An Iron Wind

An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler
©  2016 Peter Fritzsche
376 pages

That crowds that cheered Neville Chamberlain's return to England with a promise of peace in his hand are easy to condemn in hindsight. But no one in the 21st century experienced the Great War that loomed in that crowd's mind -- the war that emptied villages, destroyed families, and snuffed out millions of young lives before their time.   Modern technology promised to complete what the Great War had started: military strategies, aviation experts, and the common chatter of civilians were uniform in their belief that mass bombings would obliterate the continent.  Those fears were both new and rational: World War 2 was the first time the general populace looked at the prospects for war and realized that THEY would be the target, not just the men at the front lines.  But while civilians would be the greatest casualties in the war to come,  the conflict would be much different than expected,  nothing like a twenty-year-old re-run.   What Hitler sought was less a return of the German Empire, and more of the imposition of a new world order.  In An Iron Wind, Peter Fritzsche  uses the letter and literature written during the war to experience the first attempts to create this malicious order.  

An Iron Wind is definitely not a conventional history of World War 2, and not only because it focuses on society rather than politics and military movement.  The book often seems like a gathering of esoterica, at least until the Holocaust-heavy second half, because Fritsche  covers sundry topics like the imposition of German time zones in France,  patterns of graffiti throughout the war, and the spike in popularity of Tolstoy's War and Peace  which followed Hitler's invasion of Soviet Russia.  Fritzsche often emphasizes, however, Hitler's break with the past and his desire to create a new vision of the state.  Hitler mocked Switzerland as a museum antique, a fragile artifact of Victorian democracy that needed to accept the new way or prepare to be crushed by it.  Fritzsche offers a view of the Holocaust that its atrocities were a deliberate baptism in blood for the new way Hitler wanted to create; to  kill millions by cold, efficient bureaucracy --  with deliberation and a vast array to dedicated infrastructure – was to forcefully reject all the mores of the past, and particular ideals like universal brotherhood. While fascism in Italy and Spain could coexist with the church, linked by common enemies like communism,  Nazism regarded Christianity as enfeebling.   Hitler and like-minded ideologues promoted a view of Germany as being encircled by enemies and riddled from within by others;  his mission was to awaken and mobilize German to the threat, marshalling them for combat, with victory at any cost.  Fritzsche  also suggests that when Hitler launched his invasion of Poland,  it was for him less a battle between states than a fight between tribes, as the conflict allowed him to target not just the Polish state (which he methodically disassembled), but diverse groups like the Romani ("gypsies")  which he held in contempt. 

Although this is by no means essential reading for World War 2,  it does explore topics that are obscure enough to have not been mentioned much elsewhere, but still have relevance for understanding the plight of people who were trying to make sense of what was happening both at home and across the continent. 

This Week at the Library (10/9)

Books this Update:

• Me of Little Faith, Lewis Black
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
• Surviving Auschwitz, Primo Levi
• Carl Sagan: A Life, Keay Davidson

I began this week with Me of Little Faith, which is a book about comedian Lewis Black’s experiences with religions and the paranormal. Black is a comedian often featured on The Daily Show who hosts his own show on the Comedy Central channel called The Root of All Evil. It’s not anti-religious, which came as a surprise to me given his comedy routines. Black was raised Jewish and considers himself a Jew even though he doesn’t follow Judaism. This makes him a “cultural Jew”, which Black says sounds like a name for some sort of yogurt. Black begins by describing growing up in a family of “cultural Jews”, then moves on. The book is a book of comedy, so there’s no real organization to it. Black describes his experiences and knowledge of various religious entities (Jonestown, Oral Roberts, Mormons, the Amish, televangelists), reflects on religions’ various effects, and provides personal anecdotes to give the reader a feel for Black’s own religious beliefs. As far as I could figure, he believes in a god, believes in ghosts, believes some people are gifted with psychic abilities, and is easily impressed by astrological coincidences. He mentions experiences he’s had -- seeing things while visiting the Farm, seeing things while being touched by a guru, etc. A large part of one chapter comes from his “Red, White, and Screwed” show; a clip of which you can see here.

