Jean Lopez publishes a sort of "manual" the last hundred days of Adolf Hitler an "album" large format, low cost (many photographs, most archiconnues) recounting the last three months of war in Germany. A book "general public", while in the air. There was a time when books on the Third Reich were viewed, their editors stigmatized and their readers suspected of sympathies for National Socialism. It is true that these studies were more room for the ascent of Chancellor Hitler at its fall, its political and military victories, more than his final defeat. Today everything has changed. These are the last hundred days that fascinate. With an assumed voyeurism, we turn the pages of this disaster, we play to scare us, we revel in the spectacle of the final collapse and martyrdom (well deserved, is not it?) Of the German people. The film and television do not have long waited to exploit such a good track. (The Arte chain is a specialty). What do you want, this is how Hitler sells, it is a promising subject. Les Editions Perrin and Jean Lopez knew well, who did not want to miss the boat. Yet Lopez is by no means a specialist Hitler. He spent ten years of his life to draw new clothes for the Red Army, to give her look better before history. He published a very good account of the battle of Stalingrad. But here he advanced on a ground that is unfamiliar and that feels. It takes up, somehow, all that is already known and are added, alas, nothing new. The purpose of this type of work it is to advance in history? Certainly not. Is it to public obloquy, once again, the Hitler regime? Yes, and with the commercial transaction referred to above, it is the only ambition of its promoters. How do they do it, because the historian must maintain a minimum of impartiality before the facts and Lopez - that is to its credit - does not easily give in the cartoon? Well, besides the usual qualifiers, we proceed by light touches, by insinuations that devalue without seeming to. Dr. Morell, for example, doctor of Hitler, is "an obese uniformed Nazi Party" (p. 18) Amazing, right? General Guderian, he does not dare confront Hitler that "under the influence of alcohol" (p.21) So it was a coward! As for the Führer himself, brace yourselves: it is, at tea time "a huge consumer Viennese pastries" Really, these people were impossible (p. 22)! But that's not all: Martin Bormann "morphology and bull temperament" (p.33) On 16 January 1945, Hitler is no longer the same man in 1940 (it was fatal!) " The light hurts him, his teeth are rotten, his terrible breath, his disastrous sleep "(p. 36) Bugger! It was time for him to go! So one could continue the litany of these absurd slanders. They are added, not without effectiveness, the usual condemnations of the regime. But the end of the book takes us to other considerations. "Train" is perhaps not the right word because the idea of telling day by day and sometimes hour by hour this story makes the narrative confusing or chaotic. Lopez of realizing it: sometimes it summarizes a three day line, or "zap" another in passing (March 14). His conclusion, in any case, still deserves some comment. First, his latest "Focus": "The staging of defeat." Lopez endorsed the theses of the German historian Bernd Wegner, according to which Hitler would have continued to fight until the end in order to choreograph the Reich fall! The "failed painter" would thus avenged his ignorance ... A failure on the part of Wegner, about the artistic direction of Adolf Hitler, and a rare absurdity because Hitler choreographed the Reich beginning to end ! But as always, the Democrats' staunch "condemn authoritarian regimes that have applied through clearly stated principles since they came to power. The Democrats, they are not so stupid. Hitler would have had to stop everything, when things went badly, to save his people, claims Lopez. When? After Stalingrad? After Operation Bagration? Thus, the Red Army, dear to our author, would have easily tumbled to Brittany. For my part, I believe the opposite. In their fierce resistance on the Eastern Front in 1945, German soldiers have won a victory, the only one that had indeed: they saved their country, and us!
Jacques Bressler Honorary reserve captain, ORSEM graduate. ,
