Customer Reviews

Into the Darkness

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What possible historical subject could get this exciting?

When Stoddard the anthropologist visited wartime Germany Pearl Harbor had not yet happened, and so he was able to approach his subject--a social history of Nazi Germany at war.

And being neutral Stoddard's work lacks the often-hysterical tone of professional "pro-" or "anti-Nazi" pieces of much of the period's genre.

Having access as a scientist to a variety of German institutions Stoddard gives us a grounded look into how Germans of all station in life viewed such issues as social policy, foreign policy, Jews, and the German leadership. His chilling look into a "Eugenics Court" where "undesirables" were judged is worth the price of the book alone.

Not to be missed.

Twentieth-century America's most perceptive, influential, and prophetic writer on race -- Lothrop Stoddard -- spent four months in late 1939-early 1940 covering National Socialist Germany, as its leaders and its people girded for total war. Stoddard criss-crossed the Third Reich to observe nearly every aspect of its political, social, economic, and military life, and he talked with men and women from all walks of life, from Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels to taxi drivers and chambermaids. The result -- Into the Darkness -- is not only a classic of World War II reportage, but a unique evaluation of Germany's National Socialist experiment. For Stoddard was no ordinary journalist. A Harvard Ph.D in history, the author of The Rising Tide of Color and other works that played a key role in the enactment of America's 1924 immigration act, fluent in German and deeply versed in European politics and culture, Stoddard brought to Into the Darkness a sophistication and a sympathy impossible for William Shirer and a myriad of other journalistic hacks. To be sure, the New England Yankee Stoddard was no supporter of the Hitler dictatorship, but he was deeply interested in National Socialist policies, above all in the social and the racial sphere. Reading Into the Darkness brings you to hearings before a German eugenics court, to an ancestral farm in Westphalia, to the headquarters of the National Labor Service, to German markets, factories, medical clinics, and welfare offices, as keenly observed and analyzed by Stoddard. You'll read, too, of Stoddard's conversations with German policy makers in all fields: Hans F. K. Guenther and Fritz Lenz on race and eugenics; Walther Darré on agriculture; Robert Ley on labor; Gertrud Scholz-Klink on women in the Third Reich; General Alexander Löhr on the Luftwaffe's Polish campaign, as well as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and many other leaders. And you'll travel with Stoddard to Slovakia, where he interviews Monsignor Tiso, the national leader later put to death by the Communists, and to Hungary, where the Magyars, still at peace, gaze apprehensively at Soviet Russia. Into the Darkness (so named from the mandatory air-defense blackout that Stoddard found so vexing) shines a torch of sanity and truth against the vituperation of all things National Socialist that has been practically obligatory for the past sixty years. Knowledgeable, urbane, skeptical, and above all fair, Stoddard's book is a unique, an indispensable historical document, a time capsule for truth, and a stimulating page-turner for everyone interested in the Third Reich and the German people.

Finally a great book on 3rd Reich from an unbiased observer. Some of the chapters provided excellent insight into everyday life in Germany. Reminds us that Americans would never wish to live in that manner, but given the circumstances the Germans did their best to rebuild a society shattered by war, revolution, and economic disaster. It raises the question of what might have happened if the National Socialist experiment in Germany could've continued.

"Into the Darkness" is a calm and neutral work of journalism on the subject of Nazi Germany, written by an impartial American author in 1940. Despite the straightforward reporting, a great deal of insane vituperation has been heaped upon this book for some reason, insinuating that it's Nazi propaganda. I don't believe that anyone who has actually read it can honestly say that, but that is the book's real sin- its objectivity. There's a certain segment of Americans who prefer outright demonization to factual content when it comes to the Nazi regime.

At a time when journalistic hacks like Edward R. Murrow were receiving accolades for repeating British propaganda from London, Lothrop Stoddard actually traveled to Germany to give the American people the true story about a country that had been the subject of so much misrepresentation and slander since 1933. Stoddard wanted to see first hand the results of the Nazi revolution and size up the country's war prospects. Even though he actually interviewed most of the top Nazis, including Hitler (who made him promise not to print what they discussed), the most interesting parts of this book are his observations of everyday life in wartime Germany.

He was able to travel fairly freely through Germany, Slovakia, occupied "Bohemia-Moravia" and Austria and see conditions for himself. Stoddard seems obsessed with food and devotes an inordinate amount of space to complaining about rationing, although I imagine that was a subject of pressing interest to everyone back then. What was more interesting to me were his interviews with ordinary people and his examination of how Nazi ideology effected everyday life. He discovered some anti-Nazi discontent, and examined such organizations as the Hitler Youth, the Labor Front and the Eugenics Courts. All of these miniature portraits of Nazi society were fascinating, but what was most surprising to me were Stoddard's own attitudes.

As a leading American eugenicist, one would have expected him to be enthusiastic about Nazi Germany. After all, they were putting into practice everything he stood for. They were weeding out the handicapped, the misfits, the Slavs, the Jews, the Alpine and Mediterranean blood and promoting the Nordic element. Yet despite being sympathetic to some Nazi ideals, Stoddard's Yankee background seemed to rebel against the whole experiment, as it was put into practice.

Although it would have been out of place for him to be strident about it in this work, it was obvious he found the regimentation of the country distasteful. He was proud of American democracy and obviously was repealed by the whiff of Teutonic totalitarianism. I expect that the "Horrible Hun" propaganda of WWI had its effect on him, as it did with most Americans of his class. (For example, I know that his eugenicist colleague Madison Grant changed his tune on the racial value of German blood once America entered the war in 1917.) Even on racial terms, he was disenchanted with the Nazi ideal. He pointed out that the Nordic element in Germany was a small minority, seemingly consigning their attempts at racial improvement to failure. He also reports on the dispossession of the Jews, registering his disapproval by his vivid and sensitive description of their plight. It is this attitude which makes the "darkness" of his title such an ambiguous word; the darkness of war or the darkness of Nazism?

Stoddard's book lacks the best qualities of professional journalism, but it is nevertheless fascinating and is the only honestly objective contemporary account of Nazi Germany I know of that was written by an American.

Finally a truthful book on Nazi Germany. No one was told they couldn't breed but bonuses were paid to non-scumbags if they would have children. We do the opposite here.

I'm an agronomist and I live in Brazil.I like to read books.I tried to read this book, here in Brazil.This book is available, for free reading on internet.
This book has some parts with a little use.
The core of this book is pure trash.The author, an once respected american eugenicist tells, about nazi Germany under war.There's even an entire chapter about the author's interview, with Adolf Hitler himself.
The only value of this book is to see, how was Germany at the beggining of World War II.Even about this subject, this book is weak.
To be an eugenicist was to be a respectable person,in USA, at least before Third Reich.Many famous americans such as Dr. Morris Fishbein ( Jew and A.M.A.'s president), Alexander Graham Bell (Jew), Wilbur and Orville Wrigh(The Wright Brothers) were famous and very proundly and respectable eugenicists.In 1935, Dr. Morris Fishbein (a jew) said "[NAZI] Germay is perhaps, the most PROGRESSIVE nation about genetic problems".

Writen in a time, when eugenics becaming to be(as ever was), a despicable godless religion or a pseudo-science and the american eugenicists themselves changing his titles to neo-malthusianists or ecologists, this book is almost pure garbage.

This book has been debunked and exposed to be a complete lie. Funny how people see what they want in writings yet completely deny the facts when presented with them. It sounds all well and good but researching the material for oneself will reveal that this is just another bunch of propaganda in the overflowing world of 'holocaust' suffering.