Next I read David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Sedaris is a comedian, one I became familiar with thanks to NPR. He often appears on the show “This American Life”, and when he read from Me Talk Pretty One Day, I was so amused that I had to go find the book. I ended up reading all of his humor books, and I looked forward to this new one with great anticipation. It was not disappointing. Sedaris’ particular style of humor is as ever delightful. If you want to listen to Sedaris reading from one of his books -- and thus get an idea for what is included -- click here for one of my favorite readings. That’s a short version: you can watch the longer version here.

Also this week I read Surviving Auschwitz, which is the story of an Italian man named Primo Levi who was captured by fascists while hiding in the countryside of Italy. Owing to his Jewish ancestry, he was sent to Auschwitz. Because he was captured in 1944, he was only forced to spend a year in the work-camp. While the SS had suspended mass killings by this point -- wanting to maintain as much of a work force as possible to help with the war effort -- death was still common. Levi describes the work details, the infirmary, the rituals of life in the camp. It’s an interesting read.

To finish the week’s reading off, I read Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson. The book is a large biography of Sagan, host of Cosmos and an astronomer associated with the Mariner and Voyager projects. He’s one of my favorite people to learn from, and as such I enjoyed this biography very much. The book does not shy away from Sagan’s failings, which I appreciate. Reading the book is a bit like reading about science, skepticism, and psuedo-science from the 1950s to the 1960s. Here are a few Sagan-related links:

1. Celebrating Sagan
2. "Pale Blue Dot"; Sagan reading from Pale Blue Dot. Beautiful video.
3. "Wonder and Skepticism", parts 1 and 2. His last lecture.
4. Ted Turner interviews Carl Sagan, part 1. You can find the rest from there.
   

Pick of the Week: When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris

Next Week:

• The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampusa. This book is another book for school.
• Banquets of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov. Given how much I enjoyed the first two books in the Widowers series, I’m sure I’ll enjoy this one.
• The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, Bill Zehme. I read this book in early 2005 and am anticipating a good re-read.
• Sinatra: the Artist and the Man, John Lahr

This Week at the Library (6/11)

It's been a couple of weeks since the last time I updated, and most of my reading has been focused around school. I'm taking three courses that require readings to prepare for each lecture, and to supplement that (and prepare myself more for tests) I read from other books. For German History, for instance, I'm reading through The Complete Idiot's Guide to Nazi Germany, which is immensely helpful. For Geography, we had to skip a lecture on Israel, so I've been reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict. (I own a lot of the The Complete Idiot's Guide and ...for Dummies books: they're wonderful in providing a general overview of a given subject.)

Last week, I picked up Great Tales from English History 2 because it had a chapter on Joan of Arc, who is the subject of one of my term papers. The chapter on her was actually quite short, but I found the other stories in the book -- short chapters about Azincourt, Oliver Cromwell, the feud between Elizabeth and Mary, the many wives of Henry VIII -- to be immensely interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed it very much, and it became my breakfast reading for the week.

In more conventional reading, however, I have also read two books for my German History class. In addition to the "textbook" -- a compilation of letters, memos, and such from various German political leaders, our class also had to buy Mephisto by Klauss Mann and Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany by Marion Kaplan.

We read and discussed Mephisto about a week and a half ago. The book concerns the career of a German actor named Hendrik Hofgen. All of the characters in the story with the exception of bigger names (Hitler and Goering) are based on actual people in real life, which is a little interesting.

Hendrik starts out as an actor in Hamburg -- a very talented and a very career-driven one. He's nominally involved with the far left, politically. His friends include Communists and Socialists. The book is set in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, a turbulent time for Germany. Germany had recovered from the hyperinflatation of the early 1920s and had begun to prosper -- only to have all that recovery taken away by the Great Depression.

