Adolf Hitler
Chancellor and Führer of Nazi Germany 1933–1945
Also known as: Hitler, Der Führer
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) led the National Socialist German Workers' Party and ruled Germany as dictator from 1933 to 1945. He is the single most-cited individual in Quigley's twentieth-century narrative outside the core Anglo-American figures themselves — the personalized antagonist of the appeasement-and-war chapters of Tragedy and Hope and of substantial sections of The Anglo-American Establishment.
Appeasement and the Milner Group reading
Quigley's distinctive contribution on Hitler is to argue that the policy of appeasement which culminated at Munich was not improvised in reaction to him but had been prepared in advance by the The Milner Group and its allies. "If the truth is ever written," he tells the readers of Book Reviews, "it will show that appeasement had little to do with Hitler directly. It goes back even before the armistice of 1918 and may be seen at that time in such straws in the wind as Lord Milner's warning, in October 1918, that Germany must not be crushed in the war's end" (Book Reviews 5). The reframing places Hitler within a longer Anglo-German diplomatic structure rather than as the sole cause of the policies directed at him. In the Miscellaneous Writings pieces Quigley records the related point that German military insiders had communicated their intent to remove Hitler if he ordered the attack on Czechoslovakia — and that "the British yielded to Hitler" instead (Quigley Misc 4).
Strategic placement
Quigley repeatedly slots Hitler into the longer continental geopolitics of failed bids to dominate Europe. The Channel "as a discontinuity in the space between Hitler's power and England's power in 1940, became one of the chief elements in the whole history of German power in the twentieth century" (T&H 42); Britain's defenders against "attacks from Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler" (T&H 45) draw the same arc. In the civilizational-architecture works the iconography is direct: "'the hanging gardens of Babylon,' the Colosseum, or (as premature examples) Hitler's Chancellery and the Victor Emmanuel Memorial" are the monumental waste-displays of late-stage empires (EoC 146). In the lectures Quigley names Hitler alongside William II, Philip II and Henry V as one of the would-be universal monarchs of European history (Lectures 38).
The aggression analysis
Quigley reads Hitler's June 1941 attack on the Soviet Union as part of a continuous European-power dynamic, observing that the assault was "a consequence" of the geographic and military structure of the conflict rather than an isolated act of personal will (T&H 42). In Evolution of Civilizations he characterizes the inter-war right's collapse into "the utterly irrational activism of Hitler, Mussolini, and many lesser persons" alongside an age of irrationality with "increased gambling, increased smoking, the growing use of alcohol and narcotics" (EoC 391) — placing the rise of National Socialism within the larger crisis of Western Civilization.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 42 Quigley
The English Channel, as a discontinuity in the space between Hitler's power and England's power in 1940, became one of the chief elements in the whole history of German power in the twentieth century.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 45 Quigley
Attacks from Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 225 Quigley
'Was she to give Mussolini a free pass to Addis Ababa merely to prevent Hitler marching to Vienna?' His own friends, in particular Lothian and Geoffrey Dawson of The Times, had for some time been promoting Anglo-German fellowship.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 146 Quigley
'The hanging gardens of Babylon,' the Colosseum, or (as premature examples) Hitler's Chancellery and the Victor Emmanuel Memorial. The masses of the people in such an empire live from the waste of these non-productive expenditures.
- book-reviews · p. 5 Quigley
If the truth is ever written, it will show that appeasement had little to do with Hitler directly. It goes back even before the armistice of 1918.
- quigley-misc · p. 4 Quigley
German General Staff and of the German Foreign Office that Hitler would be assassinated by them as soon as he gave the order to attack Czechoslovakia, the British yielded to Hitler.