Albert Speer actually believed Petain when the old soldier told him Versailles was in Illinois.
Axis of Incompetence
Lessons from the Nazis on how not to run an empire.
Reviewed by Andrew Nagorski
Sunday, October 12, 2008; BW04
HITLER’S EMPIRE
How the Nazis Ruled Europe
By Mark Mazower
Penguin Press. 726 pp. $39.95
Surveying Nazi Germany’s conquests shortly after it invaded the Soviet Union, Hitler’s minister of economics boasted: “Never before in the history of the world has there been such an economy to administer.” Germany was indeed the master of most of Europe at that point, and its armies were marching quickly into Russia. But in Hitler’s Empire, Columbia University historian Mark Mazower spells out how ill-prepared the Germans were for their string of early victories — and how completely they botched the administration of their empire.
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Image: (Photo) via Bettmann/Corbis