Hitler’s Empire was bound to self-destruct

Was it a mistake to go to war in 1939? Of course it wasn't, there was no other way of defeating Hitler.

Well, I have just read a mind-blowing book called Hitler's Empire by a reputable historian, Mark Marzower, which to me seems to suggests that Hitler's empire was always bound to self-destruct, because of a fatal flaw. That was Hitler's particularly awful conception of empire which made it absolutely clear that all the subject nations had no hope of freedom ever. Germans were going to be the master race in perpetuity.

This was the empire's only governing principle, allowing no deviation; none of the Machiavellian divide-and-rule ruses, which Britain's empire had used so successfully. It was the most domineering empire ever to exist, and once this became clear in 1941, its end was certain.

Nor ­ as this book also makes clear ­ was German efficiency what it was thought to be. In fact it was an empire riven by competing and mostly corrupt power groups: ­ the Wermacht, the SS, the Civil Service, and the Gauleiters ­ - all of which were at each other's throats. Nothing worked except Hitler's implacable will, without which the empire would never have existed and with which it could not survive.

I come back to the question: did Britain have to go to war? Every page of this book, for the first time, makes me begin to doubt it. We thought we did because the degree of Hitler's self-destructive insanity was unimaginable. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, it is pretty clear that the Second World War only made the downfall of his empire even bloodier that it had to be. Take this book on holiday. You won't have a dull moment.