The Nazis: A Warning from History is a well-isllustrated book that grew out of a BBC documenary project. The
author interviewed
more than fifty survivors of World War II. The interviewees included concentration camp survivors, former military officers, and civilians from Germany and many of the European countries affected by Hitler's imperial aspirations.The book begins with an analysis of Hitler's early career, stressing that factors other than Hitler's personality and character were responsible for bringing him to power. The
author asserts that Hitler created his plan for Germany by a unique interpretation of Charles Darwin's ideas; wrote a rough plan in Mein Kampf; and influenced his followers to "work toward the fuhrer," which resulted in numerous ad hoc plans, such as the child euthanasia policy of Philipp Bouhler, the whole of which, taken together, became the Holocaust. The author posits the complicity of the German people, without whom, the Nazis could not have achieved the state of terror it evolved to keep itself and its plans in motion. The advent of World War II is seen as a blunder on Hitler's part, inasmuch as he had desired an alliance with Great Britain and war with Russia. In a chapter entitled "The Wild East," Rees asserts that once Nazi forces were out of sight of their countryman, the terror imposed on them by Nazi propaganda and commanders who were willing to look the other way allowed the birth of the worst
atrocities of the war. Beginning in Poland and moving eastward into Russian territories, mass deportations and resettlements based on ethnicity became the order of the day, eventually developing into the infamous death camps at Treblinka, Auschwitz, Belzec, and others. Rees does not see the Holocaust as the inevitable outgrowth of Nazi ideology and policy, however. As the atrocities of the war grew, eventually word of them reached members of the upper echelons of the Nazi Party, and two men, Hans von Herwarth and Count von Stauffenberg, hatched an unsuccessful plan to assassinate Hitler, and end the Third Reich. The would-be assassins were hindered by the oath of loyalty every German soldier had taken to Hitler personally. The need to assassinate Hitler is seen as inevitable, since Hitler had systematically dismantled every check on his power and removed every vestige of democratic rule in Germany from his appointment as chancellor in 1932. The book ends with an account of the war's end through the military defeat of the German forces and Hitler's suicide, and how, during the last days of the war, the Germans turned against each other, veiwed as an outgrowth of the atrocities in the East.