A scholarly book of epic proportions, Hitler’s Empire deals with a story told by others many times before – that of the destruction wrought by Hitler and his cohorts during the Second World War, and the way they dealt with the territories they invaded and occupied. This is no dull text book though – this is human history at its finest.

Mazower lays out the path of events in Europe in a logical fashion – so logical in fact, that the Third Reich’s actions on many levels, in regards to the Holocaust and extermination of other races such as the Poles and Gypsies, are seen in as the logical conclusion of Nazi policy and philosophy. That we can see the fearful logic behind Hitler’s actions, but at the same time see that they were clearly deluded, is the crux of this work. This is both the most shocking and the most brilliant skill of Mazower, and the reason that this book is such a page turner.

Nor does Mazower let us forget that anti-Semitism, to take one example, was the norm in pretty much all European countries, as was nationalism. Mazower’s thesis is that without the insane and illogical ideas at the heart of the Nazi brand of National Socialism, the third Reich could have been a success. Germany’s armies were too successful for their own good, Hitler too full of this success for his. Almost by surprise, the Nazis found themselves in control of France, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, much of Eastern Europe, the Balkans and parts of Russia. However Hitler and Himmler could not and would not entertain the use of, or collaboration with, “sub peoples” such as the Poles, even when clearly over-stretched. As such the difference between the occupation of Vichy France and Eastern Europe could not have been more different. France required minimal military supervision, with French civil servants and governments doing the dirty work of the Nazis. In Poland however, Poles were led to extermination, with the Nazis dreaming instead of Aryan immigrants from Germany willingly settling in these wild frontiers. Of course the Germans never really came, not least because there were not enough to begin with and the Nazi race filtering program was too rigid.

Hitler and Himmler were dreamers of the highest order. Many of their policies were short sighted and not to mention deluded – based on their firm belief in the imminent close of the war and of course their desire for racial purity. To quote: “The East remained what it had always been for the Nazis – a place in which the imagination ran wild and reality could be ignored.”

Nor could Himmler and Hitler see why Britain was not willing to be their ally. Hitler saw no difference between his actions in Eastern Europe and Britain’s exploits in India or Colonial Africa (and in this aspect it is easy to see his point). That the Nazis’ actions were a little too close to home or simply directed at whites not blacks seems to be a moot point to our modern ears. This is also one of Mazower’s key points: the exploitation and extermination of races was similar to the colonial past, but on a considerably greater scale – helped by Nazi scientists, a truly efficient army and often by the occupied people’s themselves.

What stays with this reviewer is not only the power that strange ideas have over leaders, but by association nations and even continents. It is the sheer weight of numbers of dead on all sides. Never before has the  Holocaust, the toll of the dead from Poland, Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe, or the effects on normal German citizens, been made so clear, so extensive. At the point when you feel there cannot be any more people left to be killed, plenty more are thrown on to the pyre. That in their desperation the Nazis became ever more brutal and murderous is perhaps the most shocking aspect of this tale.

It feels that this book requires a sequel. The end of the war and the ensuing decades are sown up quickly, raising as many questions as they answer. Intriguingly the Nazi regime kick started many of our well know institutions like the EU – both from the fear of war happening again but also from the institutions that were set up to manage Hitler’s vast empire. Interestingly Hitler had a fair grasp of what the future of Europe held, though with, for example, the EU agricultural policy, his aims of European self sufficiency were far surpassed without the need for war, lebensraum, or racial extermination.

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