Review - Hitler and His Allies in World War Two

  Hitler and His Allies in World War Two (2007)

Well, the first non-fiction book to be reviewed here is a compilation of articles about the nations that offered assistance and direct support to Nazi Germany during World War 2. It's edited by Jonathan R. Adelman, a professor at the University of Denver whose primary fields of interest are Soviet politics, Chinese politics, comparative revolutions, and the military. He also works on contemporary Middle East issues. In Hitler and His Allies in World War Two, he provides the chapter about the Soviet Union and its relationship to Germany before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. Besides that chapter, the relationship between, in turn, Vichy France, Fascist Spain, Romania, Hungary, Italy and Japan, and Germany is surveyed.

General Review

I will concentrate on a few of the presented Allies of Hitler in this review instead of all of them. Large parts of the individual chapters concentrate on how the men in power in the smaller allies actually got to their positions and what their relationship with Hitler and the Germans was. Sadly, the book is short on actual data showing the economic and military contributions made to the Axis war effort but does concentrate a good deal on their interlinked policies of the persecution of Jews and political enemies.

Empire of Japan
Surprisingly little is commonly known about the relationship between Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire. The chapter on Japan gives an overview of Japanese-German relations during and prior to WW2. The relationship of the two nations during the 1930s was dominated by Germany's unwillingness to decide between Japan and nationalist China, propelled by the belief of many in the party leadership of the inferiority of the “yellow race”, and even further strained by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on 22 August, 1939. What finally transpired as the Tripartite Pact was, in reality, a paper alliance: there was no joint conduct of the war, no integrated zones of operations or even joint war goals. The first session of the military commission of the Tripartite Pact in March 1943 was sixteen months after Pearl Harbor. No real steps were taken, and it took till November that year until even communication protocols were established. Worse for the Axis, the fractured Japanese leadership was unable to emulate the stratified and unified German command. The collective Japanese leadership was “as a group adicted to emotionalism, risk, gambling, intuition, inflexbility, and poorly defined objectives.” (p. 53), which could also applied to a later Germany under the ever stronger influence of Hitler and Himmler.

Hence, economic and military collaboration remained in the realm of wishful thinking even though a pincer attack on the Soviet union in 1941 could have spelled Stalin's Empire's doom: the Kwantung Army prepared extensively for the eastern invasion of the USSR. The chapter shows that by June 1942 650,000 men with 675 tanks and 750 air craft were ready to commence operations, but the Japanese Cabinet waited until the German fortunes turned (which, given the Kwantung Army's reputation to do whatever it wanted, is quite a feat by itself).

“Mistrust, envy, suspicion, treachery and notions of racial superiority [on both sides] prevented Germany and Japan from coming to terms and communicating frankly (p. 45)”. It was an alliance without a backbone, a problem further complicated by a shared racist dislike of each other and the fact that very few people had an understanding of the others language, culture and traditions. Worse, in good dictatorship fashion, both sides were afraid of each others successes. Japan constantly withheld information from Germany and even spied extensively on its ally, even worse, it did nothing to step lend-lease shipments to Vladivostok on Japan's doorstep. Before that, it did little to honor its economic Tripartite obligations despite the fact that it got the better of the deal: nearly 60,000 tons of German industrial and high-tech goods compared to 112,000 tons of raw materials and food for Germany. Still, the Japanese industry and population were insufficiently mobilized to fight the war (Germany produced some 50,000 tanks and self-propelled guns from 1939-45 compared to Japan's 2,515).

Thus, the reclusiveness and secrecy of the Japanese also lead to an increasing unwillingness of the German side to trust and cooperate with them, going so far that German Admiral Wennecker in late 1942 remarked that cooperation was impossible. The deteriorating diplomatic and military situation in the end lead to Germany withholding its remaining 345 submarines at the end of the war instead of sending them to Japan. 

Hungary

Miklos Horthy is presented as a fervent anti-communist crusader who found Hitler personally appalling but politically appealing. The chapter shows that Hungary and Horthy were willing to placate German views and take the spoils of the German table but always remained ambiguous about German pressure. 90% of its exports went to Germany, and Hungary used the money to propel its own rearmament. Surprisingly, there were even talks about establishing a government in exile as early as Christmas 1940 in case the relationship between the two nations turned sour. Collaboration and cooperation was reluctant, but extensive. The Hungarians were the last ally of the Reich to fight on its side in 1945, and they only collapsed when most of Hungary itself was already occupied. German pressure also lead to an end of Horthys regime before the war ended.

