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Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe Paperback – Illustrated, August 25, 2009

by Mark Mazower (Author)

4.6 190 ratings

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Draw ing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research, Hitler?s Empire sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion?and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain. Yet the Nazis? lack of political sophistication left them unequal to the task of ruling what their armies had conquered, despite a shocking level of cooperation from the overwhelmed countries. A work as authoritative as it is unique, Hitler?s Empire is a surprising?and controversial? new appraisal of the Third Reich?s rise and ultimate fall.

Print length

784 pages
Language

English
Publication date

August 25, 2009
Dimensions

8.43 x 5.51 x 1.56 inches
ISBN-10

014311610X
ISBN-13

978-0143116103
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Editorial Reviews

Review

" Compelling . . . Mazower offers incisive details and insights that make "Hitler's Empire" a fascinating read."
-"The Washington Post"

"Drawing on an enormous amount of research, yet always writing clearly and well, Mr. Mazower takes the reader on a guided tour through every corner of the Nazis' domains."
-"The New York Sun"

About the Author

Mark Mazower is the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of Hitler’s Empire and The Balkans: A Short History, winner of the Wolfson Prize for History, among other books. He lives in New York City.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; Reprint edition (August 25, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 784 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014311610X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143116103
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.98 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.43 x 5.51 x 1.56 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #831,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,594 in Jewish Holocaust History
- #2,062 in German History (Books)
- #7,644 in World War II History (Books)

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4.6 190 ratings

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Bacchus

Dense, Scholarly, Insightful Third Reich History

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2018

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This is not a book to read in one night. The amount of research that went into it was clearly monumental, and not a word was spared in this treatise on how the Nazi empire was administered and why. The politics of rival personalities jostling for Hitler's stamp of approval, the mammoth mistakes that undermined their arrogant schemes, the poor planning and blown opportunities are revealed in extraordinary detail.

It also delves deeply into the practical and economic interactions of the Nazis with their occupied territories, putting into fresh perspective the various resistance movements, puppet states, cooperative nations and complicit organizations - a thorough examination of the Nazi world's supporting players.

The breadth of quoted sources reflects the exhaustive amount of research. Dense and scholarly, it's not a casual read by any measure, but contains a wealth of informative revelations for history buffs and WW2 completists. After reading hundreds of pages I'm still only partway through it but already I've learned a ton of interesting facts that I hadn't found anywhere else, things that put a lot of what I did know into proper perspective.

6 people found this helpful

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Ir C. Kramer

Our narrow escape

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2009

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A really astonishing book. Before reading this I never realized how near Nazi Germany was to victory.
The main reasons this did not happen were the sheer arrogance, lack of patience and incompetence in planning of the regime and the extreme amount of in-fighting.
Fortunately these were exactly the main propoerties of Nazism.

One person found this helpful

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Arkansaw Traveler

Difficult, But Important Work With Implications For Today

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2009

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This work is about the short-lived empire that Hitler built, its guiding principles and how it was governed. As such, this is a study of governance, not military operations or even politics at the highest level, but nonetheless, this study is critical to understanding World War II and why Hitler failed in achieving his war aims. His policies decreed that a European Empire not only be constructed under German hegemony, but that four classes of citizens would be present: the German overlords; the "almost-Germans" (Danes, Norwegians, English, Dutch, Swedes, Finns and some Belgians; useful populations (French, Italians, Hungarians, etc.; and temporary slave or serf labor (Slavs and others.)

The author points out that this was not the first time a state attempted to create a Pan-European empire -- normally Napoleon is considered the first creator of a world (European -- unusally considered synomous with "world" by Europeans) order, but actually one can go further back to Louis XIV and the efforts by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages to create a secular confederation subject to Papal control and direction. Assuming that Hitler's empire was the second, we are now experiencing a third rising of a world order centered again in Europe and staffed and controlled by many of the same individuals and their adherents who were present during Hitler's times. One need only look at the Bilderbergs formed by Nazi sympathizer Prince Bernhard, and the development of the EU by Bilderberg members supplemented by other groups such as the Trilateral Commission and the US Council for Foreign Relations to see this at work. There are differences with respect to what roles the various populations will fulfill, but the desire for world (European) domination controlled by a powerful unelected elite is present in the current movement like it was during Hitler's regime.

In this respect, author Mazower's work is extremely instructive, both for showing what policies failed under Hitler (sometimes disasterously) and what worked. Fast-forwarding to the present day, the slave labor is present in 20 million Muslim workers in Europe (sort of), the governing elite is present in the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, and even "progressive" concepts like gun control and euthansia that Hitler introduced are alive and well in European states through gun control/confiscation laws and socialized health systems that ration health care to productive citizens first. Unfortunately, the US seems to be following Europe's lead into this same world order, suppressing individual liberty in favor of ever-intrusive government. If one changes the party from "National-Socialist" to Supra-National-Socialist" (SNAZI) it would be difficult to tell the difference between then and now other than in the racial policy against the Jews which has now abated in Europe (due in a large measure to the small numbers of remaining Jews), and in the citizenship classes by nationality instead of economic status.

