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Lothrop Stoddard

Into the Darkness Paperback – December 20, 2020

by Lothrop Stoddard (Author)

4.6 39 ratings

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A leading American journalist travels to Nazi Germany in December 1939, arriving in wartime Germany where all the lights are blacked out in preparation for an English or French bombing campaign. T. Lothrop Stoddard's provocatively-titled book refers to the eerie experience he felt of first encountering this total blackout. Into the Darkness was the product of an assignment by the North American Newspaper Alliance company in which Stoddard was detailed to report on wartime conditions in Nazi Germany-at a time before the US became involved in the war. Stoddard was not unknown in Germany. Due to his leading work in the areas of racial history, racial science and eugenic in America, he was granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of the National Socialist government and provided the first-and possibly only-accurate, unbiased account of German racial policy ever written by a non-German writer. Stoddard was granted personal interviews with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and many other Nazi leaders.

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Print length

312 pages
Language

English
Publication date

December 20, 2020
Dimensions

6 x 0.78 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1774641283
ISBN-13

978-1774641286
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Customers find the book informative and balanced. They describe it as an objective account of life in Germany during World War II. The writing style is well-written and easy to read, making it a quick and easy read.

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Customers find the book informative and balanced. They appreciate its objective approach and mention it provides a look at life in Germany during the early years of the war. The author carefully distinguishes between his interview with Hitler and others, providing an effective account of life in Berlin at war.

"...by INTO THE DARKNESS, which is a hard-headed, skeptical and highly informative record of Stoddard's 4 month stay in Germany in the winter of 1939-..." Read more

"...Still the book is extemely informative and a quick and easy read. A final note...." Read more

"...from a background in history (Harvard doctorate) proved smooth and effective: he was actually a skillful writer, employing a descriptive narrative..." Read more

"...To me it seems like a real insight into the lives of Germans in wartime." Read more

5 customers mention "Language"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well-written and easy to read. They describe the author as an American master of English, like Orwell or Malcolm X.

"...This is a fine piece of journalism by a very lucid writer." Read more

"...Still the book is extemely informative and a quick and easy read. A final note...." Read more

"...proved smooth and effective: he was actually a skillful writer, employing a descriptive narrative of interviews, tours, and..." Read more

"A well written, balanced account of life in Germany in the early years of the war." Read more

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Alec Marsh
Surprisingly objective and informative.
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2014
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I was wary of this book. Stoddard's reputation as a racist and eugenicist as well as an apologist for Hitler made me nervous. But I was pleasantly surprised by INTO THE DARKNESS, which is a hard-headed, skeptical and highly informative record of Stoddard's 4 month stay in Germany in the winter of 1939-1940. The title refers to the blackout which extended over Germany, as well as the unknown quality of the German Reich for his American readers. The first impression? Spartan. despite the consolidation of the Reich and the September victory over Poland, things are already very, very tight. Everything is rationed. A complex coupon/ ration card scheme keeps goods moving, but makes shopping a nightmare. The chapter on the average day of a Berlin housewife is eye-opening.

Stoddard understands that he is working under a censorship (not as tight as that affecting his German colleagues, but very much there). He can't go certain places (occupied Poland for example); events are managed, there are press-conferences and bus-trips to model factories and out of town to see the rural Volk. He visits Jews in Berlin and finds their conditions very tough--worse than their Aryan counterparts, if not yet absolutely beastly. Still, he writes that for the ordinary German 'the Jewish problem" is as good as solved. This does not yet, in 1940, mean physical liquidation, but it is generally understood that the Jews will be removed from Germany. he visits a "Eugenics Court" and finds the medicos who consider the case far more "conservative" and far more conscientious and orderly than equivalent practices in the United States, which were decided on an ad hoc basis with little or no government oversight. In any case, no sterilizations were ordered that day.

Stoddard interviews Hitler, Himmler, and other high functionaries, including Archibishop Tiso of Slovakia.He visits Hungary as well. Interestingly, he finds Hitler less magnetic and charming than he had found Mussolini on another trip. he himself is surprised by this since so many had told him of Hitler's fatal attractive powers. INTO THE DARK sheds light on a little known aspect of World War 2 and gives a sense of what German life was like during the first year of the war. It neither praises nor condemns Germany, but rather, gives us something very close to an "objective" account. This is a fine piece of journalism by a very lucid writer.

