There has been alot of talk in the ether-world this week about the Third Reich tour "The Face of Evil: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - see http://www.historicaltrips.com/ - that I am launching with two colleagues in the summer.
It all kicked off with a fairly ludicrous and irresponsible piece in the Sunday Times last weekend, which suggested that the tour was a "Hitler Holiday" and a "perverse pilgrimage". Other commentators have picked up on their lead this week, to describe the tour as "tawdry" and "indelicate".
By way of a response:
Don't believe everything you read online or in the papers: Both the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday ran items on this last weekend - yet surprisingly it was the Mail that did so with restraint and maturity, reporting it as a travel story, rather than a 'news controversy' angle that the Sunday Times adopted, falling back on all the hoary old stereotypes and customary hyperbolic nonsense.
Most of the other footage that has done the rounds of the internet this week has (sadly) fed off the Sunday Times' 'controversy' angle, in many cases getting increasingly wrong and increasingly ludicrous as it went. One online report stated that we promised to take our guests to "the lakeside villa" (so far, so good) "where Hitler planned the construction of Sachsenhausen concentration camp". If, as I suspect, they are referring to Wannsee - then this was where the Holocaust was planned, and Hitler was not actually at the meeting - indeed, so far as I know, never set foot in the place.
It is hard to imagine a more spectacular case of chinese whispers - or history more egregiously mangled by ill-informed, lazy journalists. So, if you want to read the truth of the trip - go to our website - http://www.historicaltrips.com/
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