The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (239 page)

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of
Foreign Affairs
, took a personal interest in seeing me through this book, as did Walter H. Mallory, then executive director of the Council on Foreign Relations. To the Council, to Frank Altschul and to the Overbrook Foundation I am grateful for a generous grant which enabled me to devote all of my time to this book during its final year of preparation. I must also thank the staff of the Council’s excellent library, on whose members I made many wearisome demands. The staff of the New York Society Library also experienced this and, despite it, proved most patient and understanding.

Lewis Galantière and Herbert Kriedman were good enough to read most of the manuscript and to offer much valuable criticism. Colonel Truman Smith, who was a U.S. military attaché in Berlin when Adolf Hitler first began his political career in the early Twenties and later after he came to power, put at
my disposal some of his notebooks and reports, which shed light on the beginnings of National Socialism and on certain aspects of it later. Sam Harris, a member of the U.S. prosecution staff at Nuremberg and now an attorney in New York, made available the
TMWC
Nuremberg volumes and much additional unpublished material. General Franz Halder, Chief of the German Army General Staff during the first three years of the war, was most generous in answering my inquiries and in pointing the way to German sources. I have mentioned elsewhere the value to me of his unpublished diary, a copy of which I kept at my side during the writing of a large part of this book. George Kennan, who was serving in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin at the beginning of the war, has refreshed my memory on certain points of historical interest. Several old friends and colleagues from my days in Europe, John Gunther, M. W. Fodor, Kay Boyle, Sigrid Schultz, Dorothy Thompson, Whit Burnett and Newell Rogers, discussed various aspects of this work with me—to my profit. And Paul R. Reynolds, my literary agent, provided encouragement when it was most needed.

Finally I owe a great debt to my wife, whose knowledge of foreign languages, background in Europe and experience in Germany and Austria were of great help in my research, writing and checking. Our two daughters, Inga and Linda, on vacation from college, aided in a dozen necessary chores.

To all these and to others who have helped in one way or another, I express my gratitude. The responsibility for the book’s shortcomings and errors is, of course, exclusively my own.

This book is based principally on the captured German documents, the interrogations and testimony of German military officers and civilian officials, the diaries and memoirs which some of them have left, and on my own experience in the Third Reich.

Millions of words from the German archives have been published in various series of volumes, and millions more have been collected or microfilmed and deposited in libraries—in this country chiefly the Library of Congress and the Hoover Library at Stanford University—and in the National Archives at Washington. In addition, the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, at Washington is in possession of a vast collection of German military records.

Of the published volumes of documents the most useful for my purposes have been three series. The first is
Documents on German Foreign Policy
, Series D, comprising a large selection in English translation of the papers of the German Foreign Office from 1937 to the summer of 1940. Through the courtesy of the State Department I have been given access to a number of additional German Foreign Office papers, not yet translated or published, which deal primarily with Germany’s declaration of war on the United States.

Two series of published documents dealing with the main Nuremberg trial have been invaluable in taking one behind the scenes in the Third Reich. The first is the forty-two-volume
Trial of the Major War Criminals
, of which the first twenty-three volumes contain the text of the testimony at the trial and the remainder the text of the documents accepted in evidence, which are published in their original language, mostly German. Additional documents, interrogations and affidavits collected for that trial and translated rather hurriedly into English are published in the ten-volume series
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression.
Unfortunately, the extremely valuable testimony given before the commissioners of the International Military Tribunal is mostly omitted from the latter series and is available only in mimeographed form on deposit with a few leading libraries.

There were twelve subsequent trials at Nuremberg, conducted by United States military tribunals, but the fifteen bulky published volumes of testimony and documents presented at these trials, titled
Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals
, contain less than one tenth of the material. However, the rest may be found in mimeograph or photostats in some libraries. Summaries of other trials which shed much light on the Third Reich may be found in
Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals
, published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office in London, 1947–49.

Of the unpublished German documents other than the rich collections in the Hoover Library, the Library of Congress and the National Archives—which contain, among other things, the Himmler files and a number of Hitler’s private papers—one of the most valuable finds has been that of the so-called “Alexandria Papers,” a good proportion of which have now been microfilmed and
deposited at the National Archives. Information about a number of other captured papers will be found in the notes. Among the unpublished German material, incidentally, is General Halder’s diary—seven volumes of typescript with annotations added by the General after the war to clarify certain passages—which I found to be one of the most valuable records of the Third Reich.

Some of the books which have been helpful to me are listed below. They are of three types: first, the memoirs and diaries of some of the leading figures in this narrative; second, books based on the new documentary material, such as those of John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Alan Bullock, H. R. Trevor-Roper and Gerald Reitlinger in England, of Telford Taylor in America, and of Eberhard Zeller, Gerhard Ritter, Rudolf Pechel and Walter Goerlitz in Germany; and third, books which provide background.

A comprehensive bibliography of works on the Third Reich has been published in Munich as a special number of the
Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte
under the auspices of the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte. The catalogues of the Wiener Library in London also contain excellent bibliographies.

Der Hitler Prozess.
Munich: Deutscher Volksverlag, 1924. (The record of the court proceedings of Hitler’s trial in Munich.)

Documents and Materials relating to the Eve of the Second World War, 1937–39.
2 vols. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1948.

