Nazi Silly Season

It seems a sort of Hitler-silly-season has descended upon us in recent weeks.

Last week, we had the rather frivolous story of Hitler’s bedsheets coming up for auction.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065162/Hitlers-bed-linen-embroidered-swastika-eagle-initials-goes-sale.html
All well and good, you might say, – and after all the bedlinen was duly monogrammed and festooned with swastikas, so is still of (at least passing) historical interest – but did the story really warrant the coverage that it received? I think not.

Then, last weekend, I was dismayed to read another nonsense story about Hitler in the newspapers, this time attempting to breathe life into the hoary old tale of his having visited the UK in the years before the First World War. We have long had the myth of his having visited Liverpool – which was put out after the war by his half-brother and sister-in-law (who did live in Liverpool), in a cynical attempt to flog an otherwise uninteresting memoir. But now, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3961409/Hitlers-visit-to-London.html the story has sadly been resurrected, apparently on the back of a BBC TV documentary, and further gloss is being added to the mythology. It is claimed that the future Führer visited London, went to see Tower Bridge and even “enjoyed a pint” down the local pub.

Now, as far as I know, there never was any proof that Hitler ever visited Liverpool (beyond the cynical, desperate reminiscences of his estranged former half-sister-in-law), yet now it seems he not only visited Liverpool, but also London, and he even went about to see the sights. Perhaps he even did some watercolours? I’d love to see the proof of all these fevered imaginings, but I would bet my next royalty cheque that there isn’t any.

All this Hitler-themed poppycock comes hard on the heels of another attempted resurrection, this time of perhaps the greatest myth of all in the Hitler canon – the suggestion that he escaped Berlin and lived out his days in Argentina. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050137/Did-Hitler-Eva-Braun-flee-Berlin-die-old-age-Argentina.html (believe it or not, the Daily Mail is actually the most respectable ‘source’ for this report – apart from that it is wackos all the way down)
The reason that this crazy story resurfaced is that it has recently appeared in a book, which astonishingly manages to incorporate almost every Third Reich mystery and conspiracy theory into one bizarre and none-too-believable tale.

Of course, this sort of codswallop is all over the internet. But then, the “World Weird Web” is chock-full of Holocaust deniers, Flat-Earthers and those that refuse to believe that Osama Bin Laden was behind 9-11. Just because they all subscribe to a nonsense theory – doesn’t make it true. And, as before, there is not a shred of credible proof to back up such fanciful imaginings. Trust me, I have had the misfortune to read it…

So, all you hacks, part-time hobby historians and conspiracy theorists, let’s give Hitler a rest for a while, shall we? Serious study of the Third Reich and its Führer is all well and good – but crud such as this is in danger not only of giving us all a bad name, but also of leading an already credulous public even further up the garden path.

Fuhrerbau in Munich

Been a while - busy busy...

Anyway - just back from the inaugural "Historical Trips" tour - all a tremendous success.

Just a quick post here to mention one of the sites that we visited - a rather impromptu visit in fact, as it was not in the original itinerary - the Fuehrerbau in Munich.



Completed in 1937 from plans drawn up by Hitler's first 'court architect' Paul Ludwig Troost (who died in 1934), the building served as Hitler's office when he was in Munich and was the location for the famed Munich Conference of September 1938, where Czechoslovakia was dismembered and the principle of collective security died a death...

Interestingly, the building also stood cheek-by-jowl with one of the 'Honour Temples' in which the Nazi 'martyrs' of 1923 were laid to rest. Naturally, that building - as the very centrepiece of Nazi martyrology was demolished, and only its concrete foundations remain. But the neighbouring Fuehrerbau was permitted to remain after the war, primarily as it served the occupying US Army as a administrative building. It now is home to the Munich School of Music.



Thanks to such vicissitudes, the interior of the building is largely untouched. And it is a spectacular example of totalitarian architecture, not only with its coffered, neo-classical ceiling (right), but also its extensive use of Hitler's favourite red marble (left).

I did half-heartedly try to find Hitler's office - which was supposedly on the southern end of the building on the first floor. However, all I found there were the students' toilets... Who said the Germans didn't have a sense of humour?

