Proszę o przetłumaczenie w miarę możliwości jednej, czy dwóch, ile kto może, niestety nie mogę znaleźć recenzji tej książki po polsku, znalazłam jedynie po angielsku a że go słabiutko znam (bo studiuję fil. germanską) więc prosze o pomoc! ;-) z góry wielkie dzięki! :)
1.There is not much positive one can say about the Nazi era in Germany but I cannot accuse them of being dull. There are various events that still fascinates the world generations after their demise.
The Night of the Long Knives is just one fascinating event that intrigues people even today. In a 209 page book I expected to be intrigued and informed about that event as I had never been intrigued and informed before. I was not.
Paul Maracin revealed little that has not been revealed before. This book was written in 2004 so I would expect him to have access to files that previous researchers did not have access to for various reasons. I realize many records may have been destroyed but still I thought I would learn something I did not know before. Instead, very few of his sources were contemporary so his book ended up being just a regurgitation of what others had written -- and poor regurgitation at that.
Maracin devotes the first part of the book -- the first 83 pages -- to a brief biography of many of the players in the Night of the Long Knives -- Hitler, Rohm, Goering, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler, Heydrich, and Bormann. Maracin then pages 85 - 118 to the events leading up to Hitler's assumption of power and what he did to tighten his grip on Germany leading up to 30 Jun 1934. Chapter 13, pages 119 - 140 -- only 21 pages -- was devoted to the Night of the Long Knives. The remainder of the book -- pages 141 - 209 (four more chapters and an epilogue) -- was like a long conclusion of what happened afterwards and what might have been had the Night of the Long Knives had not occurred.
The Night of the Long Knives was a fascinating event that had ramifications throughout the history of the Third Reich. Maracin is right in that respect. But his account of the Night of the Long Knives was not fascinating. It was just a rehash of what others had written with 188 pages of fluff surrounding the event.
2. In this fascinating little book, author Paul R. Maracin tells the story of the Nazi destruction of the SA (Brown Shirts) on June 30, 1934. The book begins by telling the story of the rise of the Nazi party, through a series of biographies of the prominent Nazi leaders. Over the course of more than half the book, these biographies take the reader from World War I, though the ruthless activities of the Nazis, and on to the squabble between Hitler and Rohm (the leader of the SA), and the orgy of violence that was the Night of Long Knives.
After taking so long to reach the Night, the activities of those two days are covered in a surprisingly quick and almost perfunctory manner. After that, the story moves on to cover the rest of the history of the Nazi party, finally ending with Nuremburg, and the fate of the surviving plotters of the Night.
OK, what can I say about this book? First of all, I must say that I really enjoyed reading it. I have not read much about the Nazi leaders, and the crimes that they committed. This book did an excellent job of introducing me to them, and showing me what they were actually like. That alone was worth my time in reading the book.
On the other hand, though, so little of this book is actually given over to the events of those "forty-eight hours that changed the history of the world" that the title seems almost misleading.
But, that said, I found this to be a fascinating and enlightening book that told me a lot about the Nazis and the Night of Long Knives that I have never read before. So, I would say that if you already know a lot about the Nazis and are interested in the events of that Night, then you might be rather disappointed. If, like me though, you do not know a lot about the Nazis, then you will enjoy this book.
3.Paul R. Maracin's book, "The Night of the Long Knives: Forty-Eight Hours That Changed the History of the World" runs just over 200 pages. Unfortunately only about forty or so actually deal with the events of June 30- July 2, 1934. Instead, Maracin goes into a relatively deep background of Hitler's cronies leading up to the seizure of power in 1933, briefly describes the Rohm Purge, then spends the last third of the book describing how the various actors met their deaths at the end of the Second World War. I was hoping for a more detailed look at Hitler's strike against the SA, and was disappointed to find that many other books on the rise of Nazism cover this subject much better without it being billed as the focus of the work, (see Anthony Read's "The Devil's Disciples" for instance.)
Too often Maracin plays to the sensational and is too ready to accept unfounded conspiracy theories. For instance, though most professional historians accept that van der Lubbe acted alone in starting the Reichstag Fire in 1933, Maracin writes prodigiously about how only Goring and the SA could do it, and states what is blatantly not true, that "the consensus was (and still is) that the Nazis themselves were responsible for the arson and that Lubbe was merely a dupe" (Pg. 101). Maracin's dramatic writing style and forceful declarations really show the author for what he is- an amateur historian. Indeed, Maracin even fails to include something as basic as source notes for his work.
This book is not completely without merit, of course, and there is some really good information here, but I would recommend this book only after a deep reading of many other authors on the subject of Nazism as a counterweight. For the general reader this book contains too many mistakes and half-truths to be taken as a serious work of history.