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Stanley
An Informative Insight into the German Nation at War
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2012
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It bothers me that only recently did I stumble across this book. Stoddard, a Harvard professor, spent several months inside wartime Germany and Central Europe before America's entry into the Second World War. Speaking German with no American accent and following some simple rules of journalism, Stoddard was able to visit not only with Hitler and other Nazi officials but also just plain regular Germans.
He came away with three general findings: 1) Most Germans did not want a general war but felt they had no choice, 2) Germans felt they must win the war or the ensuing peace would be terrible, 3) Germany was probably the most organized nation ever. Unfortunately for Stoddard the reaction to the book's even handed accounts cost him dearly. He was branded a Nazi sympathizer and his career was pretty much finished. Still the book is extemely informative and a quick and easy read.

A final note. One of Stoddard's sins was that he pointed out that the Slovaks didn't like the Czechs and weren't happy about the creation of Czechoslovakia. At one time they were promised the country's name would have hyphen. . .well that didn't happen and the Sovaks were second class citizens. This finding was at the time when Czechoslovia was presented to Americans as the victim of Nazi thievery. The Slovaks, now with their own country, certainly didn't feel that way.

Come to think of it, this book is a must read.

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Frank P. Mintz
Republication of the Last Book by T. Lothrop Stoddard, Who Returned from Darkness to Oblivion
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2018
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As far as can be discerned from the public record, Into the Darkness: An Uncensored Report from Inside the Third Reich (1940), a recounting of his investigation of the Third Reich during the "Phony War" phase of World War II, is the last book that T. Lothrop Stoddard (1883-1950) offered up for publication. Lothrop Stoddard (the "T." customarily dropped), widely read in the 1920's and a little beyond as a popularizer of racialist-eugenicist ideas centering on the survival of the White (particularly the Nordic) race, was the just the person to explore the situation in early wartime Germany as a friendly inquirer. His popularity with Nazi officials must have preceded him based on the general thrust of his writings and his use of the term "under man" (Untermensch). If ever there was a State that attempted to implement many of the ideas Stoddard propounded, then Hitler Germany, with its thorough going eugenics laws and its attempt to foster a strong, primarily Nordic farming community bound to the soil, was that Staat.

An inability to come to grips with his relationship to the "New People in a New State" is one aspect of the book that is a disappointment. Stoddard clearly was not just one of the ordinary journalists that were taking up residence in Berlin for any extended period of time. But there is nothing that the author discloses about his well-established views and their prior reception by leading ethnologists and anthropologists of the Third Reich, as well as other figures who expounded its racial doctrines and propaganda. Such omissions of background might be understandable as a result of the war and the guarded relations between the still officially neutral United States and Germany and possibly some mixed feelings of his own about the course the racialist state was taking even before war came. Yet the absence of any but the briefest reflections about his arrival as a journalist and the circumstances leading up to it is a definite shortcoming. With respect to the subtitle of an "uncensored report" Stoddard does not hide the fact that there were definite boundaries in which Nazi officialdom placed him and other journalists. One chapter is explicitly entitled "Closed Doors." Not only certain military zones were off limits, as would be expected, but inquiries into actual conditions in the recent acquisitions of Bohemia-Moravia and the German zone of Poland were effectively restricted to rumor mills. Yet he was probably singularly privileged in making his own observations of the deteriorating plight of the Jews and receiving "real-time" insight into the eugenics procedures in place for several years.

On the basis of an obvious but undisclosed rapport, Stoddard was able to secure interviews with such leading figures as Heinrich Himmler (a significant "scoop"), Joseph Goebbels, and Adolf Hitler himself. Dr. Goebbels was probably the most animated conversationalist; Himmler was straight forward about some aspects of the Gestapo's activities, but gave a cleaned-up description of the ethnic relocations going on in Poland--Stoddard not being deceived; Hitler alluded to his desire to continue his architectural revival now disrupted by hostilities. He even met with Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, director of the German Women's Organization. In Slovakia, then a satellite, but still not in the war, he interviewed Head of State Fr. Jozef Tiso. Stoddard also takes us along on escorted visits to farms and factories, gives us a look at Berlin at war, and recalls his visits to Slovakia and Hungary. He looked in on the "Life-Standard" SS barracks near Berlin, saw its immense swimming pool (actually designed on the spot by Hitler to make it more accommodating for his bodyguard division); and carefully observed the proceedings of the eugenics supreme court that (during his viewing) sent cases back for further study or even allowed one of the subjects to remain unsterilized. Stoddard warmed to the subject: he found the court meticulous in its approach and the Third Reich humane and constructive as no other state in promoting sound births and reducing its congenitally deficient population. Nor, as a eugenicist could he quarrel with the regime's 10 commandments for mate selection: the first definitely stating that all an individual achieves is owed to membership in the German racial community. The upshot must be that the individual is no end in himself, but a cell in the living organism of the folk-community. Regrettably, Stoddard was not aware of the Fuhrer order at the beginning of the war that decreed the extirpation of the incurably handicapped in favor of making more hospital space for wounded servicemen (Aktion T4).