The author points out that had Hitler's policy in the Soviet Union been to promote Ukrainian, Belorussian, and ethnic republics (even possibly a Russian non-communist republic), Operation Barbarossa might have been successful. There would have been time to suppress the Slavic populations later after the Soviet Union had been defeated, but Hitler opted for ideological purity rather than a pragmatic strategy. Gee, rather sounds like Obama today where he is being driven by ideology rather than pragmatism.

I could belabor many of these points, but suffice it to say the author does an excellent job of presenting Hitler's policies and actual implementations at length. In the long run they failed as populations were willing to support anyone fighting against the new and ultimate threat to liberty, even if they didn't see their struggle in those terms. In the very short run, harsh utilization of subject populations materially strengthened the war-making ability of the German Wehrmacht, and since Hitler expected a short war, that was what he wanted for the duration.

Today we understand that a longer time horizon is necessary. Our elite understands that it is only necessary to create crises of sufficient magnitude, economic, financial or the threat of war, to panic a people and cause them to give up their liberties. Europe had been weakened by economic hard times in the thirties, then the threat of war weakens individual resolve still further. By the time Hitler attacked, the West no longer could manifest a will to resist. Only England, secure behind its moat, found the time to gather itself together and resist. But even then, it took the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union to defeat another totalitarian regime (Hitler's), and it most likely would have happened without the participation of the US. So what totalitarian regime will save us from the threat of war with Islam? Why, the new world order arising out of the EU, of course.

Read and comprehend. This is an important work.

4 people found this helpful

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Theodore A. Rushton

The ultimate cost of fear and terror

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2008

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Aztecs.

Aztecs ruled a vast empire in the heart of Mexico by the fear imposed by cutting the living hearts from their victims, then rolling the bodies down the long blood-spattered steps of their pyramids. The Nazi terror didn't use pyramids; but, they made death a public and frequent spectacle. Both used pure terror without morals, mercy or meaning; both were crushed when their victims rebelled.

Aztecs used terror to worship their gods; Nazis used terror to offset their well-deserved inferiority complex produced by dfefeat in World War I. Endless terror is the cruelty used to crush slave revolts.

In defeating the Aztecs, Native Americans became victims of the Spanish who reduced the population by 90 percent within a century. The Spanish balanced the cost of feeding slaves against the price of new slaves; Nazis used similar accounting in their "labour" camps, and might have inflicted a similar fate on Eastern Europe had they been given a century to rule.

In both cases, terror was imposed by brutal armies who had utter contempt for the defeated. For the Nazis, killing was proof of the triumph of the will; for Aztecs, it was a pious religious rite. In early Newfoundland, extermination of the Beothuk people was "better sport" than killing deer. In every case, elimination of "trash" people was considered a virtue.

As John Lukacs writes in his superb 'Five Days in London: May 1940', "Churchill understood something that not many people understand even now. The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler."

Mazower explains the fate of mankind had Churchill failed. Sadly, the "right to kill" is often used by the Hitler's of the world who assume they have moral superiority over the lives and ethics of others. Thus, a "just" society executes murderers and other evildoers. "Exceptional" societies claim a right to impose their ideologies and morals at the point of a gun. Al Qaeda claims holy piety and thus a moral right to kill "unbelievers".

This book describes the impact of soldiers who wore 'Gott mit uns' on their belt buckles but felt no remose at wholesale slaughters of those their leaders deemed "trash". They were supported by millions of civilians, at least until they began to lose the war; and even now, by Americans such as Patrick Buchanan in his latest book.

Is it not a Christian ethic -- and a fundamental moral value of all religions -- to show mercy to the weak, the poor, the halt and the lame? Sadly, some want to kick the Underdogs out to make room for the "exceptional" superiors.

Who are the Underdogs? Take a look at 'The Underdogs' by Mariano Azuela, a reprinted classic from 1915 which vividly describes the wrath of those who finally rebel against brutal overlords.

Mazower describes a society based on fear and terror, a policy used for thousands of years though it has never achieved peace, progress, prosperity or innovation. In contrast to the ideology of terror, perhaps the only surprise is the relative mercy shown to the defeated Nazis.

Somehow, leaders must learn that force, repression, fear and terror doesn't work. Somehow, as weapons, authority, religion and globalisation become more pervasive and deadly, people must learn the merits of decency. As Mexican President Benito Juarez once said, "Peace is respect for the rights of others." Yet even he refused clemency to his defeated enemy, the Emperor Maximilian.

Will we ever learn?

8 people found this helpful

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Kbar11

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on May 28, 2018

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perfect for son's university paper

Jose_Miguel

A nice recollection of Europe under the Nazi regime.

