Three Book Reviews: Prophet of Freedom, Wages of Destruction, and The Shadow Emperor

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight, 2018 — Among the many interesting facts I learned from this magnificent book is that Frederick Douglass truly relished the political and moral fight. His greatest ambition was to be “in the arena” (to use the famous injunction of Teddy Roosevelt), shaping events and not just reacting to them. That does not absolve him of his many faults, including his deeply wounded pride — which he turbulently inflicted on those around him — and the vacillation in his political thinking. But if there is a singular theme of moral clarity running like a red thread through his work, it’s the eloquence and perceptiveness with which he wrote about the stern logic of history — the ultimate conviction that the United States would have to reckon with its role in promulgating the institution of slavery. Douglass was also aware through the bitter draught of harsh experience that “nations seldom listen to advice from the individuals, however reasonable. They are taught less by theories than by facts and events.” And history, to the extent it exists as an exogenous, knowable force, would soon take its bloody course.

Douglass brooked no sympathy or compromise with the appeasement position. He reserved some of his greatest opprobrium for the anti-Radical Republicans*, the self-styled keepers of conventional wisdom, who sought to suppress the nation’s flagrant moral contradictions; who denounced the abolitionists as mere rabble rousers, bent on disrupting national peace and harmony, with nearly as much fervor as the actual slaveholders in whose very economic interests and political and moral intransigence the nation was hurtling toward the brink of civil discord. More controversially, he was an open advocate for conflict with the slave powers long before the first shot was ever fired on Fort Sumter. But Blight makes clear his moral voice was unwavering throughout. Douglass argued convincingly that without an end to the old slave system the Civil War was “little better than a gigantic enterprise for shedding human blood.” He believed that the salvation of the Union was intimately bound up with the liberation of the slave; the country needed black people to save it from itself and absolve its moral stains. He was a fierce advocate of the country’s virtues even as he denounced some of its most egregious failings.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln, historical events would soon vindicate the foresight of the abolitionist position: that there was no compromise with the slaveholding powers. Although Lincoln’s commitment to gradual and voluntary emancipation did mark a real shift in the government’s stance on slavery for the first time in history, he was no abolitionist firebrand. He had no intention to meddle with slavery where it already existed. Yet the south responded to his rather benign and cautious overtures by immediately blundering into the very conflagration Douglass sought. Douglass’s greatest strength, then, was the cultivation of wisdom and an historical perspective on human affairs. With the prophet’s sonorous cadence, he impels the listener, through the purifying intensity and evocative imagery of blood and redemption, to embrace the cause of humanity and freedom and reject the seductive appeal of political apathy and moral myopia.

The eloquent power and skilled facility of his words truly ranks him among the foremost orators of American history. Few people can really compare besides maybe Lincoln and MLK Jr. It would be quite a challenge, then, given the intense focus to which he’s already been subjected (including three autobiographies and numerous other academic studies), to say something unique and original about the man. Fortunately, David W. Blight is more than capable of composing a suitable biography to match the intellectual achievements of this towering figure. Backed by copious amounts of private correspondences, his book really soars with its sharp and incisive analysis of Douglass’s life, including his escape from slavery and his subsequent self reinvention, the development of his political conscience, his later disenchantment with the moral suasion philosophy of William Lloyd Garrison, and his careful high-wire act of maintaining a presence in two separate worlds: one as the comfortable, inveterate political insider bent on effecting change and progress from within, and the other as a fire-breathing revolutionary unencumbered by political realities, constraints, or niceties. He did not always strive successfully, but at least he strove — and did so with great courage and tenacity.

*Early 19th century anti-radical moderation was invariably tinged with the racial belief in white superiority. It presumed that the moral and political interests of black people could be subsumed and sacrificed on the altar of national peace with slaveholding whites. This was not the common sense of the moderate. This was the callow indifference of moral inaction and racial prejudices.

Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze, 2006 — The Wages of Destruction is an enormous book of grand strategy. Tooze sifts through the massive rubble of facts and figures to find the bonding element that unites Nazi ideology with its strategy for economic development, diplomacy, logistics, military, and war. In the process, he strenuously contradicts the classic view, still held commonly today, that the unparalleled military and economic might of Germany almost overwhelmed Britain and was only tempered by America’s massive industry, its “arsenal of democracy.”

