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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2008
This isn't as badly thought out as Sutton's writings on the Bolsheviks, but still pretty far offbase. A much better book for people to look up would be Henry Ashby Turner, GERMAN BIG BUSINESS AND THE RiSE OF HITLER. Turner makes it clear that while some aid was given to the German National Socialists by big business, the rival conservative parties received much more consistent funding. Nothing in Sutton's book contradicts this basic thesis developed by Turner in great detail. Sutton's book may have value to someone who has simply grown up with the belief that fellows like Donald Rumsfeld never shake hands with Saddam Hussein. But once we're over that layer of naivete, it is apparent that Sutton has not contradicted the basic point that big business played at most a limited role in the rise of Hitler. The split between the German Communists and Social Democrats, and the way that it tore the German Left and labor movement into pieces, offers more of solid case for why the National Socialists were able to come to power than any traces of money from the business community.
Sutton also repeats the story about the Reichstag fire and the claims that it was set by the Nazis. Fritz Tobias debunked that back in the 1960s in his book THE REICHSTAG FIRE. All of the most recent critical histories which I've come across continue to accept Tobias's argument that we have no reason to believe that the setting of the fire was anything other than a one-man job which Hitler had not expected and was genuinely shocked by. It is agreed that Goering already had plans for arresting political opposition and that the Reichstag fire was not particularly noteworthy in facilitating such.
Sutton seems to have a tendency of uncritically gathering urban legends from an amazing variety of sources. The errors which he has made in his writings on the Bolsheviks reduplicate fallacies which were common in early fascist propaganda, but his mistakes when talking about Hitler follow the Comintern. It was the Comintern which put together the early charges alleging that the Reichstag fire had been set by the Nazis. The Comintern's public relations influenced many liberal historians for the first 20 years after WWII on the subject of the Reichstag fire. Also, it was the Comintern which had promoted the early images of Hitler as a puppet of Hjalmar Schacht. Henry Ashby Turner's work has punctured many holes in the visions of Hitler which the Comintern had popularized.
The best that can be said here of this book by Sutton is that he at least avoided some of the worst types of errors which have cropped in his writings on the Bolsheviks. If you cut the assertions in this book far enough down to size then there is a factual case at the root of things here. But the implications of it are much less sweeping than Sutton would have us believe. We still have to come back to the fact that Hitler's main base of support rested not on any steady backing from big business but on being able to maintain a consistent base of support among smaller businesses and taking advantage of the rupture on the Left which tore the Communists and Social Democrats apart. If someone reads this book hoping that it will allow them to replace all of the above with a picture of Hitler as a mere puppet of big business then they will be disappointed.
Sutton also repeats the story about the Reichstag fire and the claims that it was set by the Nazis. Fritz Tobias debunked that back in the 1960s in his book THE REICHSTAG FIRE. All of the most recent critical histories which I've come across continue to accept Tobias's argument that we have no reason to believe that the setting of the fire was anything other than a one-man job which Hitler had not expected and was genuinely shocked by. It is agreed that Goering already had plans for arresting political opposition and that the Reichstag fire was not particularly noteworthy in facilitating such.
Sutton seems to have a tendency of uncritically gathering urban legends from an amazing variety of sources. The errors which he has made in his writings on the Bolsheviks reduplicate fallacies which were common in early fascist propaganda, but his mistakes when talking about Hitler follow the Comintern. It was the Comintern which put together the early charges alleging that the Reichstag fire had been set by the Nazis. The Comintern's public relations influenced many liberal historians for the first 20 years after WWII on the subject of the Reichstag fire. Also, it was the Comintern which had promoted the early images of Hitler as a puppet of Hjalmar Schacht. Henry Ashby Turner's work has punctured many holes in the visions of Hitler which the Comintern had popularized.
The best that can be said here of this book by Sutton is that he at least avoided some of the worst types of errors which have cropped in his writings on the Bolsheviks. If you cut the assertions in this book far enough down to size then there is a factual case at the root of things here. But the implications of it are much less sweeping than Sutton would have us believe. We still have to come back to the fact that Hitler's main base of support rested not on any steady backing from big business but on being able to maintain a consistent base of support among smaller businesses and taking advantage of the rupture on the Left which tore the Communists and Social Democrats apart. If someone reads this book hoping that it will allow them to replace all of the above with a picture of Hitler as a mere puppet of big business then they will be disappointed.
