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Articles
Benjamin Hett on Leadership during the “Gathering Storm”
- By William John Shepherd
- | December 22, 2022
- Category: Books
Benjamin Carter Hett, The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War. New York: Henry Holt, 2020, 416 pages, $29.99, Amazon $18.90, Kindle $12.99
Professor Hett has investigated the challenge of inter-war tyranny in several previous books, including The Death of Democracy (2018) and Burning the Reichstag (2014). His latest entry, which includes German and Russian sources, takes an academic approach to the coming of war in 1939. Hett argues that the traumatic events of the 1930s were more unpredictable than first realized. He also sees an unfortunate parallel to the pressures on democracy today.
The crisis of the 1930s, Hett explains, affected not only Germany and Russia, but Britain, France, and the United States. It was fed by the hugely expanded electorates with high expectations following the human and material costs of the First World War and the economic devastation of the Great Depression.
Chamberlain reconsidered
In Germany, Hitler’s Nazis were enemies of what we now call globalism, the free international exchange of goods and ideas. Hitler personified extreme Social Darwinism (“zoological anarchy”). He wanted a closed-off economy (autarchy) and expansion (“Lebensraum”) in the east. Under the inscrutable Stalin, Soviet Russia was a paranoid police state, subject to repeated bloody purges, hostile both to Germany and the more egalitarian West.
Under Neville Chamberlain, Britain vainly led efforts to preserve the peace and contain the expansionist powers, including fascist Italy and imperial Japan. Hett believes Chamberlain’s desire for peace and penchant for-old fashioned deal making was exploited by Hitler. Nevertheless, Chamberlain was not as myopic as commonly viewed, and wisely began to rearm Britain. His efforts led to both the Spitfire fighter aircraft and radar technology, which enabled Britain to resist Hitler when war came.
Hett heroes
Hett’s unsung heroes are German officers: Helmuth Groscurth, Hans Oster, Werner von Fritsch, Werner von Blomberg, and Johannes Blaskowitz. Together, these Germans unsuccessfully but bravely resisted and tried to remove Hitler.
Contrary to some recent academic arguments, Hett also reaffirms the preeminence of Churchill and Roosevelt in the great campaign. While defending democracy, they confronted totalitarianism, epitomized by the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter, while not succumbing to autocratic measures.
Prior to the war, Churchill’s position as an emerging anti-fascist was hindered by self-inflicted wounds over his resistance to self-government for India and his somewhat romantic support for the controversial King Edward VIII. Yet once he was thrust upon the world he “demonstrated beyond any doubt his profound understanding of world affairs, his fully intact moral compass, and with all this, his powerful claim on leadership” (198). Today, with liberty and free speech under assault across the globe from Russia to America, Hett believes these are timeless lessons the 21st century needs to recognize.
Churchill to the fore
In the final chapter Hett provides a heavy dose of Churchill history. His excellent commentary notes how Gallipoli, the great millstone of failure, was hung round Churchill’s neck, while the Norway campaign, first great failure of the Second World War, was blamed almost entirely upon Chamberlain. Churchill loyally defended the Prime Minister and, in a display of character, tried to take responsibility.
But Chamberlain was wrongheaded and arrogant, Hett writes, while his successor displayed wit and respect for democracy. He strove to erase “every trace of Hitler’s footsteps, every stain of his infected, corroding fingers…”
The Nazi Menace includes a glossary on personalities. Many photographs are from the German Bundesarchiv or Alamy. While there are extensive endnotes and index, he does not include a bibliography, appendices, or glossaries.
The author
William John Shepherd is Maryland-based archivist and historian, and a longtime contributor to The Churchill Project. This is an extended version of a review first posted in Military History.