Following on from my post about H G Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’, I wanted to share with you an anecdote about one of the more interesting aspects of this novel’s “afterlife” and its impact on society. You are probably familiar with the story of Orson Welles’s radio dramatization of the novel, broadcast just before Halloween in 1938, at the height of the events leading up to the Munich agreement. Such was the effectiveness of the dramatic techniques used in the broadcast, it is said, that many Americans believed their country was really under attack. 
Category Archives: Second World War
Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
I’ve written elsewhere on the mysterious process that is re-reading a novel. The experience ranges from a comforting stroll down memory lane, to the more common “I know I have read this, but for the life of me can’t remember a single thing about it”. Slaughterhouse 5 was for me definitely a re-read, and I had a dim recollection of the main elements of the plot, if you can call it that, but the primary experience was as close to a new read as makes no difference.
‘Slaughterhouse 5’ is a strange novel. It follows the life and times of time traveller, World War 2 survivor, and alien kidnapee, Billy Pilgrim. Billy experiences time as a continuum, and travels from point to point across it freely, making this an exceptionally fractured novel. “It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”Breaking that down into a “what happened” narrative requires the imposition of a more formal, chronological time scheme and would be misleading; there is a collection of events spread across time that is revealed to us, the reader, but only a limited attempt to present this in any sort of order. In a classic post modernist manner, Vonnegut explains “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.” On reflection, however, I think I may have overstated the impact of the fractured time scheme on the narrative flow of the novel – there is underneath all this jumping around in time nevertheless a reasonably steady progress of the central narrative, from Billy’s capture as a prisoner of war, his transport across Europe to Dresden, to the final horror of the fire-bombing.
There’s also an incongruous comic book silliness to much of the novel – at one point Billy is captured by aliens and displayed in a zoo, for example. However, the seriousness is never far away, giving the reader an unsettling experience of stepping from genre to genre in the space of a few lines.
The title of the novel refers to the refuge Vonnegut used to survive the Dresden firebombing of 1945. He unequivocally portrays this as an horrifying act of violence, but doesn’t take sides – the reader is left to draw their own conclusions about the morality of the raids. He quotes the figure of 135,000 deaths in the raid, which was accepted, to a point, at the time, but is now know to be a politically motivated exaggeration of what was nevertheless a massacre. Had the Allies lost the war the Dresden raids would undoubtedly have been treated as war crimes. Some of the horror of this event is shown, but it is mainly mitigated by insistence of the philosophy at the heart of the book, that bad things are best not dwelt upon, as they are always going to have happened; far better to focus on the good. This is best summarised in the fatalistic chant of the novel, “So it goes”.
As a classic post modern meta-narrative, Slaughterhouse 5 is as much about the process of writing a novel as the events described. As is now quite common, but at the time was much more original, the book contains its own review:
“There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”
Which is as good as a summary as I am going to find. One footnote – this novel contains a passing reference to “The Red Badge of Courage”, another American novel about war, and also one of the top 100 Guardian novels. So it goes.
Which is as good as a summary as I am going to find. One footnote – this novel contains a passing reference to “The Red Badge of Courage”, another American novel about war, and also one of the top 100 Guardian novels. So it goes.
The Last Days of Adolf Hitler by Hugh Trevor Roper
Probably the last thing the world needs is another book about the Nazis, but I bought this (second hand) at the same time as the Bullock biography, read it, and it seems daft not to review it for risk of repetition. It does overlap with the later chapters of the Bullock book to some extent, and indeed is cited in it, but is quite distinct in other respects.
This book was originally commissioned as an investigation into (you guessed it) the last days of Adolf, specifically to address the rumours that he had escaped Berlin and was lurking somewhere in South America. The absence of a body, and the Russian refusal to clarify some of the confusion around his last days, fuelled this speculation. Trevor Roper puts this all neatly to bed, and while conspiracy theories linger to this day, unsurprisingly, they have never had the potency one might expect given Hitler’s status as the ultimate bogey-man.
To pad things out a little, the book opens with a summary of Hitler’s court, describing the principal characters and the bizarre wider cast of astrologers, masseurs, vegetarian chefs and the like. This is reasonably standard stuff, but where this book really takes off is in the almost minute by minute account of the last days of the Third Reich. I couldn’t avoid speculating how the British Government might have ended had things gone badly in 1941. Hitler’s choices once again seem hard to fathom. if he wanted to fight to the bitter end, why not leave Berlin, join some of the surviving German forces, which remained considerable, and fight on? Instead he holed up in a city destined to be taken by the Russians, and then killed himself rather than being captured.
As a reference work this is second to none. As a read it is well-written and relatively short. If you want to know about Hitler’s last days there are probably more up to date accounts available, as well as plenty of documentaries and the like, but nevertheless I am quite happy to have added this to my collection.
Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock
This is probably the definitive Hitler biography, against which all others are judged. It was originally published in 1952, seven short years after the end of the Second World War, and despite some subsequent updating; it inevitably shows its age. Since 1952 we have learnt a lot more about the history of the Third Reich, and indeed Hitler’s personal history – for example in this edition the fate of Martin Bormann is unknown, the number of deaths in the Holocaust is given at 4.2 million, and the whereabouts of Hitler’s remains was undetermined. So was this worth perserving with through 800 odd pages, when there are more up to date biographies available?
The point is of course moot, because I did (persevere, that is) but the question goes to the merits or otherwise of this text, despite its limitations. I learnt some (a few) things I did not know about the history of the Third Reich, but was left noticing some significant gaps – things I knew about the period which were not included, for no obvious good reason. Let’s start with the former. Of the 5 million Russians taken prisoner of war by the Germans, over 2 million died in captivity, from hunger and cold, often as a deliberate policy by the Germans. (More detail on this on page 696 of the book). That slaughter is never mentioned in programmes about the Second World War in my experience. The relationship with Mussolini was not something I knew much about, nor the very different relationship with Franco, alive and in power when this book came out of course.
But equally there are those omissions. The Holocaust is covered, of course, but in a very detached way. Tracing the origins of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and the way it took hold across Germany, deserved more focus than is given here. Equally, I know that Hitler began experimenting with euthanasia of the sick and disabled long before the outbreak of war – this was nothing to do with lebensraum, or indeed anti-Semitism, but about racial purity, which Bullock never really focusses on. The slaughter of trade unionists, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, and so on, also doesn’t get mentioned, let alone explored. Hitler’s control of Germany once elected Chancellor is worthy of closer examination. His recognition that power rested in institutions and organisations through the country which needs to be smashed, closed down, or assimilated was surely the key to his success in turning a minority Cabinet – his first Cabinet in January 1933 had only 3 Nazi members, including himself – into one in which national plebiscites showed hysterical levels of support over 99%.
There are some eternal questions about Hitler which challenge any biographer or historian of the period. Why did Germany elect such a man? Why did no-one properly understand the risk he faced and do something about it? How did he turn a tiny party of workers (the German Workers Party, which became the National Socialist Party in the early 1920’s) into a continent-dominating machine, able to command devastating levels of support? It can’t just be about charisma and luck, surely? How could the extermination camp guards kiss their children goodnight? Why was his personal life such a blank canvas, and was he religious in any way? We get a little closer to the answers here, by following the story from rural Austria to the Chancellery and beyond, but many of the mysteries and myths remain. I suspect much of the “traditional” features of the Hitler story can be traced to this book. There are things everyone is taught about Hitler, and other things that are simply ignored. I suppose what I am saying is that there was a familiarity about this book. Each phase of Hitler’s life came on schedule, with few surprises or revelations. Is this book the source of the orthodox account of Hitler’s life? I suspect so.
Just one other point: there is a slight tendency in this book, subtle but noticeable, to praise Hitler just a little too much. Positive comments are almost always followed up with condemnation, but his “achievements” are given more than sufficient attention. For example, on page 724 (yes I did get that far) Bullock writes very positively about Hitler’s prescience about the Cold War: “No-one, looking back at German anti-Bolshevik propaganda from the era of the Cold War, can fail to be struck by the aptness of much of the argument”. I accept that a biography that simply portrayed Hitler as a monster would be over-simplifying things, but the tone here is, at times, just a little too positive for my liking. Here’s another example: Bullock writes at length and at several points about Hitler’s ability to “read the mind” of his audiences (for example, page 722, “Hitler’s gifts as an orator had always depended on his flair for sensing what was in the minds of his audience.” Now presumably this is metaphorical rather than literal, but what is the metaphor for? How was Hitler able to tune into what his audience wanted, and give it to them? You could probably work this out through some close textual analysis, whereby he tries out themes and then either drops them or develops them depending on the audience’s response, but that is not attempted here. Instead Hitler is just credited with a supernatural ability to read collective minds. I’m not saying Bullock was a supporter of Hitler in any shape or form, simply that attitudes towards him (Adolf, not Alan) have hardened in later generations.
I really ought to read a modern Hitler biography for contrast, and probably will in time, but for now I need something lighter!
The Good German by Joseph Kanon
It is, I am fairly sure, just a coincidence that the books I have been reading recently have been about the second World War, and more specifically its aftermath. (Or is it? Is there something going on in my subconscious that is leading me to these books? Probably not!) This novel, a present, tells the story of a journalist arriving in Berlin shortly after the end of the war in Europe, but before the end of the Pacific war. I am sure it is revealing that despite having followed this character’s adventures over 500 or so pages, I can’t tell you his name. He is strangely unengaging for a first person character who gets the girl, solves the riddle, stands up to the bad guys, and does the right thing by war survivors. We are presumably intended to think of him as a hero, but despite the many attempts at realism I never once thought of him as a real person.