Documents concerning German–Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany.
London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1939. (The
British Blue Book.
)

Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39.
London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1947-. (Referred to in the notes as
DBrFP.
)

Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–45.
Series D, 1937–45. 10 vols, (as of 1957). Washington: U.S. Department of State. (Referred to as
DGFP.
)

Dokumente der deutschen Politik, 1933–40.
Berlin, 1935–43.

Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs
(mimeographed). London: British Admiralty, 1947. (Referred to as
FCNA.
)

Hitler e Mussolini—Lettere e documenti.
Milan: Rizzoli, 1946.
I Documenti diplomatica italiani.
Ottavo series, 1935–39. Rome: Libreria della Stato, 1952–53. (Referred to as
DDI.
)

Le Livre Jaune Français. Documents diplomatiques, 1938–39.
Paris: Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. (The
French Yellow Book.
)

Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression.
10 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946. (Referred to as
NCA.
)

Nazi–Soviet Relations, 1939–41. Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office.
Washington: U.S. Department of State, 1948. (Referred to as
NSR.
)

Official Documents concerning Polish–German and Polish—Soviet Relations, 1933–39.
London, 1939. (The
Polish White Book.
)

Pearl Harbor Attack.
Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation
of the Pearl Harbor Attack. 39 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.

Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy
. 3 vols. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951–53.

Spanish Government and the Axis, The.
Washington: U.S. State Department, 1946. (From the German Foreign Office papers.)

Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal.
42 vols. Published at Nuremberg. (Referred to as
TMWC.
)

Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
15 vols. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951–52. (Referred to as
TWC.
)

Adolf Hitlers Reden.
Munich, 1934.

B
AYNES
, N
ORMAN
H., ed.:
The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939.
2 vols. New York, 1942.

P
RANGE
, G
ORDON
W., ed.:
Hitler’s Words.
Washington, 1944.

R
OUSSY DE
S
ALES
, C
OUNT
R
AOUL DE
, ed.:
My New Order.
New York, 1941. (The speeches of Hitler, 1922–41.)

A
BSHAGEN
, K. H.:
Canaris.
Stuttgart, 1949.

A
MBRUSTER
, H
OWARD
W
ATSON:
Treason’s Peace.
New York, 1947.

A
NDERS
, W
LADYSLAW:
Hitler’s Defeat in Russia.
Chicago, 1953.

A
NONYMOUS:
De Weimar au Chaos—Journal politique d’un Général de la Reichswehr.
Paris, 1934.

A
RMSTRONG
, H
AMILTON FISH:
Hitler’s Reich.
New York, 1933.

A
SSMANN
, K
URT:
Deutsche Schicksalsjahre.
Wiesbaden, 1950.

B
ADOGLIO
, M
ARSHAL
P
IETRO
:
Italy in the Second World War.
London, 1948.

B
ARRACLOUGH
, S.:
The Origins of Modern Germany.
Oxford, 1946.

B
ARTZ
, K
ARL:
Als der Himmel brannte.
Hanover, 1955.

B
AUMONT
, F
RIED AND
V
ERMEIL
, eds.:
The Third Reich.
New York, 1955.

B
AYLE
, F
RANÇOIS:
Croix gammée ou caducée.
Freiburg, 1950. (A documented account of the Nazi medical experiments.)

B
ELGIAN
M
INISTRY OF
F
OREIGN
A
FFAIRS
:
Belgium: The Official Account of What Happened, 1939–1940.
New York, 1941.

B
ENEŠ
, E
DUARD:
Memoirs of Dr. Eduard Beneŝ. From Munich to New War and New Victory.
London, 1954.

B
ÉNOIST
-M
ÉCHIN
, J
ACQUES:
Histoire de l’Armée allemande depuis l’Armistice.
Paris, 1936–38.

B
ERNADOTTE
, F
OLKE:
The Curtain Falls.
New York, 1945.

B
EST
, C
APTAIN
S. P
AYNE:
The Venlo Incident.
London, 1950.

Bewegung, Staat und Volk in ihren Organisationen.
Berlin, 1934,

B
LUMENTRITT
. G
UENTHER:
Von Rundstedt.
London, 1952.

B
OLDT
, G
ERHARD:
In the Shelter with Hitler.
London, 1948.

B
ONNET
, G
EORGES:
Fin d’une Europe.
Geneva, 1948.

B
OOTHBY
, R
OBERT:
I
Fight to Live.
London, 1947.

B
ORMANN
, M
ARTIN:
The Bormann Letters: the Private Correspondence between Martin Bormann and his Wife, from Jan. 1943 to April 1945.
London, 1954.

B
RADLEY
, G
ENERAL
O
MAR
N.:
A Soldier’s Story.
New York, 1951.

B
RADY
, R
OBERT K.:
The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism.
London, 1937.

B
RYANS
, J. L
ONSDALE:
Blind Victory.
London, 1951.

B
RYANT
, S
IR
A
RTHUR:
The Turn of the Tide—A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff.
New York, 1957.

B
ULLOCK
, A
LAN:
Hitler—A Study in Tyranny.
New York, 1952.

B
UTCHER
, H
ARRY
C:
My Three Years with Eisenhower.
New York, 1946.

C
ARR
, E
DWARD
H
ALLETT:
German–Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939.
Baltimore, 1951.

—,
The Soviet Impact on the Western World
. New York, 1947.