those sad pictures of piles of boots, items of clothing and spectacles taken from their prisoners and meticulously counted and redistributed to others.

However, while this book gives us a surfeit of well-marshalled facts and details about Hitler’s henchmen, it gives little insight into the general politics of the era and no analysis whatsoever of Nazism's appeal to the millions of Germans who closed a blind eye to genocide and other horrors wrought in the name of the Third Reich.  However, given that Mr Read is more a journalist than a historian, he can be forgiven these minor flaws.  All in all, this book is a good riveting read.