This is a difficult book to review because it is not bad just not very good, or more accurately a quarter century after it was written it is no longerThis is a difficult book to review because it is not bad just not very good, or more accurately a quarter century after it was written it is no longer a good book.
Anthony Read was, amongst other things, a very good popular historian of, mostly, books on the WWII era. I do not use the term 'popular historian' in any negative way nor with disrespect, my love of history was nurtured by good popular historians and histories, but popular historians and their histories have limitations which militate against longevity. In the case of Anthony Read it is a lack of any formal historical training, his use of secondary sources not archives and the lack of the use of non English language works. In 1992 Anthony Read wrote a book 'The Fall of Berlin', I haven't read it but I would think anybody who reads that book instead of Antony Beevor's 2002 'Berlin: The Downfall 1945' is being stupid or perverse. The same must be said of anyone reading 'The Devil's Disciples' today.
In 1970 the German journalist Joachim Fest wrote 'The Face of the Third Reich' which presented personal profiles of the Nazi leaders in the Third Reich, focusing on their monstrous psyches and their corruption of political and moral standards. I thought that 'The Devil's Disciples' was going to be work of the same nature and at over double Fest's 420 pages I was expecting much from this book. Unfortunately this was not so much the 'Life and Times' of Hitler's inner circle but a history of Germany from the end of WWI through to the end of WWII told through the biographies of only some members of Hitler's inner circle such as Goering, Goebbels, Speer and Himmler who get all the attention while those like Frank and Shirach barely a mention. This is a new way of telling an old story in an old fashioned way. You would get more profit from reading Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'.
This was Read's penultimate non fiction book and clearly he has drawn on his experience and knowledges gained writing about Nazi history since the mid 1980s. This is reflected in the 'Select Bibliography' at the back of the book. Although Kershaw's massive two volume work on Hitler is included the biography most referenced is Alan Bullock's 'Hitler a Study in Tyranny' (originally published 1952, revised 1962). 'The Devil's Disciples' was published in 2003 the year the first of Professor Richard Evan's trilogy Germany came out. It was too early to benefit from other works like those of Peter Longerich on Himmler or Goebbels. Oddly, and disappointingly, 'The Devil's Disciples' still gives David Irving's works prominent mention in the select bibliography even though his reputation as a historian had been destroyed back in April 2000 (see Richard Evan's 2002 'Lying About Hitler').
The point I am making is not to criticise Anthony Read or this book but to put the question is there any reason in 2024 to read an 800+ pages book on Nazi Germany published in 2003, based largely on secondary sources of the mid twentieth century, rather then works by authors like Longerich or Evans. Even if you are going to read an older work on Nazi Germany Joachim Fest is better author to chose or, and highly recommend it, 'Albert Speer his Battle with the Truth' by Gitta Sereny.
When it was published this was a good history, very well written, but almost immediately it became obsolete even as a popular history. Because I have great respect for Anthony Read I am still giving this history three stars but would seriously as anyone contemplating reading it now to have a serious think about how best to employ their reading hours....more
This was a depressing book because it was a bad book promising more than it ever delivered. It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads it, but miThis was a depressing book because it was a bad book promising more than it ever delivered. It will come as no surprise to anyone who reads it, but might surprise those who haven't yet, that it provides possibly the most negligible account of the actual Munich 'crisis' and/or 'conference' of any book dealing with the run up to WWII.
This book is my second least favorite type of history book, diplomatic history, were every note, letter and piece of diplomatic flummery is exhaustively resurrected and retold even those at the time knew it was all a load of bollocks and sham gobbledygook to disguise with careful mendacious words the truth of what was going on.
The pity is that I thought we were going to get a proper look at the complexities of building the Czechoslovak state with a reasonable glance backwards to the problems of these same areas while still under Habsburg rule (please look up Tara Zahara's 'Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian lands 1900-1948) or of the equally diverse 'Sudeten German' identity (see Eagle Glassheim's 'Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy'). But we get nothing, indeed it is almost as if the Sudeten German movement sprang from nowhere, of course the tensions between Czechs and Slovaks don't even get a look in, so we no context and no history. Nor are the irresponsible antics of President Wilson and his ill thought out promises and commitments to create national homelands (none of which he bothered discussing with his UK or French allies) mentioned never mind explained.
