The Holocaust: A Warning From History

We should  not be so focused on the threats we clearly see in front of us that we are completely blind to the threats behind us.  By Ian Kershaw By the afternoon of 29 January [1933], Papen was able to tell  Göring and Ribbentrop that all was clear. "Everything perfect,"  Göring reported back to the Kaiserhof. Hitler was expected by the Reich President at eleven o'clock the next morning to be sworn in as Chancellor. Just before the new cabinet entered the Reich President's chambers, it was finally agreed that they would seek the dissolution order that Hitler so badly wanted. At least, shortly after noon, the members of the Hitler cabinet trooped into the Reich President's rooms. Hindenburg gave a brief welcome address, expressing satisfaction that the nationalist Right had finally come together. Papen then made the formal introductions. Hindenburg nodded his approval as Hitler solemnly swore to carry out his obligations without party interests and for the good of ...

While serving his prison sentence for his failed beer hall putsch, Adolf Hitler made some adjustments to "world-view."  By Ian Kershaw Ideas which had been taking shape in his mind since late 1922, if not earlier, on the direction of future foreign policy were now elaborated into the notion of a quest for "living space," to be gained at the expense of Russia. Blended into his obsessive antisemitism, aimed at the destruction of "Jewish Bolshevism," the concept of a war for "living space" -- an idea which Hitler would repeatedly emphasize in the following years -- rounded off his "world view." Thereafter, there would be tactical adjustments, but no further alteration of substance. The modifications in Hitler's "world-view" that were already forming in the year before the putsch are clearly evident in Mein Kampf . Hitler's book offered nothing new. But it was the plainest and most expansive statement of his "world vi...