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Reviewing two books on modern German history this week, a trend emerged that had only dimly occurred to me before: the curious downgrading of ideology as a factor in explaining the actions of the Third Reich’s soldiers and civilians. For many a long year after World War Two, we assumed that Nazi soldiers and civilians […]
The Siege of Leningrad began 71 years ago this month – the bloodiest and most murderous siege in history. To mark this grim anniversary, here is my review of Anna Reid’s excellent book on the subject, which was published last year. (This review first appeared in the Financial Times, on 27 August, 2011) Anna Reid […]
On the anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11, its worth perhaps remembering one of the festering wounds that brought the world to that unhappy and horrific day – the sorry saga of Afghanistan. This is my review of Rodric Braithwaite’s excellent book “Afgantsy”, which first appeared in the UK’s “Independent on Sunday” in the […]
A visit to Versailles whilst on holiday this month gave me food for thought. The grand palace of the French kings, to the south-west of Paris, has long fascinated the world. Back in the day, every European monarch wanted his own “mini-Versailles” in imitation of the French monarchs – like King Ludwig of Bavaria at […]
Been a while – apologies. I spent this last week on two trips to Central Europe – on Friday flying to Wroclaw in Poland (the former German ‘Breslau’) for a conference, and then to Leipzig to do some filming for a documentary. In the short time that I had for sightseeing in both places, the […]
Alot of newspaper editors had fun this week with pictures of Adolf Hitler in a variety of outfits – lederhosen, for instance, or a very fetching SA cap. The Telegraph covered it here, as did the Times and the Daily Mail here It was all very amusing – and a chance to dust off a few […]
I went down to the Royal Academy this afternoon to visit the “Building the Revolution exhibition, on modernist architecture in the Soviet Union, 1915-1935. I was not sure what to expect to be honest, but I thought it showed up a few contradictions and hypocrisies that i found interesting. The exhibition itself was a bit […]
For those of your struggling to find the last few Christmas gifts – here is a short list of my favourite History Books of 2011… Anna Reid – Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44. Max Hastings – All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945 Ian Kershaw – The End: Hitler’s Germany, […]
Big news of this week has been the European summit and PM David Cameron’s use of a veto to scupper a proposed treaty aiming for greater fiscal union to save the Euro. All sides on this are posturing and playing politics – Milliband is especially shameless – yet, it strikes me that we should perhaps […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]