Of Fascists and Islamofascists

In November 1923, Adolf Hitler tried to bring down the German state. In his famous 'Beer Hall Putsch', he and his followers marched through Munich in a re-run of Mussolini's 'March on Rome' of the previous year, which had brought the latter to power in Italy.

Hitler, however, failed. Faced down by the massed ranks of the Bavarian police, he and his men were mown down in a narrow Munich street. 16 of their number were killed and Hitler himself escaped with a dislocated shoulder. He was later arrested and charged with high treason.

He stood trial in February of the following year. Amidst a blaze of publicity, Hitler exploited the opportunity to promote his ideas from the dock. The authorities were lenient; sympathetic to Hitler's motives, if not his methods. Though found guilty, he was sentenced to 5 years 'fortress confinement' - a gentler form of imprisonment with no hard labour and comfortable cells. Moreover, of this 5 years, Hitler served less than 9 months, being pardoned and released in later December 1924.

This leniency towards the right was commonplace in Germany at this time. Anton Arco-Valley, for instance, had murdered the Bavarian premier Kurt Eisner in Munich in broad daylight in 1919, yet was praised by the prosecutor at his trial, who stated that: "If the whole of German youth were imbued with such a glowing enthusiasm, we could face the future with confidence." Arco-Valley was initially condemned to death, before the judge reduced the sentence to 5 years, which again was served in 'fortress confinement'.

Another example was the Munich chief-of-police Ernst Pohner, who protected right-wing criminals and covered up right-wing crimes in the early 1920s. When asked if there were extremist death squads operating in and around the city, he famously relplied "Yes, but too few of them."

Germany's toleration of its extreme right in the 1920s may have been political grandstanding, but it would nonetheless have profound consequences. Within less than a decade of his trial, Hitler would be appointed Chancellor of Germany; The Third Reich, World War Two and the Holocaust followed.

Today - rather than fascists - we are assailed by a new enemy within - Islamofascists - who are just as bigoted, just as misguided, and just as contemptuous of our laws and traditions as Hitler and his cohorts were. Like the Nazis, theirs is a totalitarian ideology which will brook no compromise, views tolerance as weakness, and fetishises martyrdom.

But how do we respond to this challenge? Do we learn the lessons of history? Do we stand up for what we believe in? Face the threat robustly, confident in ourselves? Steadfast in defence of our traditions?

Sadly no. As the preposterously lenient sentence in the trial of Emdadur Choudhury demonstrates - this is a battle that the west seems to be hell-bent on losing. Having hamstrung ourselves with so much empty talk of 'rights', 'respect' and 'tolerance', we are clearly unable even to identify the threat posed to our civilisation, much less engage it.

After his failed putsch, Hitler vowed to use democratic means to destroy German democracy - to undermine it from within, using freedom of speech, pluralism and tolerance to weaken and finally destroy those same noble concepts. Our modern foes are utilising the same tactics, exploiting human rights, freedom of speech and tolerance, in an attempt to destroy our system and our way of life from within... The question is: How should we respond?

Third Reich Tour "Controversy"

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/

Tim Snyder's "Bloodlands"

The second review is for Tim Snyder's excellent new book "Bloodlands" . This review was first published in the BBC History Magazine in October 2010.

There are many studies available that document the most brutal chapters of 20th Century history. The Holocaust is well-covered in both scholarly and popular volumes, and even lesser-known subjects, such as the Soviet ‘Great Terror’, the Warsaw Risings and the post-war expulsions of the Germans, have all found their own champions in print.

Yet, to date, nobody has sought to place all these grim examples of man’s inhumanity to man into a single all-encompassing narrative. That is the task that Yale historian Timothy Snyder set for himself with his new book “Bloodlands”.

Snyder concentrates his attentions on the very epicentre of those horrors – the ‘Bloodlands’ of the title – the territories between Germany and Russia comprising mainly of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, which bore the brunt of the killing in the mid 20th Century. It was there, he suggests, that the two most murderous totalitarian regimes of the time competed, co-operated and overlapped through twenty of the darkest years of human history. Consequently, it was there that as many as 14 million lives were lost: not through military action, but through deliberate state policy – starvation, execution, maltreatment and gassing.

