Eyewitnesses to catastrophe

Travelers in the Third Reich underlines the power of wilful delusion, and explores indifference of tourists in Nazi Germany to the regime's atrocities, offering a lesson that remains relevant today

Travelers in the Third Reich: The rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People

Author: Julia Boyd

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Price: Rs 599
 

One paradox of tourist travel is that visitors tend to be indifferent to the contemporary realities of the countries they visit. How many of us have wowed the pyramids without thinking of the corrupt regime that oppresses the people of Egypt? Or admired the Hagia Sophia and  Süleymaniye without giving a thought to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian politics. This willing suspension of awareness is, of course, critical to the enjoyment of foreign travel.

This attitude matters less in the 21st century where the average citizen has sufficient access to new reportage and analysis to counter even the most positive tourist account. But in the inter-war years, “positive tourism” could play its part in influencing the public discourse.

This is the striking point about Travellers in the Third Reich, which traces the rise of the Third Reich through the eyes of foreigners who visited or lived in Germany from the go-go Weimar years to the rise of the Nazi party through first-hand accounts written by foreigners. “It creates a sense of what it was like, both physically and emotionally, to travel in Hitler’s Germany,” Julia Boyd explains in the Introduction.

The subtitle, “The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People” is misleading. Not all observers can be described as “everyday people”. Ms Boyd has also drawn on the diaries of diplomats, politicians, famous authors and the aristocracy, who can certainly be viewed as powerful influencers. This book, which includes previously unpublished diaries and letters, is also an Anglo-Saxon, mainly British, view (though there is an interesting account by a Chinese scholar of Sanskrit and Indian history studying at Gottingen University). This is not an unreasonable limitation; Britain was not yet the marginal power it is today and the country played the seminal role in shaping Europe’s responses to Nazi Germany.

Retaining an abiding fascination for German culture and a sense of racial affinity, thousands of British tourists travelled through Germany right up to September 1939. The “pristine medieval towns, neat villages, clean hotels, the friendliness of the people and the wholesome cheap food, not to mention Wagner, window boxes and foaming steins of beer drew holiday makers back year after year even as the most horrific aspects of the regime came under increasing scrutiny…” Ms Boyd writes.

Appeasement is a discredited word today but Ms Boyd’s account shows why it was attractive in inter-war years. War weariness was part of it. The politically inclined also saw in Germany’s Nazi authoritarianism a credible alternative to Russian communism. Others on the right wing, watching the horrors of Depression-era unemployment and chaos, saw in Hitler’s ideology the illusions of socio-economic certainty.   The remarkable point about these accounts, grouped in 21 chapters, is the generally obtuse responses to Hitler’s rise. With the exception of journalists, the occasional diplomat and courageous tourists who clandestinely helped Jews, many admired uncritically the glass smooth autobahns, the smartly turned out marching SS troops, and the illusions of a united, disciplined country. All of this appeared to enhance the country’s traditional charms. The regime’s excesses — and this will be familiar — were attributed to those around Hitler, not the man himself.

The German leadership worked hard to enhance these positives. Hitler’s favourite Wagner Festivals at Bayreuth became PR exercises in High German culture. Foreign visitors to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, were impressed by the healthy appearance of prisoners and the apparent good treatment they received there. They did not know that the inmates they met were guards dressed up in prison garb for the occasion.  During the Berlin Olympics in 1936, signboards forbidding Jews entry into public places were taken down. Only those who did not leave Berlin after the Games noticed the reappearance of those signs, and the scales fell from their eyes.

Latent Anti-Semitism of European society enabled many tourists to delude themselves that Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was justified. The view of communism as a Judeo-Asiatic movement strengthened these prejudices, though some perceptive observers noticed the similarities between the two ideologies.

Strenuous efforts by the Nazi top brass to seduce the British establishment was another element of the whitewashing. This was particularly true of the British aristocracy which, with honourable exceptions, saw value in appeasing Hitler. Lord Londonderry, cousin of Winston Churchill and secretary of state for air for nine years before World War II, is the best known of them. There was also King Edward VIII, who later abdicated after marrying a divorcee, but also Lord Halifax, former Viceroy of India and foreign secretary, who enjoyed Goering’s lavish hospitality at hunting parties.

Unity Mitford, the neurotic daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, famously fell madly in love with Hitler.  Her propensity for heiling him at the slightest provocation was amusingly related by the British Ambassador to Germany Sir Eric Phipps, no Nazi admirer. When Unity executed a brisk Hitler salute on entering his Berlin drawing room, he, a good head shorter than the strapping young lady, stood on tiptoe to shake her outstretched hand.

Anecdotes like these add readability to a story that will hold surprises only if you are unfamiliar with the broad contours of this history. If you’ve read William Shirer’s tome The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or, better yet, historian Richard Evans’ three-volume classic, you’ll get a better understanding of why Europe fell under Hitler’s spell. This book, however, offers the wisdom of hindsight. It underlines the power of wilful delusion, a lesson that remains relevant today.