What is needed is not an exhaustive account of various letters and memorandums laboriously concocted and then abandoned without reading but an understanding of why Chamberlain, Halifax and others were so willing to give way continually to Hitler because it didn't stop at Munich, France and the Uk may have found themselves at war with Germany over Poland but the complete absence of help, indeed complete indifference to Poland's destruction, is simply a continuation of a moral bankruptcy that affected all layers of UK and France.
There is an important story to tell in the betrayal of Czechoslovakia and it is a story we should always remember, just as we should remember the fate of Poland. What did the UK or France do for Poland?...more
The only reason I read as much of this book as I did was because it was Anthony Beevor and although that means the book is well written it doesn't meaThe only reason I read as much of this book as I did was because it was Anthony Beevor and although that means the book is well written it doesn't mean it is worth reading. I was going to award this book three stars out of respect for Mr. Beevor but have decieded to go with gut instincts and award one star and will explain why.
The first problem with this book is that the amount of real information on Olga Chekhova while certainly more than what would fill a postcard is nowhere near enough to fill a book. The information we have on her 'spying' activities would barely fill the acreage of a postage stamp. Basically there is no real evidence and if anything ever comes from the archives it won't reveal her as another Mata Hari (but then even Mata Hari was no Mata Hari). The book is packaged to present her as one of those femme fatal agents influence gathering tit bits, or maybe pillow talk?, from her association with Hitler.
Of course Olga Chekhova had no relations with Hitler of any substance. Hitler had no relations with women like Chekhova, she was way too sophisticated, something Hitler was not and didn't like in anyone, particularly women. You don't choose mistresses like Geli Raubal and Eva Brown as well as a woman Chekhova.
That doesn't mean the Soviet security didn't make use of her, she had family living in the Soviet Union including a brother who definitely was a Soviet agent, but that was true of any emigre Russian. If there was a book worth writing it might have been about the complexities of the relationship between emigre Russians and the Soviet State which were far more complex, and interesting, than our cliched view of exiled white generals as taxi drivers in Paris and aristrocats bemoaning the loss of their estates in seedy bistros. The example of the great scholar Prince D. S. Mirsky who returned to Russia in 1932 and died in 1939 in a labour camp is reading up on. He had a perfectly adequate life as an emigre academic but he couldn't live away from the land of his birth. If Mr. Beevor had used Olga Chekhova and the broader Chekov family to look at the issue of survival in the Soviet Union, emigration, the use that the Soviet intelligence service made of these people, etc. then you might have had a book worth reading. The parts of the book that deal with Chekov's widow and his siblings is by far the most interesting part of the book.
Unfortunately it gets lost by the great 'Hitler's favorite actress was a Russian spy' non story. I cannot help thinking that this was an idea for a book that didn't pan out. There was only enough information for an article so it was padded out.
Not a good book and, what is worse, an opportunity missed....more
This is a disappointing mediocre book particularly for the English language reader for whom the Thyssen name is not as immediately recognizable as it This is a disappointing mediocre book particularly for the English language reader for whom the Thyssen name is not as immediately recognizable as it may for continental Europeans. The pity is that The Thyssen's like any of giant industrial fortunes in the USA does have a compulsive fascination if only on the level the reading equivalent of 'car crash TV'. The Thyssen's in oddity and vulgarity and unpleasantness are a great subject but this is not the book they deserve. To put it in most basic terms this book is not another 'Arms of Krupp' and David R.L. Litchfield is most definitely not another William Manchester (it is somewhat ironic that the two great 19th century industrial giants of post unification Germany Krupps and Thyssen are now both, in a much reduced state, merged into one company. Litchfield is not a historian, he is barely a journalist, not even of the muckraking or scandal sheet variety. He can't handle his material well enough and has no sense of humour.
To go back to Manchester and The Arms of Krupp what gave that work some strength (although it is flawed) was that he had access to family members and the firms and executives). Litchfield has no such 'all areas' access to people or the company and the Thyssen industries were never akin to Krupp in their importance and the family never as centered in the political dynamic in the way Krupp family were. There was never a Lex Thyssen to match the Lex Krupp and no matter what the circumstances there never would have been. The Thyssen's weren't important enough.
Their lack of importance, even on an economic level, must be stressed. Although they made money they were not Krupp and neither were they the equivalent of J.P. Morgan, Commodore Vanderbilt, Jacob Astor or Andrew Carnegie. In importance they don't even come near to Henry Clay Frick. Although they are associated with an art collection to compare them as either collectors or donors to men like Morgan or Frick is grotesque. They were not connoisseurs and no one ever mistook them for Medici or della Rovere. They barely qualify as proper donors when you look even superficially at the grotesque negotiations surrounding the acquisition of their collection by the Prado.
