History repeating itself in the 'disease of a generation'

Historian Laurence Rees focuses on a dozen warnings in his compulsive new book on the Nazis’ rise to power. Nine of them have a contemporary relevance, says Robert McCrum

- Robert McCrum

The British fascination with the tyrannies of sinister, evil, and possibly mad foreign dictators is a tale we love to tell. It goes with our history as the "sceptr'd isle" beset by enemies. In a society that's been periodically obsessed by the threat of European invasion, that nightmare is remembered in phrases such as “Boney will get you” and “take back control”.

During the reign of Elizabeth II, our not-so-secret pride in the way we opposed the horrors of 20th-century totalitarianism became a scarlet thread in the tapestry of our national story. Churchill, who “gave the roar” to Britain’s response to the Nazis, was a well-judged organ grinder as much as a rhetorical master.

There are many ironies in our dread of Nazism. We purport to be unscathed by hostile invasions and alien ideology. Yet the conquest of 1066 was followed by 300 years of French occupation, the “Norman yoke”.

And we have known other oppressions. In what sense, then, are we immune to authoritarian governance? Besides, when the walls between subjugation and freedom can be so paper-thin, is it not prudent to keep an eye on any predisposition to tyrannical government?

Laurence Rees, a lifelong and acclaimed historian of the Nazis, does not invoke this context as a British intellectual. He does not need to. The making of “the Nazi mind” from 1919 to 1945 is both enthralling and chilling on its own terms. As a “warning from history” in the age of Trump 2.0, it’s compulsive reading.

Of course, The Nazi Mind must address the charismatic evils of monsters such as Hitler and Goebbels. Each occupies their own special place in any 20th-century