This book is much too big to properly discuss in a short review, but there are many interesting insights found within its luminous (and voluminous) pages. Tooze’s central conceit is that Germany went to war in 1939 despite of, not because of, its industrial war machine, which could hardly hope to outproduce its rivals. Consider the fact that, in 1942, despite the usual bromides about the inferiority of its productive capabilities, the Soviet Union alone was manufacturing more weapons than the Germans could muster, even though this came at a stunning cost in lives (as the Soviets could no longer afford to produce enough food and materials to support the civilian economy). The Soviet margin in aircraft production stood at 2:1. In small arms and artillery it was 3:1. Tank production was a massive 4:1 advantage even with the excellent quality of the T34 tank. Allied assistance, which only began arriving in large quantities after the initial German offensive was repulsed, cannot fully account for the disparity in production. This insight points to a surprising conclusion: the Nazi military was not the massive unstoppable engine of destruction dreamed up in the fevered imagination of the Reich’s detractors and appeasers alike (including people such as Charles Lindbergh, who believed that German air superiority would reduce Britain to rubble). Disproportionately agrarian, inefficient, and not yet mechanized, Germany’s economy was smaller than Britain’s in absolute terms and even smaller than France’s in per capita terms.

Why, then, did Germany choose to launch a seemingly unwinnable war in the August of 1939? The answer, on the evidence, seems to be Hitler’s dark portent of national decline and its inviolable intertwining with racist doctrine. He conceived of the struggle between nations in purely apocalyptic terms, which he thought Germany had to win or be subsumed. Germany’s plan, such as it existed, was to marshal the entire resources of continental Europe to match the power of the United States on a global scale. Yet from the outset, the fundamental strategic dilemma which the regime could never solve was the vast material and economic superiority to its enemies. Despite Hitler’s early obsession with rearmament, his country could not obtain the material resources necessary to match the United States and Soviet Union on an economic scale without first beating them in a war, but war just served to expose the true extent of its inferiority. Germany’s initial victories over France and the Soviet Union, though resounding, were never enough to solve this dilemma. By the time Germany approached Moscow, it was already badly outrunning its supply lines, and the chance of victory was vastly receding. It was fighting a losing game.

Tooze also dispels the aura of the Albert Speer-led armament miracle later in the war which sought to transform Germany’s faltering fortunes. This was an industrial mirage dreamed up in the fevered imagination of a German propaganda machine that vastly exceeded the reality on the field. Tooze recounts a funny anecdote that reveals the extent of Germany’s inferiority. By the end of the war, the Nazi regime, broken and dysfunctional, was desperate for a solution that might turn the tide of war. One of its solutions was the Mark XXI U-boat, which the propagandists said would revolutionize the nature of submarine warfare in the Atlantic. However, like a collapsing house of cards, the model presented for Hitler’s birthday leaked so badly that it nearly sank, and it never made a material impact on the war. There’s a lesson somewhere in here about Germany’s vain attempt to contravene and turn back the tides of reality.

The Shadow Emperor: A Biography of Napoleon III by Alan Strauss-Schom, 2018 — The Shadow Emperor is a vivid portrait of a period in French history of which I knew nothing beforehand. It certainly strives toward the grandiose pretensions of its subject matter, but as a biography of the man himself, there are some major glaring weaknesses in the choice of material that keep it from greatness. The author spends an entire chapter delineating the gaudy and sumptuous parties of the French elite and another chapter on the cultural impact of the composer Jacques Offenbach. Both are fascinating topics, but they should not eclipse the biography of the man himself. In one of many unusual choices, this ancillary material seems to supersede other more important topics such as Napoleon’s election to the presidency of which he says almost nothing. Indochina also receives scant attention here.

While Strauss-Schom is very good on certain topics (the transformation of Paris into a major center of architecture, technology, and culture is a major theme of the book), the lack of true historical analysis poses a major problem overall. He attempts to cover so much material that I think the solution was to either scale back the ambition of the book (not my preferred choice) or expand it further. The author also has the tendency to name-drop all kinds of historical figures, both major and insignificant, even if they’re tangentially related to an event, but this adds nothing to the material.

Unfortunately, I have no prior experience in French history to comment on the veracity of the information here. I do plan to reread the Franco-Prussian war section of Christopher Clark’s Iron Kingdom to get a better sense of the events from the other side. The Shadow Emperor will have to suffice for now.