1938: Hitler's Gamble [Hardcover]

This book is not your usual historical treatise but more of an historical memoir. It is a memoir of the year 1938 in Central Europe. Unlike a good history which is an accounting of what happened during a specific time, a memoir is much more opinionated (and brother, MacDonogh has enough for two books). In this case we get to see the 'other' side of history, the parts that are usually left out of the "history books". The reporting on Hitler's moods, many taken from the diaries of his 'inner circle' give a better idea of not only what Hitler was thinking but how he came to his opinions. After the Anschluss he felt that he was infallible (move over Pope Pius XI) and that the 'old line' Generals were a bunch of 'old woman'.

One of the more interesting sidelights of the book is the feuds between Goring and Ribbentrop and Himmler and Goebels. The Propaganda Minister was constantly in hot water for cheating on his wife, the Fuhrer turns out to be quite the prude. On the other hand we have Goring trying to put into his Four Year Plan to gear up the Third Reich for war production, while Hitler is dreaming of rebuilding Berlin and Linz. Goring goes into eclipse over the 'war' for the Sudetenland. Goring knows that the army is not ready but Ribbentrop is there egging on the Fuhrer. When the British cave in to his 'demands', Goring and the Generals are left with egg on their faces.

The marginalization of first the German and then Austrian Jews, while everyone in the world turns their backs is the most powerful image of the book. Little by little, week by week, Jews lose more and more civil rights, the right to ownership of businesses, buildings, livelihoods, while they are expected to pay their way out of the Greater Reich and into other countries. MacDonogh describes the brutality of the first Concentration Camps (Dachau and Buchenwald) without making excuses for those who built them or ran them. His information is taken from the testimony of former inmates (at this time people were still being released after serving their time).

MacDonogh gives credit to those who tried to help Jews get out of Austria and Germany as well as holding to the light those miscreants who persecuted and robbed Jews seeking to emigrates. He does a yeoman's job of covering the Protestant and Catholic Churches without any 'Mia Culpas' and/or excuses. He also points out who stayed away out of fear and who out of complacence. His coverage of the reaction to "Kristallnacht" is worth the price of the book alone. That the Oster Conspiracy was ready to overthrow Hitler should the British and French stand up to him over Czechoslovakia, make Neville Chamberlain the man who truly 'caused' World War Two.

This is a well done book with being a polemic on either side of the issue. The one thing missing is some maps that would show the geographic areas he was talking about since many of us are not geography majors. Besides that, pretty good.

Zeev Wolfe

Although not able to match the classic 1938 book - On Borrowed Time - this is nevertheless a book worth reading. It has revelations concerning the pecking order in Hitler's inner ' court' as well as statistics to make your head swim. The author has certainly done his research and has family reasons for wanting to explore this important year. However, it lacks something in its narrative drive: I never felt compelled to turn the page, although many of its pages were rewarding with the insight and information they contained.
I thought I knew all about this momentous year but I was wrong; there was a lot of new material which made me slightly alter my perspective on the period. Whereas
other books I have read covering this period have had Chamberlain as the central character, this one has Hitler's acolytes and the persecuted Jews as its main subjects,banishing Chamberlain to the periphery. Sometimes whilst reading some detailed passages, I felt I was being bludgeoned with a blunt instrument. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to genuine students of this most fateful of years in European history.

I have read hundreds of books on the period over 40 years and there is nothing at all new in this one. That 1938 was a gamble for Hitler in some way that any scholar of the period may not have already surmised, is simply not revealed. The book merely takes one year and explains what dozens of authors have in one way or another already covered.

Perhaps it's fair to say that it is slightly novel to look at 1938 from a single focus, but don't expect to read anything new.

It is well written and easy to get through, form that point if view it makes a good read.