As I ponder the motivation behind writing Exposing the Reich, my mind wanders back to a sunny day in the summer of 1995. I can still see my uncle, with his shock of white hair wildly flying about, ardently waving a wispy baton in the direction of an improvised choir and piecemeal orchestra. The music performed was a conventional enough piece—Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor—yet the setting was anything but ordinary: the infamous Dachau concentration camp. Surrounded by guard towers, barbed-wire fencing, and the very crematorium where his sister had met her tragic end in 1944, my uncle, a teacher of meditation and Indian Sufi mysticism, had gathered this musical group and a small but attentive audience to pay homage to his beloved sister, Noor Inayat-Khan, half a century after her untimely passing.
Noor, who had volunteered to assist in the war effort and trained as a secret agent, was sent into German-occupied France in 1943 as a radio operator for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), an organization created to sabotage German occupation in Europe and help the Resistance in German-controlled countries. At great risk and despite many near captures, Noor operated in Paris clandestinely for months, carrying out crucial work in preparation for the Allied landings, pinpointing drop zones for parachutes to deliver weapons and money, and liaising the French resistance organizations with London’s supportive military command. She facilitated the escape of thirty Allied airmen shot down over French soil and organized false papers for fellow agents. For some time, Noor acted as the sole communications link between resistance agents in the Paris region and London intelligence and military headquarters until she could be replaced.
Ultimately, arrangements were made to repatriate Noor to the safety of England, an offer she had repeatedly refused until she felt she had fulfilled her duty. However, tragically, just days before her return to London, Noor was betrayed to the Gestapo, as there was a bounty on her head. She was then incarcerated in the German Security Headquarters in Paris, where she attempted to escape twice but failed. Later, Noor was transferred to a German prison where she was subjected to the horrors of solitary confinement and kept in chains for close to a year.
In September 1944 orders came from Hitler via Ernst Kaltenbrunn that all Allied agents who were currently held in German captivity should be made to disappear in a “Nacht und Nebel” (night and fog) operation. Noor, along with three fellow women agents serving in Churchill’s SOE, were taken to Dachau, where they were executed.
Though, by a twist of fate, I had been living only a couple of hours’ drive from Dachau for nearly ten years, it was not until my uncle invited me to the musical commemoration for Noor that I finally visited the camp to pay tribute to my aunt’s acts of bravery and call of duty to the free world. As the product of a mixed-race heritage—born in Russia to an Indian father and an American mother—Noor had spent much of her life in England and France. Yet her allegiance lay not with any one country or nationality but with the cause of justice and righteousness. The young woman who aspired to devote her life to music, writing children’s stories, and working in child psychology, was tortured and murdered at the age of thirty while fearlessly battling against Hitler and his regime of terror.
My initial reluctance and procrastination in visiting the Dachau Memorial Site likely stemmed from a fear of facing the quandary about how the German people could be responsible for the unimaginable horrors of the concentration camps. I had been living in Bavaria all these years and perceived the German people as being no different from those I had lived among before, namely, British, American, and French.
A decade after my first visit to Dachau, I received an invitation to return while participating in a BBC documentary about my aunt, Noor Inayat Khan. It was during this visit that the center’s curator divulged shocking details about Noor’s death. He presented me with a photo of SS Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Ruppert, the man in charge of executions at Dachau, and revealed that he was the one who had personally beaten my aunt before fatally shooting her.
Standing in solemn silence at the “execution wall,” where Noor and countless others had met their tragic end, we also paid our respects at the nearby “ash pit,” where their remains had been unceremoniously disposed of. This experience left me with a multitude of unanswered questions, including the necessity of Noor’s sacrifice and the culpability of the German people for the atrocities of World War II and genocide. With these questions weighing heavy on my mind, I hope that through Exposing the Reich readers can gain a deeper understanding of this dark chapter of history and comprehend how ordinary citizens could turn into killers.
