The Order of the Day

By: Éric Vuillard, Mark Polizzotti - translator

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Winner of the 2017 Prix Goncourt, this eye-opening account of the muddled forces at work behind the Anschluss brilliantly dismantles the myth of a glorious and inevitable Nazi victory.

February 20, 1933: on an unremarkable day during a harsh Berlin winter, a meeting of twenty-four German captains of industry and senior Nazi dignitaries is being held in secret in the plush lounges of the Reichstag. They are there to "stump up" funding for the accession to power of the National Socialist Party and its fearsome Chancellor. This inaugural scene sets the tone of consent which will lead to the worst possible repercussions.

March 12, 1938: the annexation of Austria is on the agenda and a grotesque day ensues that is intended to make history: the newsreels capture for eternity a motorized army, a terrible, inexorable power. But behind Goebbels's splendid propaganda, it is an ersatz Blitzkrieg which unfolds, the Panzers breaking down en mass on the roads of Austria. The true behind-the-scenes story of the Anschluss - a patchwork of minor shows of strength and fine words, a string of fevered telephone calls and vulgar threats - reveals a starkly different picture: it is no longer strength of character or the determination of a people that wins the day, but rather a combination of intimidation and bluff.

With this vivid, compelling history, Éric Vuillard warns against the perils of willfully blind acquiescence, and offers a crucial reminder that, ultimately, the worst is not inescapable.

©2018 Actes Sud. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation © 2018 by Mark Polizzotti.

meh

informative, but kinda boring. didn't capture me. it's read well though. I don't know of I would recommend this out side of an academic context

The Price to Pay for Appeasement

Besides being a lesson on appeasement, this book also serves as a wider critique on business leaders and mega-millionaires who have no choice to involve themselves in politics. We know the story already, and so there is nothing shocking that comes from the end of the bigger story. The shock instead comes from the pitiful ways in which otherwise fine men might act and the individual men (mostly)—great and common—who dealt with the extreme terror that surrounded them. It makes you wonder what you might do in this situation.

The writing is brilliant, putting you right in the center of whatever situation the principal players find themselves and the condemnation in the narrator’s voice is justified for this type of narrative.

I was also wonderfully pleased by the small “fun” facts scattered about the book. I’m a huge WWll fan, and this book still resonated with me in a profound way.

Interesting but

Some shocking revelations but the story is dragged down by quite a heavy handed imagining of what people “must have” thought and felt.

Dramatized reading of a moment in history

No incredible depth or new knowledge found, but a more exciting, dramatic retelling of a known story, with compelling asides.

fascinating book

Fascinating and worthwhile. Nationalism as a pretext to undermine human rights and democratic traditions ends badly.