Hendrik's determination to become a famous actor makes him immensely successful in Hamburg. He realizes, though, that to get to where he needs to be, he needs to make a name for himself in Berlin. He eventually moves to Berlin and uses friendships to advance his name. While filming in Spain, the Nazis come to power in 1933 -- disaster for a socialist like Hendrik, since the Nazis despised the left.

Rather than giving into despair over the loss of his life in Weimar Germany -- the deportation of his friends, the persecution for his political ideas -- Hendrik sells himself out. He relies on his friendship to the Minister of Propaganda's wife to insert himself into the new ruling circles. Hendrik is completely at home with the Nazi elite, given how much of their platform they began to ignore once they were actually in power. The Nazi ranks were full of political opportunists like Hendrik. Hendrik's performance as Mephistoles in the play Faust is what really makes Hendrik's name known. Mephistoles is one of the "Devil's" familars. Mephistoles convinces Faust to sell his soul for gain, but that's all I know.

Eventually, Hendrik has to face his inner demons -- guilt at advancing while his friends live as exiles and deteriorate in concentration camps. The book ends as he realized that like Faust, he has sold his soul to the "devil". For a "mandatory" read, I found the book to be quite enjoyable.

The third book, one which I finished over this past weekend, is Between Dignity and Despair. In high school I developed a morbid interest in the Holocaust. The very idea of shipping people off in cattle cars and exterminating them in gas chambers was (and is) so surreal that I was driven to read about it, in hopes of making sense of it.

Learning the German language and studying German history has made me somewhat sympathetic toward Germany, but this book angered me and made me sick. The author portrays the persecution against the Jews as increasing in stages. At first, Nazi rule is merely inconvienent: there are stores that won't sell to Jews, and some Jewish men have to find other places to work. As the years drag on, Germany becomes more and more Nazified. The German people are exposed to more and more propaganda against the Jews and become absolutely hateful toward them.

I learned some things that I didn't know -- for instance, that there were tremendous barriers against Jewish people emigrating from Germany. You would think that the Nazis would make it as easy as possible to get their "undesirables" out of Germany, but that wasn't the case. Jewish bank accounts were frozen and massive taxes levied against Jews trying to leave Germany for places like Japan . Eventually, Jewish emigration was completely banned.

It seems that the Nazis didn't want to get the Jews out of Germany: they wanted to exterminate them.

Pick of the Week: Great Tales from English History 2

My reading for the next week will be dominated by readings for my research papers. I'm going to be writing about two pet subjects -- Joan of Arc and the Luftwaffe -- for my Medieval European and German history classes, respectively. I went to the libraries (today -- 8/11) and checked out a number of books regarding my two papers. One was completely unrelated -- Great Tales from English History. I'm quite looking forward to it.

Some of the books I'll be perusing in the weeks to come:
- World War II in the Sky
- The Air War 1939-1945
- The Influence of Air Power upon History
- Hitler's Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War
- To Command the Sky
- The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe
- The Trial of Joan of Arc
- Joan of Arc: Her Story
- Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman

I think I have one more book about Joan, but I can't remember the title at the moment. For reasons that escape me, I have had a strong interest in the story of Jeanne d'Arc since middle school. (Well, one of the reasons doesn't escape me.) I suppose it's because I'm a Francophile, but Joan fascinates me even though I'm a cynic about religion and she was purportedly being talked to by dead Catholics.

I have harbored a fondness for propeller-driven airplanes since high school. I don't know where or when (the clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore, the smile you are smiling, you were smiling then...), but I developed a strong interest in the second world war and especially the air war. In ninth or tenth grade, I picked up a book called The Airman's War by Albert Marrin, and I loved it. Marrin is a fanstatic writer in my opinion. In tenth grade English, we were told to write a paper on anything that interested us.

I wrote twenty-two pages on the air war. It was an awful paper, really -- a glut of information that wasn't really focused -- and I only receved a C. I was going to do my German History paper on Nazi building projects during WW2, but I was unable to find a lot of information on that other than Albert Speer's memoirs. I decided to go with a pet subject. I hope to do the subject justice with this paper.