Apologia for Hitler

THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR (296 pp.)--A.J.P. Taylor--Athene-um ($4.50).

Anxious to rescue history from simple moral judgments, historians have been restoring the reputations of many a traditional villain. Richard III, Metternich, Aaron Burr have all been readmitted to civilized society and admired for their "realism." But no one (outside Germany) seemed to have thought of scrubbing up Hitler--until now. In The Origins of the Second World War, Oxford Historian A.J.P. Taylor finds excuses for Hitler and reasons to blame nearly everybody else.

Provoked by Little Powers. Most historians have pictured Hitler as a juggernaut. In Taylor's account, he is peculiarly passive.* "He did not seize power," writes Taylor. "He waited for it to be thrust upon him." Like other statesmen of his time, he was defending the national interest in a cleanly Machiavellian way. He simply wanted to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and restore Germany as a great power. Minimizing the fact that Hitler committed his plans for conquest to paper as early as 1925 in Mein Kampf, Taylor claims that the dictator did not really want war. His threats were "daydreaming" or "play-acting" to impress German generals who wanted to slow him down.

In Taylor's view, it was always somebody else who put poor, passive Hitler in a mood to fight. "Provoked" by the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg. Hitler improvised the invasion of Austria almost overnight, as proved by the fact that 70% of the German transport broke down on the way. When Hitler ordered his generals to "smash" Czechoslovakia, it was merely a "momentary display of temper." The real culprits, Taylor implies, were the men foolhardy enough to stand up to Hitler. Poland's Foreign Minister Jozef Beck had such "great power arrogance" about his little nation that he tricked Britain into the foolish defense pact that started World War II.

Theatrical Destruction. With scholarly detachment, Taylor states the case for appeasing Hitler and for resisting him, but his sympathies obviously lie with the appeasers. Germany, he argues, had a right as a great power to reoccupy the Rhineland in 1936, even though Winston Churchill, among others, felt that Hitler could have been easily stopped and probably toppled from power. At Munich, writes Taylor, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain saved the peace and served the principle of self-determination, i.e., by handing a slice of Czechoslovakia to Germany because a lot of Germans lived there. Writes Taylor: "It was a triumph of all that was best and most enlightened in British life."

Taylor insists that Hitler was no fanatic. "Hitler was a rational, though no doubt a wicked statesman," writes Taylor primly. "His object was the steady expansion of German power, not a theatrical display of glory." This is an odd assessment of a man who wallowed in the theatrical, whether haranguing the chanting mobs under the searchlights at Nuernberg or accepting the total destruction of Germany as a suitable Goetterdaemmerung to accompany his own demise. His nationalism, far from being the common variety, was the most virulent racism the world has ever known.

"A study of history is of no practical use in the present or future." Taylor, who likes to be whimsical, once said. As far as Taylor himself is concerned, his book proves his point.

* The book's English publication last spring precipitated a celebrated scholarly duel between Taylor and fellow Oxford historian and longtime rival, Hugh Trevor-Roper (The Last Days of Hitler), who attacked Taylor for "perversion of evidence" and "irresponsible antics."

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