Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing)

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This abridged version of the two-volume classic on one of the most malign characters in history, is a book I’ve been waiting to sink my teeth into for a very long time. On Audible, the recording is over 44 hours long – which gives you some idea of why I waited. This is not a book to read occasionally over a period of many months. It needed proper time to study.

That time was not wasted. Kershaw writes superbly and you can’t help but be gripped from the first page to the very last. It’s weird to say that about a history book (I’ve only ever done that once before, with Frankopan’s brilliant Silk Road book on world history), but it really was a page-turner for me.

That’s not to say I don’t have criticisms, of course.

The main one is that throughout the book, Kershaw pauses from his riveting telling of the story, to comment on what he thinks about Hitler’s skills or attributes with respect to whatever the story is at the time. Each time, he is at pains to tell us that there was nothing skilful about Hitler at all, he was lucky and that when things went right it was in spite of his actions (or inactions) rather than because of them. This was, frankly, completely unnecessary. It felt like Kershaw was constantly worried he might be perceived as admiring or praising this dictator and wanted to set the record straight. It comes across as a touch paranoid and mildly irritating.

The other big criticism from me is Kershaw’s bizarre judgement in his summary at the end, that there’s no excusing the German people for their complicity in the atrocities. He dismisses the usual view that people didn’t know what was going on or were unable to stop it. This is more than unpalatable, especially as Kershaw goes to great length to show just how much it was impossible even for those closest to Hitler to change anything or get rid of him and how ‘The Final Solution’ was never written down and only ever discussed in the barest and most euphemistic of ways. The whole structure of Hitler’s government was chaotic and designed to both remove power from all but Hitler and also encourage in-fighting and ‘assumptions’ about what ‘The Fuhrer’ would want to be done. Kershaw tells us these things in great detail. To suggest then, that the ordinary German people – who suffered increasingly to the point of almost the same level as Jews and Russians – could somehow have changed things, is unfair to say the least.

And this matters, in my view. Kershaw points out the German people voted Hitler in and absolutely adored him in the beginning. Well, wouldn’t we all? Honestly, that’s my view. Not Hitler himself, here in the UK, but some English equivalent. Kershaw shows, convincingly, that Hitler was the right person in the right place at the right time to create the catastrophic future he constructed. His one skill was in rhetoric. Hitler could speak; powerfully. There are, today, many leaders and would-be leaders who are similar. They don’t sound or talk like Hitler, nor share his ideologies (at least, not all of them). But they have that gift of oration that means people love them, for good or ill.

Stanley Milgram’s famous ‘electric shock’ experiment of the 1960s, while arguably flawed, has shown us that every one of us has a high chance of doing terrible things if put in the right circumstance and told to do it by the right person. It’s worth clicking the link if you don’t know about this experiment, but in essence, ordinary people gave terrifyingly huge electric shocks to people strapped in an electric chair for no good reason other than they were told to. It was an actor in the chair and no shocks were really applied, but the participants applying the shocks didn’t know this. Every single one of them applied nasty shocks and 65% of them applied the full voltage when told to. Few refused to continue the experiment. All of us could turn full Nazi if we were put into extreme circumstances, that’s the ghastly truth of it.

So Kershaw is unfair to the German people and it’s a pity because otherwise he gets things pretty damned right. I learned so much from this book – not just about Hitler but about the German war machine and how politics allowed it to flourish. I have a much greater understanding of World War I and II and the period in-between, and a greater understanding of the mistakes the rest of the world made to bring Nazism to power.

Two theories have come to my mind from reading this book – both of them very controversial and I acknowledge that fact.

First, reading about Hitler’s first couple of decades of life, I can’t help but believe he was autistic. I’ve seen no writer or commentator suggest this, but it seems clear as a bell to me. His family background, relationship with his parents, with school, with his failings in further education – he’s like every autistic teenage boy I’ve ever known (and I’ve known a lot). I can’t help but wonder how things might have been different had he lived in a world where such traits could have been picked up and he could have gotten support. It’s a total thought experiment, I know, but one worth pondering on – again because of the real world implications for today as we see ‘history rhyming’ a hundred years on.

Second, while I absolutely see Hitler as a very bad man who led a regime that did undeniably evil things, I don’t think Hitler himself is evil. That thought will no doubt cause immense knee-jerk reactions so let me say again, I do not condone his actions nor his government and I do see him as a bad man. But to make him evil is to confer a greatness on him he does not deserve.

Many a novel and movie was made in the aftermath of Hitler’s death proposing a scenario where some other version of him – a clone or whatever – would come back the good guys would be fighting to stop ‘New Hitler’ from trying to take over the world again. It’s all a nonsense. He could be here today and almost certainly would just end up as a frustrated artist living on social benefits.

Hitler was an ordinary (albeit possibly autistic) man with extreme views that were concordant with many in Europe, who happened to step into the right place and be catapulted to power over a very long period of time. His views – always supported by very many people (and some still are, today) – became increasingly extreme and focused as Hitler himself became more anxious and paranoid. As his mental and physical health collapsed, his determination to ‘end Jewry in Europe’ and bring down Bolshevism exploded and was enabled by others. In many ways, the whole Nazi regime is an horrific version of the ‘The King’s New Clothes’. All those around Hitler who could have stopped him, wanted to believe exactly what he was telling them. Between them, they created the evil. There’s no evil genius here – just a lot of very bad people.

Why does this matter? Because Hitler was a one-in-a-million chance but such chances happen all the time. We won’t see Nazism take over the UK (or the US or Europe etc., etc.) but we might see something else like it. The things happening today are just waiting for ‘the right person’ to come along and make them work for him or her. If it is for good, no problem! History will probably just pass over them. But if it isn’t for good…if their views are extreme but concordant with what many people are believing and saying…if they have the right skillset to exploit all that…then we’re in trouble.

And right now, looking almost everywhere in the world at the moment, it’s never been scarier that this could happen. We might not get another Hitler, but his life story tells us a regime just as evil could easily arise, centred around one person.

For that reason, I think everyone should read Kershaw’s book. We need an understanding of the man generally that’s better than the GCSE-schoolchild understanding which is nothing more substantial than ‘wasn’t he terribly evil, thank God nothing like that could ever happen again.’ If we don’t deepen our understanding, there’s a real danger we will frog-boil ourselves back into the atrocities of ninety years ago.

My Verdict:

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

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