Though generally critical of Jews in his prior writings on both psychological and physiognomic grounds ("disharmonic blend"), his recollections of authorized visits to Jewish apartments during his stay, as well as hearing gratuitous occasional toasts from Party members ("May the Jews die!"), clearly set forth his opposition to any cruelty in what was basically a most inhumane situation for those Jews remaining in Germany at the outbreak of the war. He did point out that there was some parallel in the treatment meted out to Jews in the Third Reich to the Turkish nationalists' determination to remove their Greek and Armenian populations even if it hurt the economy for a considerable period of time. As Kemal Attaturk and his associates made clear to Stoddard in Ankara: What are 10, 20, or even 30 years in the life of a nation? To the economic vindictiveness shown by the "Kemalists," the Nazi's inserted their own set of racial animosities, Stoddard added, while noting that anti-Semitism had already been widespread in Germany well before the advent of Hitler. His view was that while most Germans deplored the particular acts of violence and ill-treatment that the Jews experienced, particularly in the late 1930's, they would not want to see the Jews return after their undoubted impending physical elimination. Probably, Stoddard was not thinking in terms of literal extermination--rather deportation--but one can't be entirely certain. Nor can we be sure that most Germans, particularly of the older generations, wanted a completely "Jew-free" Germany.

The reader may speculate as to the use of the word "Darkness" in the title. There was no need to be ambiguous: This was actually the literal situation that Stoddard found: a stringent British blockade enforced in the North Sea and Gibraltar (which he experienced first hand), strict rationing of food and clothing, strong controls on business decisions and profits, and the onset of a severely cold winter that froze vital waterways such as the Danube, plaguing delivery of resources already very limited for the civilian population of Berlin and most urban areas. Alcohol remained plentiful, and Germans downed beer, schnapps, and even champagne as never before: "I saw a great deal of public drunkenness," was Stoddard's straight-forward comment. Although Stoddard was housed, along with some of the other neutral-nation journalists, at the plush Adlon Hotel in Berlin, he was overjoyed at the opportunity to re-visit still neutral Hungary where, in addition to having talks with various journalists and statesmen, he could savor much more balanced meals and, to boot, real coffee topped with whipped cream-- plus enjoyable company and entertainment among an "aristocratic" people. There is something hauntingly familiar about his description of the comparative availability in Hungary (even under some pre-war restrictions of its own) for those who traveled there after a visit to the Soviet Union and, particularly, the Romania of Ceausescu.

Again, this time in his enthusiastic approval of Hungary, the issue of candor strikes the reader sufficiently familiar with what Stoddard had written previously. He esteemed Hungary, although its population is composed of a variety of racial elements to include whites of all shades and skeletal configurations, as well as persons of mixed Europid/Mongolid ancestry. Particularly prevalent is the Alpine, the round-skulled race of whites that had left Stoddard unimpressed in the 1920's. During his stay in Hungary, he tremendously enjoyed partying with Magyars during the Christmas-New Year's season and admired how those Gypsy entertainers could play. Of course he understood that the "Tziganes" were of a brown-skinned stock that was part of the rising colored tide he had warned against.

Stoddard realized he was being shown everything that would put Germany in the most favorable light, but does indicate that, on balance, the regime had been very acceptable to most workers and probably farmers (officially Bauer)--especially on the North German mid-sized holdings he examined on one of his tours, where ample food was available. The increasing regimentation of the German economy by the late 1930's and the war itself raised questions about the of loyalty the workers, and drained capital and labor away from farming, but the security National Socialism provided to the blue-collar class and the relative absence of rationing for farmers after September 1939, prevented any really significant opposition in these sectors. (Such potential opposition from those quarters became an abstraction after Stoddard left, when great numbers of farmers and workers became conscripts in the growing ranks of a military involved in incredibly far-ranging campaigns. Their replacements were women and, increasingly, various levels of workers--voluntary and forced--from all sections of Europe.)