Reviewed in Spain on July 24, 2017

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Mark Mazower tells the story of incompetence of the Nazi rule across Europe. After each military campaign, at the beginning quite successful, the administration of the conquered land was disastrous. Economically as well as logistically. Very clear book easy to read.

One person found this helpful

Gurjar Darbar

Must for those who are interested in Nazi Germany

Reviewed in India on October 7, 2013

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A very succinct yet brilliantly researched account of Nazi Germany/ It describes well how the Nazis ruled over conquered territories. Many details not written elsewhere are here in this book. Mazower is a brilliant historian. I will definitely read his other books.
Balbhadra Rana

schlimmerdurst

Fassungslos...

Reviewed in Germany on May 21, 2010

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Ich lasse mich nur selten durch ein Buch aus der Fassung bringen, aber Mark Mazower hat das mit seinem Werk geschafft. Das Panorama, das er in wunderbar lesbarer Prosa vor dem Leser ausbreitet, zeigt das Dritte Reich in seiner ganzen Unfähigkeit: Beginnend bei einer Darstellung der völligen Planlosigkeit des faschistischen Regimes, welche durch den Sturm und Drang zunächst nicht sehr auffiel bis hin zum ständigen aktiven Wunsch, die eroberten Gebiete gegen sich aufzubringen. Dabei geht der Autor sehr detailliert vor und legt in einer schonungslosen Klarheit die Eitelkeiten und Inkompetenz eines Ribbentrops und Görings ebenso offen wie die Machtgeilheit eines Himmler oder den fast religiösen Rassenfanatismus eines Goebbels und Heydrich. Wenn aus bestimmten Kreisen immer wieder die Effizienz des Dritten Reichs gerühmt wird, so zeigt sich während der Lektüre hier ein völlig anderes Bild: Effizienz gab es im Dritten Reich ausschließlich bei der Vernichtung von Menschen (und sogar dabei gab es Probleme). Mazowers These, dass Deutschland ein Kolonialreich in Europa errichten wollte, und die eroberten Gebiete entsprechend behandelte, halte ich anhand der präsentierten Tatsachen für durchaus nachvollziehbar.

Mazowers Portraits der Hauptpersonen Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich und diverser weiterer wichtiger Personen wie Frank, Stuckart, Ribbentrop, Speer und Jeckeln, aber auch ausländischer Führungspersonen wie Mussolini, Globocnik und Antonescu, die ihren Teil in der Geschichte hatten, sind in einer beeindruckenden Klarheit erschreckende Beispiele für den globalen Wahn, der in den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren des 20.Jh. die Welt erfasst hatte, jedwede humanistische Zügel zeriss und dem Wolf im Menschen die Kontrolle über alles gab. Es waren eben nicht nur Hitler und Himmler, sondern Bereitwillige auf allen Ebenen, die erst ermöglichten, Europa in den Untergang zu stürzen.
Die erschreckende Wahrheit, dass die Welt ein Deutsch-Europa durchaus sogar akzeptiert hätte, wenn die Nazis nicht so übermäßig gierig und unkooperativ gewesen wären, bietet genügend Stoff, einmal darüber nachzudenken, wie die Welt dann heute aussähe. Darüberhinaus habe ich persönlich sehr viel über deutsche Geschichte gelernt und sehe nun vieles aus einer informierteren Position.

Das Paperback ist typische Penguin-Qualität mit dünnem Papier. Es enthält einige Fotoseiten, die allerdings meiner Meinung nach zu unspezifisch sind und in dieser Form dem Text keinen Mehrwert liefern. Die 600 Seiten Text werden durch weitere 100 Seiten Endnoten ergänzt.

Ein sehr dicht geschriebenes Buch, das dem Leser einiges abfordert, da jede einzelne Seite vor Informationen fast platzt; der lockere aber nüchterne Schreibstil Mazowers, der sowohl die Absurditäten des Regimes als auch die Schrecken emotionslos kommentiert, hilft dem Leser aber sehr. Akribisch recherchiert, brilliant formuliert: Äußerst empfehlenswert.

12 people found this helpful

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Leif Asbjørnsen

Evil Empire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2009

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It is easy to be shocked and shrink back in horror when reading about the atrocities committed by the Nazis and their allies in Eastern Europe during WW2. However, Mazover writes about this sinister subject in a descriptive and readable way that makes the book bearable to read for ordinary readers like me. This does not mean that he writes without empathy for the victims, but since most of us now know about Nazi attitudes and their treatment of Slavs, Gypsies and Jews - and Mazover does not underestimate his reader - he leaves the moral indignation to us by painstakingly accounting for what happened. Thus, if you are not completely morally perverted the book cannot but make an impact. For one like me who is no specialist on the subject, but who grew up in occupied territory during the war, this book is both informative and revealing as to how lightly we were treated here in Norway compared with for instance Poland. For all who are interested in this dark chapter of European history: This is the book.

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