Following a Powerful Historical Story in Sound.

It's funny how Germany's history in the first half of the 20th century is so fascinating a morbid sense to see a nation so steeped in militaristic nationalism that they help plunge the world in such destructive agony in the first World War and then go collectively insane in World War II. 


For myself, I found listening to a whole list of history audiobooks from Audible.com cover much of that history with such enthralling narratives and there are still holes to fill with more to listen to.


It all started with the classic book, The Guns of August by  Barbara W. Tuchman  where you will follow how Europe's nationalistic rivalries exploded into an war led largely by arrogant idiots like Joseph Joffre who kept with stupid doctrines long after they have proved self-destructively useless until it was almost too late and weaklings like General Moltke who nervously fiddled with vital military plans and senselessly stuck with them even when the tragedy could have been avoided.  However, it followed through and reading about Belgium and the price it paid for its independence is powerful listening as the conflict that drowned it become something much worse in scope. Meanwhile in my reflexive interest in Britain's role in this rolling disaster, I never thought I would be rooting for General Douglas "Butcher" Haig and Lord Kitchener, but reading the moronic blundering of John French screwing up the British Expeditionary Force to the point of utter destruction you are drawn to the competent no matter their subsequent history.


After that, I couldn't resist listening to all of Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich Trilogy (The Coming of the Third Reich , The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War) to listen to an comprehensive survey of Nazi Germany as a kind of grand historical horror story.  It starts with the trials of the doomed Wiemar Republic and how it provided the fatal precedents that Hitler exploited to the hilt.  Still, listening to the final book is almost impossible to get through entirely, the depravities inflicted in Eastern Europe, especially in the Soviet Union, beggars the imagination even when you know about the death camps that came later.


After that, The End by Ian Kershaw is the natural followup to learn why did Nazi Germany fight to the absolute bitter end. In that book, there is a perverse fascination to learn of a nation being ground into oblivion with such hopeless fanaticism for a future Hitler refused to contemplate and his people feared more than anything else.


Finally, I'm listening to Exorcising Hitler by Frederick Taylor to learn what happened to Germany afterward to answer that necessary question: what happened to a country that paid such a crushing price for following a leader's grandiose dreams in the face of all conscience and reason.  The answer I got is an intriguing mix where a punitive moral idealism and a pragmatic appreciation for the greater good for a nation that eventually came to a real moral reckoning on its own by its next generation.


All in all, it's been an intriguing trip and The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor will likely be next.


As modern history goes, it's well trodden ground, but it's a journey that is still powerful to follow myself.