Looking around in the provincial cities and meeting local party officials when on a junket with other correspondents, Stoddard was not impressed with most of the people he met, particularly their "pretentiously dowdy" wives. One group had definitely triumphed in the Nazi revolution: the empowerment of the lower middle-class seemed its central accomplishment. He remarked about their "inordinate presence" outside the great metropolitan centers, as part of the entourage of the Gauleiters,who governed the new regional units of the Reich. The Nationalist Socialist upheaval evidently lacked the aristocratic aspect that so charmed the pedigreed New Englander in Hungary.

Frequently, Stoddard lets Nazi ideology speak for itself in variations of the phrase, "the common interest above self." This slogan in its practical aspects made an increasingly poor impression on businessmen, the one group Stoddard saw as the most hampered by the war restrictions that were developing even before 1939. This Wehrwirtschaft, as Stoddard describes it, deserves careful consideration as to Hitler's aims, or at least expectations, by the late 1930's. If he did not really want war in 1939, and even hoped that Chamberlain's England would stay out of Germany's "ethnic rescue operations" on its eastern border, he did not necessarily think that a major conflict was avoidable. Imposition of this constricting economy of scarcity rather than reliance on further development of peaceful trade made hegemonic domination of areas for ready access to food supplies (e.g., Denmark) or oil and a vast stream of raw materials (to wit, the U.S.S.R.) a logical outcome, even if one puts aside the ideology of Lebensraum and purely military motives as the prime movers of these particular invasions.

Stoddard's transition to journalism from a background in history (Harvard doctorate) proved smooth and effective: he was actually a skillful writer, employing a descriptive narrative of interviews, tours, and travels, that in its somewhat archaic, almost 19th century style, is very absorbing. His description of a plane ride to Vienna from Berlin, through clear skies and into cloud banks, with a quick view of Prague, is worthy of a novel. He carefully distinguishes his interview of Hitler (actually an audience, not to be fully divulged), who greeted him very courteously, but then became more distracted and distant, with a prior talk with Mussolini--who used his mesmerizing eyes to convey a definite personal interest in the interviewer. We are left with much to reflect on. Stoddard obtained a good publisher and a reasonable review in The Saturday Evening Post--undoubtedly there were others; yet his return to the light marked his eclipse. No sequel appeared. He had another decade of life to see the end of his own era of white racial self-confidence, a genocide he may have predicted, the rise of the Soviet Union and its advance into Eastern Europe and Central Germany, a new decades-long Cold War, and the rise of the Third World.

A final word about the format of the present book, obviously a re-publication. That a new edition of an old book which is undoubtedly hard to obtain in libraries today, should now be available is, per se, a service for those interested in the history of ideas and want to go directly to the sources. Clearly, Stoddard is a serious counterpoint to William L. Shirer, the most famous U.S. correspendent in Nazi Germany. Its biggest deficiency is the lack of an index, present in the original; and the table of contents promises one! An index is indispensable for efficient re-reading and analysis of any book. It is regrettable, but not a fault of either the present or prior publisher, that Stoddard provides no photos, even relatively bland ones, that could stay within bounds or capture glimpses of then non-belligerent Italy, Slovakia, and Hungary.

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Amazon Customer
An Interesting Read
Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2017
Verified Purchase
When I originally purchased this book I was hoping to get a hardcover with a simple dust-jacket, but when it arrived I realized that this was not the case and that the hardcover was printed onto the front of the book. For reasons of aesthetics and practicality this was a general disappointment as the front of the cover could definitely turn some heads and isn't the most appealing. However, the print of the book seemed to be fine and the hardcover was nothing poor or great and given that the paperback cost around $13 - 15CAD the extra 6 - 8 CAD for the hardcover is a rather small increase in price for a more durable copy of the book. In terms of the content of the book I recommend looking elsewhere as there are many on the Internet both critical and for the text that have done great analysis and/or summaries

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Common Man
One of the more unbiased accounts of life in the Third Reich.
Reviewed in Australia on March 22, 2021
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Written by a professional journalist who had neither an agenda to push nor an axe to grind.

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