Hitler's handlers.

• Author: Dempsey, Joe
• Position: WHAT HITLER KNEW: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy by Zachary Shore Oxford University Press

WHAT HITLER KNEW: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy by Zachary Shore Oxford University Press, $29.95

JUST WHAT ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN and Kim Jong-II up to? Zachary Shore's new book, What Hitler Knew, reminds those seeking an answer that even dictators don't enjoy complete control over their governments. They may not be impeded by a constitutional system of checks and balances, as American presidents are, but they can certainly be hampered by a limitation all too familiar to Washington Monthly readers: the behavior of the bureaucrats they oversee.

Shores intriguing book examines the archived papers of several important Nazi-era diplomats and foreign policy officials in an effort w piece together how well informed Hitler was--or wasn't--about Germany's foreign adversaries in the period leading up to World War II and how, in at least one case, that may have accelerated the oncoming war.

In a sense, this project is something like a historical GAO report, tracing the flow of information up the chain of command in an effort to pinpoint where it broke down.

Shore, who has served as a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and brings an insider's expertise to his subject, begins his investigation shortly after Hitler took office in 1933. Despite the dramatic change of leadership, Germany's foreign ministry bureaucracy experienced no wholesale house cleaning. Instead, Hitler inherited a ministry teeming with socially elite Weimar-era career officials like Foreign Minister Constantin Freiherr von Neurath, who were versed in the "rigid lines of hierarchical command" through which the ministry operated.

All of that changed when Hitler came to power. German citizens, including those in the government, were frightened by his infamous purges, such as the Night of the Long Knives, in which at least 77 people were killed (including a former chancellor) and more than 1,100 arrested. Hitler's SS also "struck to eliminate rivals, to settle old scores, and, above all, to leave their mark." By creating a climate of distrust, uncertainty, and fear, his regime inadvertently denied itself the benefit of receiving important foreign policy information. Instead of performing their jobs, the first priority for career officers quickly became protecting their own livelihoods (and lives).

As a result, many foreign ministry officials like Neurath began hoarding information as a means of self-protection. By reading--and then...