Arriving in Berlin he stumbles across a murder, which in time honoured fashion no-one else thinks is worth pursuing. He doggedly chases down the culprits all the while reigniting a pre-war romance, getting stories for his magazine, and observing impassively the destruction and despair all around him. This takes time, and a large supporting cast of characters who one by one are ticked off as potential suspects or bumped off along the way in a manner which removes all possible suspense. That’s not the interest of the book, of which surprisingly there was some. Berlin in mid to late 1945 was obviously devastated by the Allies bombardment and subsequent capture, and the behaviour of survivors is described here with some originality. Nazi scientists are hunted by the US and Russians, and their war crimes glibly overlooked. Other Nazis buy “forgiven” status from Jewish survivors, not because they are innocent but because the survivors are desperate for money. The huge differences between the surviving Berliners, desperate for shelter, food and water, live alongside Allied troops who seemingly want for nothing, creating a black market which is the origin of the murder. This is a complex environment for a murder mystery/thriller, where the foreground is less interesting that the context.
Both this novel and “Look Who’s Back” provide an interesting commentary on the question of why Germany fought to the bitter end, leading to the destruction of Berlin and other German cities, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. The Hitler of “Look Who’s Back” is clear – the punishment for losing the war is death – the Reich needed to be destroyed because it was unworthy, because it lost the war. This was not a long rearguard action hanging on for the super-weapon that never emerged, but a protracted suicide. Of course that is not how most Germans saw it. The perspective most often articulated in Kanon’s Berlin is that ordinary, good, Germans were the victims – that their cities were firebombed, their citizens targetted, long after the point they could effectively defend themselves, their women raped by rampaging Russians and others, then starved and frozen once the war ended. There is little or no understanding from Kanon’s good Germans that they are reaping what they sowed. It is unusual from a novel of this kind to have such a finely balanced discussion of difficult issues like this, and it sits uncomfortably with the other, much more conventional elements of the novel. (Incidentally, Anthony Beevor’s “Berlin” is very good on this point).
If you enjoy complex, and long, murder mysteries in the Le Carre tradition, you might enjoy this.
Berlin by Antony Beevor, 2002
Berlin – The Downfall 1945 Antony Beevor, Penguin, 2002
You might get the impression from some of my recent posts that all I do is read German history, but it is fair to say that these entries are not entirely representative of my reading habits. Before I get to the book itself, a little gripe – this book’s cover includes the strap line “The Number One Bestseller”. It is amazing how often that line is used – I think it is largely devalued now. No doubt if challenged the publisher could justify it by selecting a very limited period of time, or category, or location. Number one in the non-fiction category on December 11th 2004 in Latvia doesn’t really count.
I am being overly cynical however, because this book is a highly authoritative account of the fall of Berlin. As you might expect, the horror is unrelenting, and while I now know more about this terrible period of history than I could possibly want, I confess the detail has not stuck – there is a long parade of generals with similar sounding names, battles across unknown terrain, without any clear overall picture of the progress of the war – there is simply too much detail for the non-academic reader.
What has stayed with me (as I usually find) are the images. History says that the fall of the Third Reich was a long but inevitable process. Where you start the beginning of the end from is a matter of choice – the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbour (my choice, because after the USA joined the war there was really only one way it was going to end) D-Day or the end of the Battle of the Bulge, it all pointed to defeat for Germany at the end of the war. A negotiated peace was theoretically possible but the Nazis would never have let it happen. So the crushing of Berlin, principally by the Russians, was always going to be brutal. Despite this, it seems many Berliners tried to continue normal life right up to the end , rather than getting the hell out of there. They did not see the end as inevitable. The ability to deceive oneself despite all the appalling evidence to the contrary is quite chilling. Of course there were also many Berliners who could see what was coming but could do nothing about it. When it was published I remember the book being controversial because of its focus on the systematic rape of German girls and women by the Red Army. While these accounts are hard to stomach, the context justifies their inclusion, and Beevor makes it clear that he is not taking sides or using this abuse as a justification for anti-Soviet propaganda, a pretty pointless exercise in any event. German atrocities are not the focus of this book but are referenced as part explanation for the brutalities of the Red Army.
This is “popular” history, that is history for the mass market, with half an eye on a TV series, but few concessions have been made to accessibility. It’s not an easy read, for many reasons, and even students of the period could probably find better, more digestible accounts. It is also one of those history texts that provide little in the way of food for thought. Compared to say When Money Dies, which can provide much to think about in the context of today’s society, all this book tells us is that when wars come to a bloody end there is an incalculable price to pay, which I think we knew.
The Reading Bug 