1938 Hitler's gamble
At the beginning of 1938 the reoccupation of the Rhineland and Saar as well as bits of Germany had been temporarily wrested from Germany. By the time the year ended, the picture had been totally transformed. Hitler, by a mix of bullying, bravado and sheer guile, had occupied both his Austrian homeland and the Sudetenland. Hitler then set his eyes on the region of Czechoslovakia reducing the Czech lands to a powerless morsel ripe for swallowing. Back in Germany the mass pogroms of Kristallnacht had pointed the way for the Holocaust ahead. Germany’s Armed Forces were prepared and suited up for what now seemed an inevitable and imminent war. All this had been achieved without the loss of a single Nazi life. Hitler’s single-handed aggression had been rewarded, his enemies had been outmanoeuvred and demoralised, and all Europe lay defeated at his feet.
At the beginning of 1938 the reoccupation of the Rhineland and Saar as well as bits of Germany had been temporarily wrested from Germany. By the time the year ended, the picture had been totally transformed. Hitler, by a mix of bullying, bravado and sheer guile, had occupied both his Austrian homeland and the Sudetenland. Hitler then set his eyes on the region of Czechoslovakia reducing the Czech lands to a powerless morsel ripe for swallowing. Back in Germany the mass pogroms of Kristallnacht had pointed the way for the Holocaust ahead. Germany’s Armed Forces were prepared and suited up for what now seemed an inevitable and imminent war. All this had been achieved without the loss of a single Nazi life. Hitler’s single-handed aggression had been rewarded, his enemies had been outmanoeuvred and demoralised, and all Europe lay defeated at his feet.
While many believe that the Nazis were always determined to exterminate the Jews, the book shows that this was exactly the case. The Nazis did their best to cleanse the greater German nation of all traces of Jewish influence, but however they spent most of 1938 getting as many Jews deported as they could. the book spends a lot of time dwelling on the Jewish situation in Austria, Germany, and eventually in Czechoslovakia.By the end of the year, all that had changed utterly: Germany had annexed Austria and the Sudetenland and was poised to mop up the rest of Czechoslovakia; Hitler was in total command of the armed forces; and the Jews had suffered the full force of Nazi persecution, culminating in Kristallnacht in November and a huge increase in deportation to the newly built concentration camps.
Through various processes of intimidation, governmental confiscation of property and the gradual enforcement of laws that removed the ability for Jews to operate anywhere in society, the Nazis forced the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Central Europe.The Jewish situation was not helped by the many Western countries. Strong restrictions were placed on Jewish immigration, Great Britain limited how many Jews they would take. Other countries would take only so many and no more, Some of them blatantly said that they did not want to create a "Jewish problem" of their own. By the end of 1938, Jewish people were running out of places to go. Though the book does talk a lot about the Jewish situation, it does also discuss other issues. Hitler had a list of plans to be implemented during this year, whether it was the annexation of Austria or the eventual invasion of Czech territory. A great debate took place among Hitler's advisors on whether or not these such a plans were too risky, cautious that it might bring both France and Great Britain into a war in which Germany was not ready.
The book talks a lot about how Hitler could have been stopped if the other Allied nations had just stood firm from the outside. However, Hitler was quite adept at promising to only go so far, and he seemed more powerful than he actually was at the time. The most horrifying aspect of this book is almost the what if questions you have.