This is a not very good book about a not very interesting family of very rich people. ...more
This is an excellent history of appeasement from a UK point of view but it is also a rather conventional and old fashioned history of the period. TherThis is an excellent history of appeasement from a UK point of view but it is also a rather conventional and old fashioned history of the period. There was a lot of hype about this being a new evaluation and one that would attack established shibboleths but that had a marketing spin to it. It is useful to be reminded of how much the horrific legacy of WWI had on the events of the 1920s and 30s and how the general unease about the Versailles treaties lead large numbers of people to have more sympathy for German desire to revise the treaty rather than concerns of those like the French who worried about such revisions. But it is also useful to remember, and this not a point Mr. Bouverie gives much time at all to, how many of the people pronouncing authoritatively on the future of Germany and Europe and the UK's relationship to them were speaking with a degree of ignorance that should have made them blush and hold their tongues (of course politicians and others talking rot about foreign affairs are still with us).
I find Bouverie's account of Churchill utterly predictable he may point out flaws but more in the light of amazed at Churchill's genius then with a critical eye at what a damaging blowhard he was. A huge amount of the warnings he gave about Germany were wrong (rather like the alarms about the non existent missile gap Kennedy used as scare tactics in his political career). His successful frustration every move to provide some satisfaction to Indian nationalist before WWII has a huge responsibility for the horrors of the partition that came with independence.
Ultimately both Churchill and the appeasers were working not on a basis of antipathy or admiration of Hitler but about the preservation of British power. Churchill would have been as aggressively negative about Germany's resurrection as a military power if it had remained the Weimar republic. Churchill didn't defy the Nazis, he struggled to preserve Britain's pretty shaky imperial preeminence. That was what he cared about and in a different way that is what appeasers wanted as well. Churchill had as much interest or concern for Czechoslovakia as he had in Poland. He would have sacrificed the Czechs as he sacrificed the Poles but, to paraphrase Frederick II of Prussia on Marie Theresa and the partitions of Poland in the 18th century, 'he cried, when he betrayed; the more he cried, the more he betrayed.' What mattered was the preservation of Britain's honour and power. It wasn't so much what Munich did to Czechoslovakia that mattered but what it revealed about Britain.
The fact that after the defeat of the Nazis they were revealed as an absolutely repugnant regime gave a retrospective glow of moral purpose to the anti-appeasers that was without foundation. It is time for appeasement, like all the other actions of British governments in the 20th century right up until it's idiotic involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq, were seen as increasingly pointless attempts to preserve an ever more chimerical idea of British importance....more
(A duplicate listing for this fine book so I reproduce my review from 2015 Below)
This is a splendid and fascinating book on the post WWI lives, not ju(A duplicate listing for this fine book so I reproduce my review from 2015 Below)
This is a splendid and fascinating book on the post WWI lives, not just of the Hessen family (so closely connected to other dynasties like the Romanov and Windsor), but of the former German dynastic houses (Imperial Germany contained 4 kingdoms, 4 grand duchies 7 duchies and 7 principalities of varying degrees of size and independence as well as numerous royal/princely families such as those of Hesse-Cassell and Hanover whose territories had vanished but position as royals and as acceptable husband's/wives for those whose kingdoms hadn't disappeared) as a whole. It may seem obvious now that their relevance was over, but it wasn't so clear at the time just as it wasn't obvious that supporting the Nazis was guaranteed not to provide them an ongoing relevance but only to cement their destruction - because the Nazis used the Royals like they used everyone who might be of use - but they had no loyalty or commitment to them and turned on them with a thoroughness that would be shocking had the Nazis not already demonstrated a freedom from ethics and a penchant for betrayal on numerous previous occasions.
Petropoulos sorts, as far as is possible the truth from the fictions and I think it is a tribute to his own reputation as a scholar that the Hessen family archives were open to him and that Prince Philip spoke with him (it is interesting to learn how many former archives of the various now defunct royal 'states' of the equally defunct German empire are still private family archives with access controlled by the current pretenders to those long defunct kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies and principalities - it means that access to the war time period for ex-royals like the Coburg's is very restricted, just like the archives of the Windsor family. Petropoulos tells a fascinating and awful story but it will be some time before anyone matches his knowledge of the sources and archives. Please be warned off the many shoddy competitors out there...more
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