Upon my arrival in Germany during the 1980s, I quickly learned that it was best not to bring up the topics of Hitler, World War II, or the Holocaust. The older generation would dismissively categorize that period as “difficult times” and preferred not to discuss it further. The younger Germans at the time had limited knowledge of those dark days and would often deflect any national culpability by pointing out the transgressions of other nations, such as British colonization or American oppression of Native Americans and African slaves. However, nearly four decades later, the situation has significantly improved.
Like most western children born in the 1950s, I was exposed to the Hollywood-stereotyped movies portraying us as “the good guys” versus the “bad” Germans, the “Nazis.” At the French elementary school I attended in the 1950s, children parroted their parents’ nickname for the Germans, referring to them as “les sales Boches,” a contemptuous term the Allies used for Germans during both world wars and derived from the French slang tête de caboche, meaning “cabbage head.” Yet now I lived and interacted with Germans, people like you and me, gifted with the same qualities and faults as the rest of humanity. Where were these monsters? Were they my friends’ and neighbors’ parents or grandparents? Could they have been so different from the other inhabitants of Europe or of North America?
Stephen E. Ambrose recounts a timeless anecdote in his best-selling World War II history book Band of Brothers. It involves American soldiers describing, often in a derogatory manner, the people they met as they advanced from England to France, Belgium, and ultimately Germany. However, the story takes an unexpected turn when the average G.I. discovers that the Europeans they liked the most, related to the most, and even enjoyed being around were the Germans. Many American soldiers found the Germans to be similar to themselves: clean, hardworking, disciplined, educated, and with middle-class tastes and lifestyles.
Working as a tour guide for over three decades on “Hitler’s Mountain” in Berchtesgaden, I have become accustomed to inquiries surrounding Hitler and his Nazi Party. Visitors are often eager to venture beyond the mere facts and figures concerning Hitler’s mountaintop Eagle’s Nest retreat, asking thought-provoking questions such as these: What motivated the Germans to vote for Hitler? Why did Hitler harbor such hatred toward the Jewish people? Did all Germans support the Nazi Party? How could the German people be aware of the concentration camps yet do nothing to prevent them? Providing satisfactory responses to such complex and multilayered questions can be challenging, as it requires contextual knowledge to comprehend the intricate historical events that led ordinary individuals to actively participate in heinous acts against their fellow human beings.
What educational material could I recommend to my tour participants to better understand the quandary of the Third Reich? What book or books could answer their questions easily, could fill in the blanks? An exhaustive list of Hitler biographies, Hitler personality analyses, World War II histories, and voluminous academic studies on specific aspects of his regime spun around in my head. Yet I could not point a finger at a single work that would, in simple language and condensed into a reasonably short read, offer an understanding of one of the greatest calamities that mankind has ever experienced.
For this reason, I felt compelled to gather material that would help us understand what transpired in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century. I was determined to do this without either placing a burden of guilt on the German people or attempting to plead their innocence. I deemed it important to follow the time line of Hitler’s rise and reign and, in easy-to-read terminology, to guide a reader step-by-step to gain insight to the how and why of the Third Reich tragedy. Chapter by chapter, Exposing the Reich aims to list the most important facts and events that allowed a frail and skinny young man who, at the age of twenty-four, was found unfit to fulfill Austrian military service to become, arguably, history’s most ruthless dictator and warmonger.
Part 1 of the book offers readers a chronological journey through Adolf Hitler’s life, starting from his youthful ambitions of becoming a “great artist” and his life-shaping experiences in Vienna. The section also covers Hitler’s time serving in the First World War and his return to Munich as a decorated veteran. Additionally, readers will learn about Hitler’s training in the army’s political propaganda, his entry into the world of politics, and the challenges faced by the Weimar Republic, the German postwar government. We also follow the events that shaped Hitler’s worldview and led to his rise to power. The last chapter in this section questions the commonly held belief that Hitler restored Germany’s floundering economy. Surprising as it may sound, the much-touted drop in unemployment and the concurrent resumption of industry did not produce a solid economy, the desired self-sufficiency, or long-term wealth for Germany.
