Reviews for 1938: Hitler's Gamble

The average rating for 1938: Hitler's Gamble based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-06-14 00:00:00 Kirk Webb This book is the author's analysis of why the year 1938 was a turning point which lead to the conflagration of WWII. History buffs would agree that Hitler, in his quest for control of Europe (and beyond), gambled on the inept leadership of England (Chamberlain, the great appeaser), and France (a government in chaos) to back away from any confrontation with Germany. Despite the fact that Hitler kept gobbling up one territory and country after another, they turned a blind eye to the portents of the coming disaster. The book is a rather pedantic in style and tends to overuse statistics. The majority of the information deals with the deportation of the Jews (this was prior to the infamous Wannsee Conference where the "final solution" was drafted) and the numerical statistics overwhelm the narrative. This is neither the best, nor the worst history of that pivotal year.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-07-09 00:00:00 Denise Mayes Giles Macdonogh knows his strength as a chronicler; his writing within a monthly review of 1938 is as smooth as Anthony Read's. In this format, Hitler's further consolidation of power sneaks up on you while the Jews of Germany feel a rise in violent discrimination. 1938 is marked as the year where power shifted irrevocably from the Weimar political elite & took the army top with it. It's just a bit heavy on the Jews and a bit light on the power shift. Only in the last quarter does the Munich Agreement provide a beacon known from general Nazi history, where the "golden years" of 1936-38 are often rushed in favour of approaching war. Even Guido Knopp theorized that Hitler'd be remembered as one of Germany's great politicians if he'd died in 1938. Yet the troops setting off for the Sudetenland where met with a silent handful of commuters in an antithesis of 1914's "jubilant crowds".