WWII historians: What is your opinion of Timothy Snyder's argument that Hitler was neither the nationalist nor the totalitarian he is depicted as, but rather saw the world through an "ecological" lens?

by DaaraJ

Full disclosure: I have not read Snyder's new book but in this interview with him in The Atlantic his general thesis is made fairly clear.

The tl;dr of the interview is that Hitler saw the concept of the State as an ecological aberration perpetuated by the Jews and his ultimate goal was the complete destruction of the State in all forms, hence allowing the supreme race to emerge.

Basically I'm just curious how is Snyder's argument being received among his peers.

Ultraximus

Small clarification: Snyder only claims (at least that is how I understood it) that Hitler (certainly) used (nationalism and totalitarianism) them as a tool for achieving his main goal. His argument is that Third Reich was different from other nationalist dictatorships and left-wing party states that we have ever seen. For Hitler, German State was not the main purpose or his end goal, but rather the German Race. He uses term "racial anarchist" to describe Hitler, which in some way makes sense.

I have not either read his most recent book (but I have read Bloodlands, and it was very well written and his main argument is compelling), planning to do so in the coming weeks. Meanwhile I would suggest to read this long read which is based on one of the book's chapter, or the[ LSE lecture] (http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=3200) with Anne Applebaum.