Romania

Romania fielded third - largest Axis army in Europe and supplied most of the oil (up to 94% in 1941) under Marshall Antonescu's regime. The same as its old rival Hungary, Romania collaborated willingly in the deportation of the 300,000 Romanian Jews. The nation allied with Germany after the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia after 26 July 1940. The head of government, Ion Antonescu, is still revered as a hero by many today in Romania. The Romanian cooperation with Nazi Germany only began to falter when the Eastern Front was in full retreat and its national economy was beginning to fall apart from the pressure of having to deliver ever more goods for ever fewer money. Inflation was mounting and the war economy was close to a collapse before the nation switched sides late in 1944, which ended all formal relationships between Romania and the German Reich.

Vichy France

Vichy stayed out of the military struggle but supported Germany in the ideological struggle:  it was anti-parliamentarian, anti-communist and anti-semitic, policies that placed the regime firmly in the pro-Axis. It drew lots of its populaer support from a long standing resentment of fascists and the French right against the republican parliamentary system. The chapter provides a good overview of the internal Vichy machinations between pro-collaborationists like Laval and Darlan and anti-collaborationists like Weygand. Indochina's relation to Japan was similar after 1941 to that of Vichy and Germany, where collaboration remained strong  in Vichy controlled communities even in 1944 after the allied landings. Vichy “remained in power with significant popular legitimacy” (p. 83), which shatters the myth of the French all-encompassing Résistance. Petain's actions were driven by the need to establish a good “working relationship” (p. 85) with Germany in the new European order, and the old Marshall only refused an entry into the war on Germany's side because he feared the social disorder such a declaration might entail. His cabinet ministers Pierre Laval and Darlan  were both anglophobes, with Laval harboring a virulent hatred for the British. The regime fostered an intense voluntary collaboration: many scholars have since stated that collaboration was not a German demand but a French proposal, as France wanted to be a partner, not a subordinate or satellite in the New Europe (p. 90). Full collaboration was achieved after the occupation of the French remainder in 1942 but with decreasing French objectives. By that time Germany received between 40-50% of France's complete agricultural and industrial output. 

Compared to that, military collaboration was minimal. there were never more than 10,000 Frenchmen in German uniform. The collaboration in the form of foreign workers was a lot more massive after June 1942, and there was a zealous hunt for foreign jews and close police cooperation with German authorities. The German and Vichy anti-semitism were separate but similar (p. 98). The French initiatives to work against Jews and the Résistance were meant as means to preempt a feared German involvement. 

There were anti-German positions, especially at the beginning of collaboration, in the Foreign and the War Ministry, but British and American initiatives to make good use of this failed as they did not understand that while the cabinet members responsible did not like the Germans, they were loyal to Petain and liked the Allies even less. Mers-el-Kébir (3 July, 1940) was a massive stain on any pro-Allied Vichy France leanings and almost lead to open war as the cabinet meeting the next day had Laval and Darlan argueing for naval attacks against allied shipping in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. For the Army, Germany was the main  enemy. For the Navy, it was England. The Air Force's position most likely was: We like puppies.

Problems

Adelman states on page 55 that there was a “common sense of racial purity and racial superiority over the neighbors” for most of Japan's and Germany's common history. I cannot comment on Japan other than in a superficial way, but for Germany that statement – certainly until into the 1930ies – has no basis in fact. Larger German communities were dotted all over eastern and south-eastern Europe, and intermarriage rates between them and the slavic majority populations remained high until the outbreak of the second world war (and did not decline in those countries that were actually allied with the Reich). The high rate of mixing between migrants into the Ruhr region from the Polish provinces of the German Empire and Tsarist Russia before the Great War also negates that statement. Secondly, it needs to be remembered that instilling that sense of racial hatred and superiority was a concerted government effort that took the better part of a decade to unfold. Germany, until the beginning of the 1930ies, was a lot more 'tolerant' of its Jews than France (Dreyfuss-Affair anyone?) or the Polish.

One the same page and elsewhere in the book: Germany's foreign policy focused on “world conquest”. No. Germany's foreign policy conception, so far it even existed, focused on an European land empire up to the Urals, no more, no less. That's the conception developed in cooperation with the father of the concept of geopolitics, Haushofer. Everything else is unsubstantiated bollocks.

Verdict

"Hitler and His Allies" gives a passable introduction of Germany's allies and quasi-allies during and before World War 2, shedding some light on Japan, the USSR, Italy and some of the smaller Axis nations like Hungary and Romania. For a broad overview of the relationship between each of them and Germany in turn the book is a sufficient read, and the chapters concerning the smaller, less well known and featured partners  are especially enlightening for those with an interest in the Second World War. The ambivalence of Spain and Vichy France also are points that deserved attention.

On the bad side, this book is most likely the worst edited piece I've ever read, concerning  scholarly volumes. I have no idea how something as riddled with grammar and vocabulary errors as this had any chance of getting published in the first place - ans since I'm not even a native speaker you know it's got to be bad! The sloppyness with regards to style also finds its way into the content. German pre-war President Paul von Hindenburg becomes only "Hindenberg". Stalin is a peace-happy puppy who only builds up the Red Army because he fears Hitler (which is why he started already in the early 1920s). USSR arms procurement and preparations for an offensive war against western Europe (as widely documented, among others, in much more in-depth tomes by Bogdan Musial) are ignored and down-sized, while Hitler is at points described in a sensational and almost cartoonish manner.

The book is imbalanced in structure and content, with Adelman and Sullivan providing the most in-depth analysis of their respective topical countries, giving good overviews about policies and capabilities and the dynamics within them during the time in which they were Allies of the Reich. The case of Vichy also is very interesting, but brings forth less conclusive data due to the ambiguous relationship the regime of Petain had with Nazi Germany. Where the book shows its weaknesses is, unfortunately, is with the small allies one usually hears little about. Hungary and Romania, despite their large contributions to the Axis war effort, receive little more in-depth attention than one might gather from a good and thorough read of the countries' and their respective leaders' Wikipedia entries. More so, and this is a subjective point, they focus less on the military and specific economic assistance they provided but place an emphasis on the persecution of their Jewish populations. Call it my specific German perspective, but the persecution of the Jews is something that's constantly shoved down my throat on national TV and every second weekly you can buy, let alone the constant bombardment with the topic in higher schools. It is only interesting in so far as one learns that, except for the Italians, there existed wide-spread antisemitism in all those countries way before they even veered into the German political orbit, and that many of them quite enthusiastically sent their Jews to the concentration camps. I left Spain out of the discussion of the chapters above because it can be summed up in two short sentences: “Germany could resupply its submarines in Spanish harbors, but Franco disliked Hitler and withheld any other support. He was a smart guy.”

So, who's this book for? Everybody wishing to get a first overview over Germany's allies during World War 2 without expecting a too in-depth analysis. There is some good general information to be found here, but the tome has its clear limitations. If you expect more specific data on the contribution of war material, resources and troops, this one is not for you, and you should seek out more country-specific literature. For everyone else – if you don't mind something as leisurely edited as one of my fanfictions – this is a good start and worth the expense. All in all, it is an introductory work, sometimes factually incorrect (and before people complain: if the authors get widely published things like Soviet pre-Barbarossa armored strength wrong, how are we supposed to rest assured they don't get even more existantial things wrong, too?) and atrociously edited. If you want to buy it, buy the paperback version, which, while still expensive, is at least somewhat grounded in economic reality. By no means is this work worth the exorbitant price demanded for the hardcover edition (see below)!

Final Verdict: 4/5 for the great overview of the lesser known parties in WW2 riddled with editing problems and some factual inaccuricies.

If you are interested in buying this volume, I recommend you use the link below. It links to the German Amazon website which sells it at a price below 30 EUR. Amazon.com only sells the hardcover edition at (as of 01 September 2010) 120 USD! Hitler and His Allies in World War Two at Amazon.de (for European readers). Purchasing the book using the given links will provide me with a small percentage of the prize, which allows me to acquire further material to review here in the future. Thanks!