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[–] 16215294? ago 

This book gives a pretty clear look at how things were run in Germany. Though it is wartime reporting, so there would be differences from peacetime, but even in peacetime, resources were limited, and thus heavily controlled.

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[–] 16215363? ago 

Book has a great intro. This is going to be a great read. Thanks.

In 1940, however, accuracy and objectivity on Hitler’s Germany was

not what was wanted by America’s intellectual and policy

establishment. Even before Into the Darkness was published, Time

magazine sniped at Stoddard as “persona grata to Nazis,” running a

grotesquely truncated version of his interview with Goebbels (already

published through the North American Newspaper Alliance). By the

time his book appeared, Germany ‘s armed forces had conquered

Denmark and Norway, overrun the Lowlands and conquered France,

and driven British troops back across the Channel. While the United

States, in accord with the wishes of the great majority of Americans,

would stay officially neutral for a further a year and half, the climate

in the publishing world, the academy, and government was such that

Stoddard felt constrained to include an apologetic “Statement” on the

book jacket. It begins “Personally repellent and depressing though

Nazi Germany was to me, as it must be to any normally-minded

American .” and continues in the same mode for two paragraphs.

Stoddard’s aim then was to salvage himself and his book by

advertising Into the Darkness as a clarion call to preparedness against

the German “New Sparta with its cult of ruthless efficiency”; today,

Stoddard’s apology for Into the Darkness stands more as a sad tribute

to the intimidating power, even then, of America’s Orwellian media

combine. One can’t help noting that none of Stalin ‘s many apologists

among American journalists seems to have felt compelled to write a

similar disclaimer.

Sixty years after it was written, the text of Into the Darkness is both a

refutation of its author’s apologia and a rebuke to his detractors. This

is a journalistic account that still lives and breathes, that informs and

entertains.

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[–] 16215366? ago 

Most shocking thing I learn so far about real Nazi life:

Another surprising matter was the number of officers and soldiers

sitting together in gay parties throughout the audience. I had already

noted instances of this in North Germany, but not to the same extent.

Recalling as I did the rigid caste lines in both the old Imperial Army

and the small professional Reichswehr established after the World

War, it took me some time to get used to these evidences of social

fraternization. The new trend is due to two causes. In the first place, it

is part of the Nazi philosophy to break down class and caste

distinctions, and weld the whole nation into a conscious Gemeinschaft

— an almost mystical communion, as contrasted with the rest of the

world. In such a socialized nationhood, the traditional caste barriers,

first between officers and soldiers, secondly between army and

civilians, are obviously out of line. The present German army is

undoubtedly more of a Volksheer — a People’s Army, than it ever was

before. This new tendency is also furthered by the fact that with better

education, specialization, and technical training of the rank-and-file,

officers and men are more nearly on the same plane. The old Imperial

Army, unmechanized and made up so largely of peasant lads

commanded by Junker squires, was a vastly different institution.

Yet, despite all social changes, military discipline and authority do not

seem to have suffered. No matter how friendly men and officers may

be off duty, the heel-clicking and stiff saluting on duty are as

punctilious as they ever were in the old days

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[–] 16215297? ago