Author Topic: Random Excerpt  (Read 32365 times)

smirnoff

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #180 on: April 09, 2020, 03:43:34 PM »
In Rohm's opinion, he could only stand the 'flatterers and Byzantines' who 'unscrupulously crowded around,' exploiting his vanity, feeding him on illusions and 'venturing no word of contradiction.'

He consciously gathered little men around him - and this is quite literally; for it is noteworthy that the intimate circle of Hitler's old guard, the Steichers, Amanns, Hoffmanns, Webers, Berchtolds, were physically puny, some of them dwarf-like.

What Hitler wanted was power, and the struggle for power demands endlessly shifting adaptation to shifting circumstances.

It is no malicious legend that the leadership and nucleus of National Socialism in the years from 1925 to 1930 consisted for the most part of failures

-Der Fuehrer, Kondrad Heiden 1944



At times this book reads like an instruction manual or script for current events. It's easy to suss out similarities and ignore differences though, leading you to come away with simplistic parallels. But then again, it's hard to ignore those instances where history seems to intersect so precisely with the present. To say this book is thorough feels like an understatement. A third through the book and you're still covering the events of the 1850's to make sure you have the full context. At times, particularly regarding genealogy, the level of detail can only be described as biblical. But Konrad takes the whole complex history and creates a readable narrative. Most of it is more like journalism though since Heiden himself attended and witnessed Hitler speak as early as 1923 and protested against Nazism from its earliest existence. From the preface "In 1920, and the years following, my friends and I certainly did not view our modest fist-fights and other encounters with the National Socialists as an attempt to put a premature end to the career of the modern Genghis Khan, and I would have jeered at anyone who had prophesied that this was the beginning of a new epoch in world history." Anyways, a really good read and I'm learning a lot.