Word: hitlers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Indeed, Taylor suggests that Hitler might have gotten Danzig and escaped war over Poland, had it not been for a series of blunders on his part in the negotiations over the free city...
FROM his study of this diplomatic record, Taylor concludes that Hitler never planned or expected a full-scale war. Even German rearmament only proves the Fuehrer's love of machinery and military pomp, and his (or Economic Minister Schacht's) perception that large State budgets end depressions. It does not point to an intention to use the new force aggressively...
...leit-motif of German diplomacy between the wars was not aggression: it was Hitler's perception that the Western Powers would let drop the plums he was after without too much shaking, if he would only be patient. Hitler's genius as a diplomat resided in this incredible patience -- and in such confidence in himself, that he was able to win battle after battle in the war of nerves by out-waiting his opponents. "Right to the end," says Taylor, "Hitler did not make demands; he graciously accepted what was offered by others...
Taylor's book is, among other things, a challenge to laymen and historians whose views of the Second World War rest on a moral judgment of Hitler and the "Nazi idea." It is not easy to accept such a challenge; for there can be no compromise in a democrat's mind with the Nazi regime as it operated within Germany between 1933 and 1945. And it is difficult to avoid extending one's critique of that regime to its performance in the field of foreign relations, and to count Hitler guilty of diplomatic sins just as one condemns his domestic...
...result is neither an attack on appeasement, nor a whitewash of Hitler. It is a successful attempt discuss the central problem of the thirties: the failure of most people to distinguish between the real, the crucial German problem, and the inflated (or otherwise distorted) picture of it. No doubt Hitler's demands were unreasonable; but they reflected the interests of a strong, legitimate Power, run by an arch-opportunist dealing with short-sighted...