The Nazis' March to Chaos: The Hitler Era Through the Lenses of Chaos-Complexity Theory

(Hardback)

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Rather than a technical treatise based on equations, this study of the Hitler era in Germany from the standpoint of chaos-complexity theory is a narrative history based on a non-linear perspective. After defining basic chaos-complexity concepts and terms, like "sensitivity to initial conditions" and "fractals", the book explores the Third Reich as a chaotic system; the clash between the image of Nazi technical prowess and the anti-modernism in National Socialist ideology; and German and Nazi military tactics and doctrine as ways of coping with the chaos of war and imposing it upon the enemy. Beaumont also looks at attempts to instil the arrogance and rage of the Nazi Party's brown-shirted storm troops into the Wehrmacht through the National Socialist Leadership Officer programme, the "Nazi Commissars". What were the intricate causal roots of the Endloesung or Final Solution Why did the Allies refuse to mount a direct attack on the Nazi infrastructure responsible for the Holocaust The study concludes with a discussion of paradoxes and implications, considering such questions as whether Nazism was a form of chaos, in the theoretical sense of its being a degree of order within apparently random turbulence, or a kind of recurring pathology, as well as whether social and historical processes are tractable to chaos-complexity-based analyses.

Reviews

.,."Beaumont's study of the Hitler era contains many insightful gems on a wide range of topics conveyed in...delightful and often exciting prose."-The Journal of Military History
...Beaumont's study of the Hitler era contains many insightful gems on a wide range of topics conveyed in...delightful and often exciting prose.-The Journal of Military History
In the end, Beaumont...provides sufficient analysis to answer the basic question of his thesis: "How much does looking at history through the lense of chaos-complexity theory offer new and useful perpesctives on how history is crafted by historians and how it actually works" The answer one draws from this seminal work, that amalgamates science with history, is a thought-provoking and unique way of exploring the contraditions that make up the "tachycardia of horrors" like the Hitlerzeit.-Military Heritage
..."Beaumont's study of the Hitler era contains many insightful gems on a wide range of topics conveyed in...delightful and often exciting prose."-The Journal of Military History
"In the end, Beaumont...provides sufficient analysis to answer the basic question of his thesis: "How much does looking at history through the lense of chaos-complexity theory offer new and useful perpesctives on how history is crafted by historians and how it actually works" The answer one draws from this seminal work, that amalgamates science with history, is a thought-provoking and unique way of exploring the contraditions that make up the "tachycardia of horrors" like the Hitlerzeit."-Military Heritage

Author Bio

ROGER BEAUMONT is Professor of History at Texas A&M University. A co-founder and North American editor of the journal Defense Analysis from 1983-1989, he has authored 11 books and monographs, the most recent being War, Chaos, and History (Praeger, 1994), and over 70 book chapters and articles. He served two active duty tours as a military police officer and has lectured at higher military schools in Europe and the United States.