Snyder is an excellent guide through this man-made hell. A talented historian and storyteller, he expertly negotiates an extremely complex story, debunking myths, correcting misconceptions and providing context, analysis and human interest in equal measure, always with a sympathetic ear for the victims themselves.

His holistic approach is a novel one: modern scholarship and political convention prefer to view Nazi and Soviet crimes in isolation. It is also not uncontroversial, as there are vested interests who would seek to proclaim one or other episode as unique, or especially worthy of study.

Yet, as Snyder explains, the myriad victims of those events did not have the luxury of drawing such distinctions; they were often condemned to compare, most immediately when the two regimes worked in nefarious concert with each other, or when one totalitarian overlord was replaced by his rival. History demands that we, of later more blessed generations, do not shrink from such difficult comparisons. Snyder himself certainly does not, addressing the thorny issue in a thoughtful and thought-provoking final chapter.

If there are quibbles, they are minor. Though stylistically strong, Snyder’s text is dense, packed with information and nuggets of wisdom. It demands positive engagement from the reader. Moreover, there is a suspicion that the author has been a little too inclusive in his selection of events. His overarching argument would have been just as well made, for instance, without the addition of a chapter on the Stalinist anti-Semitic purges of the 1950s, which after all delivered only a handful of victims, and for all their distaste, sit rather incongruously alongside other, more murderous, chapters.

Yet, these are petty concerns. “Bloodlands” is an excellent, imaginative and authoritative book, which tells the grim story of the greatest human and demographic tragedy in European history with exemplary clarity. Snyder set out to give a human face to the many millions of victims of totalitarianism. He has succeeded admirably.

© Roger Moorhouse 2010

Adrian Weale's "SS - A New History"

Been a while away from here - busy launching my new book "Berlin at War" - so a couple of reviews to catch up with...

The first is for Adrian Weale's "The SS - A New History". This review was first published in the Financial Times.

Every writer – and every publisher – cherishes novelty. We all need a new angle, a new interpretation or new material. The word ‘new’, therefore, seems to be the sprinkling of gold dust that accompanies every publication.

So, too Adrian Weale’s new history of the SS. Given that the last large-scale studies of Himmler’s black-clad elite were published a generation or so ago, Weale has certainly timed his book well.

He has also chosen a subject that exerts an enduring if often ghoulish fascination. From its origins as a personal bodyguard to Hitler, the SS developed into the most loyal and ideologically committed organisation in the Third Reich. The very vanguard of Nazism, it was a movement whose authorship and complicity in some of the era’s most heinous crimes would earn it criminal status at the end of the war and the darkest of reputations.

Moreover – and curiously given the acres of print routinely devoted to the subject of Nazism and the Third Reich – there are still questions about the SS that remain to be addressed; such as how a select garde du corps morphed in wartime into a motley body of warriors nearly a million strong; or precisely how the vast economic empire of the SS – which handled everything from the fruit of its prisoners’ labours to the gold teeth of its Jewish victims – was integrated into the wider German economy. Overarching them all, of course, is the question that Weale poses for himself at the outset of his book - how the soldiers of the SS willingly participated in some of the most bestial operations in human history; the mass murder of men, women and children.

There should be much, then, for any new history of the SS to discuss. The organisation’s intellectual and political world, for instance, a curious mix of think-tanks and thugs, high-flown theory and murderous practice, would be worth some investigation.

Also, the new morality of the SS would surely merit a chapter. It was this, after all, that provided the pseudo-philosophical underpinning that enabled many SS men to do what they did. Liberated from ‘outmoded’ concepts such as pity or Christianity, they saw mankind sorted into a league-table of races with Aryans and Nordics at the top and Jews and Slavs consigned to the status of vermin. In their ruthless and murderous treatment of these latter categories, they viewed themselves as soldiers in a Darwinian, life-and-death struggle for racial superiority, through which they would forge the new Germany.

For all its potential, Weale’s book addresses few of these points, however. It is certainly well-constructed and well-paced, providing an easy-reading account of the salient points in the story. It also provides useful potted biographies of the main characters – Himmler and Heydrich – as well as those lesser-known villains such as Christian Wirth, Franz Stangl and Odilo Globocnik, and the solitary hero Kurt Gerstein, who infiltrated the SS solely to report to the outside world on its murderous activities. Yet, crucially, it offers little that is genuinely new.

