My Amazon Review of Ian Ona Johnson's "Faustian Bargain....."

 

The Secret Outlaw Alliance

 

With the ink hardly dry on the Versailles Treaty Europe’s two outlaw states, Germany and Russia, left the Genoa Economic Conference slipped away to Rapallo, Italy to make a separate peace treaty. What followed was a ten-year period of military cooperation where Germany, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, that would establish three bases in Russia to design and develop aircraft, tank, and chemical warfare technology while Russia would benefit from German know how and engineering technology. Notre Dame history professor Ian Ona Johnson turned his Ohio State Ph.D. dissertation into this very readable book.

 

Johnson goes into great detail in discussing how the German program was funded secretly and was run in succession by generals Seeckt, Groener and Schleicher. The policy was supported by both center-right and center-left governments. Further German firms Krupp and Junkers were in up to their eyeballs in Russia. A major motivation for the Russo-German efforts was Poland. Because Poland was carved out of Russian and German territory both parties had an interest in destroying it. What was talked about in 1922 came about in 1939.

 

Many of Germany’s World War II generals cut their teeth in Russia including tank commander Heinz Guderian the lead author of Blitzkrieg warfare. The protypes of the tanks and aircraft that both Germany and Russia went to war with in 1939 were developed in Russia. Further, it was in Russia, where Germany developed the use of radio transmissions to coordinate their tanks in the field, a major advantage of the flying of flags. The Russians developed a tank that would allow for tree person crews which freed up the commander to guide the battle. Both the three person crews and radio coordination would prove decisive in the Battle of France in 1940.

 

For their part, the Russians upgraded their military to adopt the German general staff model. It was his contact with the Germans that Russian general and strategist Mikhail Tukhashevsky developed his theories about deep battle, maneuver, and economic mobilization. Although shot by Stalin during the great purge, it was Tukhashevsky’s strategies that saved Russia from the Nazi onslaught. It was also during this period that Russian airplane designed Tupolev upgraded his craft.

 

The period of joint cooperation would end with Hitler coming to power in 1933. However, by that time both Britain and France were no longer interested in enforcing the strictures of the Versailles Treaty that Germany no longer needed secret bases in Russia to test their weaponry. A new Rapallo would emerge with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, but that would end in June 1941 when Germany attacked Russia where both parties utilized what they learned in the 1920’s to a devasting effect.

 

Great credit is due to Johnson to keep the reader interested in what could have been very dry military history. Also of note is that he supports my theory that the untimely death of Foreign Minister Gustav Stressemann’s death in October 1929 could have had far reaching consequences. Stressemann was the only politician in Germany who could have stood up to Hitler.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Secret Outlaw Alliance (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945

 

Hitler’s War

 

This is Volker Ullrich’s second and very long volume (848 pages in the print edition) of his very detailed biography of Adolph Hitler. (See my review of Volume 1 at  https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-amazon-review-of-volker-ullrichs.htm) This volume starts after Hitler’s acquisition of Memel in March 1939, his last peaceful acquisition of territory in Europe. Because Hitler’s life is so enmeshed with the war in Europe, the volume is also a history of World War II from a German perspective. Much of his accounts come from the diaries of Hitler Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who figures prominently in the book.

 

Hitler’s goals were to conquer Europe and the destruction of European Jewry. He almost succeeds with the first and is very successful in slaughtering the Jews of Europe in the holocaust. Hitler’s war in the East is a war of annihilation starting first in Poland and then in Russia. In the West Hitler works with generals Manstein and Guderian (the architect of Blitzkrieg warfare) in coming up with the strike at France through the Ardennes forest which works to destroy the French army. Far from being a dilettante, Hitler knows his maps and military strategy. These abilities would decay as the war went on. Thus, as victory turned to defeat Hitler would increase his micromanagement of the war and remove generals with great alacrity.

 

Although Hitler never gave a direct order for the holocaust, his minions knew exactly what he wanted to be done. At the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 the order was given to kill the Jewish population of Europe. This comes after the failure of Operation Barbarossa to conquer the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941. Had Barbarossa succeeded one of he plans was to exile Europe’s Jews to the steppes of Russia. Instead the Jews went off to the camps and in late 1944 the hitherto relatively safe 400,000 Jews of Hungary were rounded up and sent off to their deaths.

Hitler knew that Germany lost the war at Stalingrad but continues the slaughter because his war of annihilation made a negotiated settlement with him impossible. After Stalingrad morale in Germany breaks and Hitler’s health rapidly deteriorates.

 

Ullrich is very good at describing the failed Stauffenberg plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 and its aftermath. However, we learn very little about Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun, his mistress. Both she and Hitler commit suicide along with the Goebbels family in the bunker in 1945.

 

The most haunting passage in the book is Ullrich’s description of Hitler in January 1945. He writes as follows, “several of his character traits had become even more pronounced his egocentrism, his inability to self-criticize, and his commensurate tendency to overestimate himself, his lack of scruples when choosing means to his ends, his habit of betting everything on a single card, his contempt for others and his lack of empathy.”  This sounds like someone we know.

 

The book is a long slog, but worth it for readers who want a better understanding of Hitler and World War II.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RRHJACHZBT72K?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp