I told you all I was going to do it and I went and did it. To reward myself for beating Call of Duty 2 on the Veteran level as well as for my undying servitude to the best public interest by continuing to educate and entertain you all for free--I went and bought myself the Easton Press edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer.

This book is very special to me because it was one of the only books my father ever gave me. He gave me his dog-eared paperback copy when I was twelve years old; telling me, "You need to read this and know it so that it won't happen again."

I remember the first time I ever heard about the Nazis and World War II. It was in my 8th Grade AP English class when we read return Return to Auschwitz and had in-depth discussions on the methods and systems set up to murder and dispose of twelve million human beings.

And isn't that what everyone is really interested in when you talk about the Nazis--how they killed all those people? I was too in the beginning, I admit it. In fact, I became passionately interested in what had happened during those twelve simple years which changed the world forever. I even went so far as to read Mein Kampf cover to cover and was more lost when I finished it than before I started. There was too much provincial European politics that my fifteen year old mind couldn't get over on and it still remains on of those books, like Finnegan's Wake and many passages in The Bible, which make more sense when others explain to me what they mean.

But this huge book by Shirer, who was a CBS news correspondent stationed in Berlin until 1940, explained how it all went down like a fiction plot. Shirer became my favorite historian (even though he was a journalist) until I starting reading Paul Johnson. But he and this book still remain on my top five list of the most important books I've ever read.

So, imagine my pleasure at discovering the series available through Easton Press, the finest luxury book manufacturer in the world. These books are bound in the softest leather with hubbed spines (indicative of quality books), distinctive 22k gold embossing, satin ribbon page markers, gilded-edged pages to keep out dust, and the paper is archival quality acid-neutral (meaning your finger oils won't destroy them like normal books). And the pages are thread sewn into the binding and aren't glued like normal books. In other words, these books are like the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty--built to last.

But they're also damn expensive.

This set, in particular, cost me about $300--but consider what it comes with:

1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in two volumes


2. Shirer's Berlin diaries 1927-1945 in two volumes (they actually look like the classic leather journals but the paper is the same quality as the full volumes


3. Shirer's CBS broadcasts from Berlin. This is a magnificent historical artifact since one can weigh these against his diaries to see exactly how brutal the Nazi sensors were on what news was broadcast from Berlin (Shirer left in 1940, just as the regime was getting into its final strides of ruthlessness).

There are so many fascinating items when one considers the history of the National Socialist movement in Germany. Here is one: Did you know that the Furher of Germany was almost named Adolf Shicklegruber? Alois Hitler, Adolf's father, carried the Shicklegruber surname for the first 34 years of his life (he had been born a bastard and this was his mother's family name). But his 84-year old birth father made a decision out of the blue to contact his son and claim him before he died, passing on to him the Hitler name. Adolf was born shortly after that and was also passed the Hitler name. There has been much historical speculation by scholars of Nazi history as to whether Hitler would have ever been able to persuade the citizens of Germany to give him their ultimate allegiance had his name been Shicklegruber instead of the two-syllable moniker that would eventually strike fear in the hearts of countless millions around the world.

There is a great danger of engaging the history of Nazi Germany simply on the terms of the sensationalism of the brutality of the Holocaust, shaking one's head like a simpleton saying, "That’s really too bad but it's got nothing to do with me." The danger lies in completely dismissing the rise of Hitler as the act of a single mad individual because, in the beginning, Hitler was far from mad. Sure, he entertained ridiculous ideas of racial struggle dominating the sociology of man but so did everyone back then (many still do today). And yes, his concept of economics and their relationship with politics was juvenile and half-thought out but in the midst of a world-wide depression even the madmen begin to sound sane.

The inescapable fact is that Hitler read the will of the people better than any politician in history and he played the populace like Jimi Hendrix played Madison Square Garden on New Year's Eve 1969 with the Band of Gypsies (in other words, really well). He had studied every major political party in Germany in the early 1920s and understood very well what they were doing effectively and what they were doing wrong. He analyzed their appeal to the common German and sought out their weaknesses. He then exploited these weaknesses by either incorporating their populist messages into his own rhetoric or sending his SA brownshirt storm troopers in to bust up their meetings and silence their leaders (sometimes outright murdering them).

The Weimar Republic of Germany was one of the most liberal governments ever to exist on this planet. It was one of the first Western governments in which women were given the right to vote and the art that came from that period has become the stuff of legend today (at least the art which wasn't burnt by the Nazis during their many cultural purges). But by its nature, the most liberal government in history was staffed with the biggest pussy-hearted willow men who toppled like a sugar pile in high tide.

The political scene in Europe in the 1920s was a blood bath of corner-brawling prophets professing to have the answer to Europe's crisis. It was a cacophonous symposium of warring factions all aiming at the heads of the former German empire, a civilization which had been brought to its knees by the Allied powers and then made to bow lower than dignity or good graces dictated. But Hitler didn't care about the peanut-headed intellectual elite for he knew that these fools weren't the key to the German volk--it was their heart. And he took aim and brought down the beast to the point where that discordant chorus of calamity was eventually silenced into one ear-splitting theme which became known as the National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP) or "Nazi" for short. How that happened remains a critical historical lynch pin for the entire 20th Century and the War on Terror we currently find ourselves in the midst of fighting.

There is magic in the story of how Europe fell from the low wall and couldn't put itself back together again. And this magic is not the fuzzy rabbit in the hat kind--it's the kind of dark magic that works every time like a mathematical proof and those who don't understand it and avoid it will always bend under its yoke like light rays in a prism.

It's the kind of magic we need to be asking ourselves if we are under the spell of right now. I believe that it is coming from far more angles than the network news would have us believe (i.e. it ain't just coming from the White House).

And one must never underestimate the genetic reverence that all Germans have for raw power wielded mercilessly. I am German-Irish with a touch of Cherokee Indian thrown in for good measure, so I have a temper the length of a cat's penis and if I get my Irish up, watch out because something's getting thrown or someone's getting one upside their head. But I also have a deep respect for the cold use of political power at opportune times to effect specific ends. I understand the implications of when and where it is necessary to leverage pain and misery to accomplish certain ends and I believe that this trait is culturally inherent to all immigrants from Europe and the Middle East. Perhaps I am fooling myself to believe that it isn't something deeply ingrained in the very heart of mankind regardless of ancestral heritage.

Maybe what I'm talking about here is the original sin and maybe those knuckleheads who file into church pews every Sunday aren't so crazy after all for putting their faith in the story of a man who said, "Enough is enough. Stop acting like assholes and climb up to this higher ground where isn't about blood, land, or how things you pile up in the space between your birth and death."

I do know that this reverence for power is what made me vote for Bush in 2000 and 2004 and why I continue to support his administration despite their multiple failures and shortcomings. I just didn't sense this type of leadership in the alternatives. I did sense weakness and weakness is what got the Weimar Republic Hitler. Weak leaders never got any country anywhere despite all the idealism and high speech ever spoken on public stage or in private conference. The true test comes when the rubber meets the road and even though the brakes have slipped many times in the history of America--we are far from Nazi Germany.

I intend to keep it that way and I invite you to do so as well by procuring this book and reading it from cover to cover. When you go to Barnes and Noble, go up to the information desk and tell 'em that Uncle Josh sent ya.

LINKS:
The Easton Press Third Reich Collection
Easton Press
William L. Shirer
Antimedia is Depressed

TAGS:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, William L. Shirer, Easton Press, Holocaust, Politics