The Order of the Day

French author Eric Vuillard has written a very short book - if it was fiction, you'd call it a novella - about Nazi Germany. "The Order of the Day" begins and ends with short chapters about the major German industrialists of the 1930's and how they threw their support to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. There were no clean hands among the Thyssens, the Krupps, or the other armament merchants who made nothing but money in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Money made using the free labor from concentration inmates, most of whom were literally worked to death.The middle part of the book is devoted to the machinations behind the German takeover of Austria in March, 1938. This included both political and armed threats directed at the existing Austrian government by the Germans and by the Austrian Nazi party. Vuillard gives interesting details about the German soldiers and dignitaries - including Adolf Hitler, returning to a city that he felt had rejected him in 1908.My problem with Eric Vuillard's book is that I felt that he wrote the book at a sort of emotional remove. His writing seemed to hover above the events and the people. It's a tough concept to try to explain in a book review and thankfully I don't feel that way about many books. I don't know know if this was in Vuillard's original writing or was the result of the book being translated from French to English.I can advise you to read Eric Vuillard's book if the topic interests you. But you might find yourself looking at the events from above.

A short book, but long on thought. This is a brilliantly written account by a French author of the take over of a welcoming Austria by Hitler's Germany and the complicity of still existing and thriving corporations in this crime.Having a prior understanding of the history of the era, while helpful, is not essential.The book has no chapter notes, so one relies simply on the accuracy of the author. This, to me, seems justified after reading this poetic history of a particularly dark episode of time.

About 70% of this book is filled with irrelevant asides. I have less understanding now of what happened when Germany annexed Austria than I had before I read this book. More a series of off topic ruminations than a history. Avoid this at all costs.

Vuillard, author and filmmaker, dramatizes the Anschluss (Spring, 1938), filling his short book with anger and thinly veiled derision. Setting the scene, early in the book, with his characterization of the Hitler Schuschnigg meeting in Berchtesgaden, Vuillard queries “[w]hat was he [the Austrian chancellor] doing in this hornet’s nest?” All but captive and intimidated, Schuschnigg capitulated in the face of Nazi threat, contending he was coerced into the agreement to make Austria a German state. He is “easy pickings” for Vuillard who excoriates him, calling him a “pinhead,” ignoring the immense pressure on him and Austria and deriding his imprisonment once he stepped down. What follows after is more of the same; fiction masquerading as history. Vuillard’s book is possessed of the shallowness of the modern trend towards cinematic history, fueled by palpable anger, slim on details and devoid of historiographic scholarship.

I thought I was buying a novelistic interpretation of the annexation of Austria, 1938. What I received instead was a jejune political diatribe on the human condition, democracy, capitalism etc. One star beyond one for decent writing skills even in translation but the joke wears thin fast even in a book this short. Sad really.

The Order of the Day is a small volume which can be easily read in one sitting. The author is Eric Vuillard who is a French man. As a longtime student of World War II and Nazi Germany I enjoyed the book for its excellent and impressionistic literary style. In its few pages we see how mediocre corporate giants were swept into the cobweb of crime that was the notorious Third Reich. These moguls supported the Nazis with big checks and dull minds as they led their beloved Fatherland into the maw of the monster Hitler. Hitler's abuse of the Austrian chancellor is a tour de force of descriptive writing as Austria came under the hegemony of the evil regime in Berlin. The only problem I had with the book was that it was too short! I hope the author continues to write about the Third Reich and applaud him for his excellent writing skills.

Its hard to imagine a more disappointing book. The claim it won an award, the 2017 Prix Goncourt, really would make me question the validity of this award. This book, I guess is mostly about the Austrian Anschluss (annexation) by Nazi Germany in 1939. Yet honestly I’m not entirely certain as it wandered a lot between various aspects of Nazi history and contemporary times. To even call this a history is a little circumspect as well since no sources are cited, and no bibliography is listed. Finally the writing is mostly unpolished and too casual for serious historiography — nothing close to what should be award winning. One unreal sentence was a rambling 177 words. Apparently the editor took a vacation the day that chapter was scheduled for a review. The only redeeming feature of the book is that it does present some interesting nuggets of information and observations about this era (which makes it worth a second star), but besides that, the book is virtually unredeemable. My advice is to skip it.

To me this book is extraordinary. The literary style is remarkable. I loved this book. The historically accurate narrative borders on the lyrical. I wish the book was longer and I hope the author puts his considerable literary skills to further writings on the topic of WW2.

Takes strange and absurd moments in Hitler's exercise of power and creates a great sense of place and importance through detail and speculation.For a short book it gets to the point .I feel someone has shaken all the history books and picked out some shining gems and presented them as if to say look at that, look at it again it's us now.

Peculiarly written or translated, very drawn out, shallow and with a sense of unentitled grandiosity.The author takes many pages to reach one pertinent event or issue, a number of things get unnecessarily repeated, and overall the plot is very 'thin' and anticlimactical, with the book certainly not delivering what it was hyped to do in some reviews.The whole 'book' could have been written in about 40 pages. All the 'infill' - meant I imagine to give some sort of authoritative 'atmosphere' falls flat in my opinion, and the often overly intricate language used smacks of self-importance or self indulgence by the author rather than displaying any particular literary skill or actual assistance to the reader.While the books have me a couple of small new insights about possible events at that time, it has otherwise been pretty much a waste of money (not much, fortunately) and a waste of time spent reading it looking for much more substance and many more gems or insights which never appeared.

A short little hardback title but well worth reading. It covers the European events surrounding the Anschluss or annexation of Austria, looking in detail at the personalities and behaviour of those involved. Very well written but disappointingly all too brief.

Not read anything quite like this a very different view of a time we are taught about in schools would tell anyone interested in these events to read it

I enjoyed the book having been made aware of it by a radio 4 production and as such think it a very good 'gateway' for further enquiry into the subject matter discussed ... It is oft forgotten that the 3rd Reich would never have succeeded had it not been for the industrialists and bankers support. There is a common thread running through the events of the 20th Century and that is the banking industry. I would recommend readers also read Adam Lebor's ''Tower of Basel'' for fuller factual account.