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A lot of people will question why we need a new biography of Hitler. Aren’t there enough already? They will ask. Didn’t Ian Kershaw’s two volume offering of 15 years ago satisfy our collective fascination with that most odious dictator? Is there anything new that can be said about the man? Well, yes and no. […]
An interesting news story caught my eye yesterday. A piece on the Telegraph website reported that Ukrainian and Polish archaeologists had discovered a mass grave in the grounds of a former castle at Volodymyr-Volynsky in Western Ukraine. According to the investigators, the grave contained some 950 corpses, including both civilians and Polish military personnel. Cartridge […]
I’ve not really had a bad review before, so this was a new experience. The Guardian today published a review by Richard Evans of my new book “The Devils’ Alliance”, on the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and it was a rather predictable response. I had expected that the left would cry foul about any book that draws attention to […]
A curious tome caught my eye some weeks ago – “Gottland” is a book about communist Czechoslovakia written by a Polish journalist Mariusz Szczygiel. As one steeped in Mitteleuropa, I naturally ordered a copy, spurred by the positive reviews. It is indeed an interesting book. Essentially, it is a collection of anecdotes and vignettes from […]
Given the death before Christmas of the Soviet weapons designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, I thought it was a good time to post this review of a book from 2010, which made a study of his most famous invention: the iconic AK-47… “The Gun: The AK-47 and the Evolution of War” by C.J. Chivers Few guns achieve […]
I finally got around to watching the last part of the German mini-series “Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter” last night. It first aired in Germany earlier this year, and caused something of a sensation, drawing enormous audiences, provoking spirited debate and anguished reflection and generally jumping the normal bounds inhabited by a TV programme. Meaning literally “Our […]
I watched an interesting film yesterday. “Fortress of War” is the subtitled English-language release title of a Belarusian film from 2010, ‘Брестская крепость’ or “The Brest Fortress”. It tells the remarkable story of the Soviet garrison manning the 19th Century Fortress at Brest, on the Soviet-German frontier, in the opening days of the German invasion […]
I had a rare treat last week, being invited up to RAF Cosford to take a look at the Dornier Do 17 wreck that was raised from the seabed this last summer. It was a fascinating visit. It was, of course, very interesting to have a tour around the workshops and see what Cosford is […]
On 4 October 1940, the man who would become known as the “S-Bahn Killer”, Paul Ogorzow, claimed his first victim. After a season of assaulting women around his home patch in the eastern suburbs of Berlin, with increasing frequency and violence, Ogorzow killed for the first time. What’s peculiar about the case is that […]
I recently spent a very enjoyable couple of hours with a Norwegian World War Two film from 2008 – “Max Manus – Man of War”. It tells the true story of the eponymous hero – Max Manus – who was one of the central figures in the Norwegian Resistance to Nazi occupation. I must admit […]
Yet, if one stops to think for a moment, one realises that “Godwin’s Law” also applies to our political elites. After all, wasn’t Saddam Hussein repeated described as a ‘Middle-Eastern Hitler’, when the West was agitating for war against Iraq? (Actually, I think Saddam was more of a ‘Stalin’, but the point is moot). And, […]
There is a moment in Reg Twigg’s posthumously published memoir, where he makes a very valid point. “Don’t read this in the cool comfort of your armchair” he wrote, “Read it in the hottest greenhouse in Kew or the Eden Project. Feel your clothes cling to your body, see the print on the page blur […]