Weale’s is a competent and engaging synthesis, but there is more to the story, and more is required if the adjective ‘new’ is to be appended to the book with any real justification.

Part of the problem is the author’s choice of sources. Lacking German, it appears, Weale is left with a rather restricted range of material with which to work. Unable to avail himself of the many academic studies and specific investigations that have appeared in recent years, therefore, he concentrates primarily on published, English-language volumes, which though sound, do not provide sufficient depth or variety.

As a result, though there is ample scope for a more thorough-going and thoughtful approach to the subject, Weale’s book is disappointingly pedestrian, telling most readers little that they didn’t already know. Though he tells his story well enough, Weale does not provide enough in the way of a novel approach, a new interpretation, or fresh insights. The ‘new’ history of the SS, it seems, still awaits its author.

© Roger Moorhouse 2010

Trautmann's Journey

“Trautmann’s Journey”
by Catrine Clay
Yellow Jersey, £16.99, 340pp, index, notes, illustrations.
In a year in which Anglo-German footballing rivalry might well be rekindled in South Africa, it is perhaps timely that a new book should recall the remarkable contribution made to the English game by “Traut the Kraut” - Bert Trautmann. One of the most iconic figures of domestic post-war football, Trautmann is the only man ever to have been awarded both the Iron Cross and the OBE, and is most famous for breaking his neck in the 1956 FA Cup Final - and playing on.

Beyond these headlines, however, Catrine Clay’s new biography – “Trautmann’s Journey” – reveals a fascinating back-story. Born in humble circumstances in Bremen in 1923, Trautmann was tall, blond and athletic and excelled at sport. He joined the Hitler Youth, then the Paratroopers, spending three years on the Eastern Front in which he was briefly captured by the Soviets and even witnessed a massacre of Ukrainian Jews. Transferred to the west in 1944, he then fought in Normandy, Arnhem and in the Ardennes before literally stumbling into British captivity, where he was greeted with the words “Fancy a cup of tea, Fritz?” He would be one of only 90 of his unit of 1,000 to survive the war.

Yet, for all these experiences, Trautmann himself admits that his real education began when he reached English shores in the spring of 1945. Transferred into the POW camp system in the north-west, he worked as a driver and later in bomb disposal and was consistently surprised by the kindness, forgiveness and understanding demonstrated by the ordinary Britons with whom he came into contact.

His real passion was still football, however, and he played his first game in goal in 1946, immediately showing the determination and athleticism that had earned him numerous accolades and awards as a youth in the Third Reich. From there, his ascent was swift. Signed by St Helens Town and then Manchester City, he would soon be making the first of his two FA Cup Final appearances. None other than Bobby Charlton would refer to Trautmann as the best goalkeeper that he had ever played against.

“Trautmann’s Journey” is a remarkable story, well told. Only occasionally does Clay attempt to incorporate too much extraneous material into her account. In general, her narrative moves along briskly, ably combining the narrow focus of her subject’s life with the broad sweep of events. She also does well to tease out a number of salient themes, such as Trautmann’s sometimes difficult relationship with his parents and the significance – for all parties – of his decision to make his home in the UK.

Though it is not short of affection for its subject, Clay’s biography is no hagiography, however. Trautmann emerges as an often equivocal character; a sport-obsessed curmudgeon with a quick temper and an apparent inability to accept authority. Imprisoned by the Nazis for insubordination, he would also be classified by the British authorities as a category ‘C’ prisoner – a hardened Nazi – primarily because of his surly and uncooperative attitude in interview. Even time did not mellow him. In 1954, Trautmann was suspended for tangling with a referee, and in his very last game as a player, he was sent off for violent conduct.

For all his foibles, Trautmann enjoyed an illustrious career, being the first foreigner to be named Player of the Year and later being inducted into English Football’s Hall of Fame. As this book demonstrates, by his example and his efforts, he has been a tireless ambassador for Anglo-German relations. And if those two countries resume their rivalry in South Africa this summer, supporters of both sides should be united in raising a toast to his name.

© Roger Moorhouse 2010