The Heart of Darkness

T Lothrop Stoddard (1883-1950) was a controversial American writer with a White supremacist orientation. “Into the Darkness”, first published in 1940, describes the author's travels in Nazi Germany, Slovakia and Hungary.

Stoddard was commissioned to write about conditions in the Third Reich and some of its neighbors as a correspondent of the North American Newspaper Alliance, a syndicate of mainstream US newspapers. His visit to Germany took place shortly after the invasion of Poland. The German allies Slovakia and Hungary were still nominally neutral. Since the main phase of the war hadn't begun yet, conditions in Germany were “peaceful”, permitting the American correspondent to crisscross the country, talk to people from all walks of life, and attempt to describe the normal workings of the National Socialist system. Stoddard managed to get interviews with several prominent Nazis, including Goebbels and Himmler. Eventually, he was granted the rare privilege of an audience with Hitler himself. His impressions of Hitler don't match any other (pro nor con), a curios fact Stoddard notes himself.

Stoddard's “objective” tone might be the main problem of “Into the Darkness”, since you can't really be objective about Hitler's Reich. Even the term “darkness” is neutral, referring to the German blackout, rather than to Nazi evil. If you can stomach this, the book is actually extremely interesting. Stoddard is a good writer with an excellent eye for details. He describes the Nazi war economy at some length, including its pseudo-socialist features. There are chapters on the German Labor Front, the Hitler Youth, the National Socialist Party and the SS. One fascinating chapter describes the “medieval” farmers of northern Germany. More disturbingly, Stoddard describes the work of a eugenics court. The author believed that the Nazis had relatively wide-spread support, since they imposed order and created a relatively stable economy after decades of inflation and depression. Most Germans also believed that Central Europe was their natural sphere of influence, and that the German people was fighting for its very survival against the British.

Occasionally, Stoddard's reports sound slightly absurd, as when he visits the small puppet state of Slovakia and realizes that conditions in this God-forsaken country are much better than in Berlin and Vienna. Nominally neutral, Slovakia was not subject to the British blockade, nor to any blackout. For the first time in weeks, Stoddard could order a tasty schnitzel and visit some real cafés!

Inevitably, the most disturbing part of “Into the Darkness” concerns the Jews. Remember, Stoddard visited Germany in 1939-40. The death camps were still in the future. Yet, he takes it as a given that the Nazis want to physically exterminate the Jews and/or send them to a “reservation” in southern Poland! This raises all kinds of questions about the Holocaust, who knew what and when, etc.

This edition of Theodore Lothrop Stoddard's book is published by the British right-wing extremist press Ostara (somewhat ironically, it's actually printed in Poland). Ostara claims that “Into the Darkness” was suppressed after the war. I don't know how Stoddard felt about the US entry into World War II, but his views on eugenics and White racial supremacy were probably enough to make him persona non grata in polite company after the defeat of Hitler and Greater Germany. While I obviously don't like the author's political views, I will nevertheless give his “uncensored report” from the heart of darkness five stars, since it's highly interesting in its own right.