Part 2 delves into the Third Reich’s use of multiple forms of propaganda, ranging from education and art to media and entertainment, as well as the Führer myth. Through subtle and theatrical means, National Socialism aimed to appeal to the senses and emotions of the public. Readers will become familiar with Hitler’s skills as an orator, his use of dramatic staged events, and the public’s constant forced exposure to manipulated worldviews. Above all, the Reich’s well-oiled propaganda machine aimed to instill in Germans a fear and hatred of so-called international Jewry and Judeo-Bolshevism.
Part 3 reveals the mechanisms by which Germany’s population was monitored, in particular by the police force and the terror apparatus such as the Gestapo and the SS. It describes the targeting of actual or perceived enemies of the Reich, such as Jews, dissidents, political opponents, and those who, for social or religious reasons, did not conform to the new norm. The development of the German concentration camp system is also elucidated, from its first official establishment near Dachau to its repurposing as extermination facilities in Eastern Europe. In this section we also learn about those who did not embrace Hitler’s ways and who, at the risk of their lives, to a lesser or greater extent did what they could to counter, resist, or topple the regime and its dictatorship.
Part 4 delves into additional themes related to the Third Reich, providing answers to common questions and topics of interest. Among these are whether Hitler and his top officials studied occult or esoteric themes, the truth about Eva Braun’s role as Hitler’s mistress, the significance of the swastika as the National Socialist symbol, and the similarities between Hitler’s and Mussolini’s regimes. The often overlooked role and status of women during the Third Reich is also explored, and finally, the section reviews Hitler’s unpublished “Secret Book” or “Second Book,” written in 1928, which sheds light on the foreign policy plans that Hitler would later implement during his twelve-year reign of terror.
Part 5 delves into the level of involvement of the average German in National Socialist beliefs during Hitler’s regime. It investigates the extent to which Germans, from soldiers to housewives, teenagers to civil servants, supported the regime’s ideology and persecution from 1933 to 1945. This section further explores the Germans’ retrospective assessment of the Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust, both in East and West Germany, in the decades following the war. The final part of this section provides insight into how the German state and its people perceive and remember their past today, particularly the Germany of their parents and grandparents, and how they are dealing with the recent surge in xenophobia in the country.
Through the systematic presentation and development of various themes, this book aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of Germany and the Germans during the period of the National Socialist German Workers Party’s rise to power and eventual downfall at the end of World War II. In keeping with my effort to explore and understand the Third Reich in an objective manner, I have purposely avoided the employment of the non-German derogatory designation of the party as “Nazi” or its adherents as “Nazis” but have chosen to use the official terms “National Socialist” or “NS” Party.
By following developments along the time line during which they unfolded, it is my intention to present this complex era of history in a clear and easily comprehensible manner, accessible to a diverse readership, including students, scholars, World War II history enthusiasts, visitors to Germany, and anyone with an interest in history. I hope that this book will provide insightful and thought-provoking information to all who engage with its pages.
David Harper
P.S. If you find this work interesting and illuminating, please look out for my next book. Wishing to share my knowledge of the numerous historically significant sights—many of which have remained obscure and that are often overlooked by even the most educated travelers to Europe—I have put together a “guide book” to identify and visit both perpetrator sites and victim sites. Few have explored, for instance, the remnants of Third Reich Germany’s monumental underground fortifications, such as the Ostwall or the Westwall, once stretching hundreds of miles along the country’s eastern and western borders.
The book also describes how to visit over forty historic sites in Europe, nearly half of which have remained unknown, such as the fortress-like training center for the Reich’s future political leaders, Himmler’s mysterious Wewelsburg Castle, and the two salt mines in which Hitler stockpiled the world’s largest art collections. Other sites of great historic interest include vast hidden bunkers in Poland, German V-weapon factories in France, and Hitler’s once-secret HQ in Belgium.
Better known travel destinations such as the Normandy Landing beaches, the Nuremberg Trials’ courtroom, and the infamous concentration camps of Dachau and Auschwitz are also described among the book’s listing of numerous historic and educational sites dotted across ten countries.