Blog
I came to this one a bit late, I’m afraid, as I have been struggling to get my latest book finished. Anyway… It seems Hitler is never far from the news. A couple of weeks ago the story broke that American researchers had undertaken DNA testing on the fragment of Hitler’s skull – held by […]
It seems that none of the major political players, gathered at Gdansk yesterday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two, could resist playing politics with the event. Worst offender, predictably, was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who demonstrated his nation’s idiosyncratic grasp of 20th century history to full effect. He […]
The death, earlier this week, of Harry Patch, the last surviving British veteran on World War One, coming as it did so soon after the death of our other WW1 veteran Henry Allingham, set me thinking about the nature of memory and our links with the past. Patch, of course, wrote (or had ghosted) a […]
After my visit to St. Petersburg last week, two news stories caught my eye. The first was the kidnap and murder of the Russian human rights activist Natalia Estimirova. Though Mr Medvedev wrings his hands in public, and expresses his ‘outrage’, it is barely conceivable that this heinous act did not have some element of […]
I have been fascinated this past week to see the role that the social networking site Twitter (and others) is currently playing in the crisis in Iran. It set me thinking about the wider influence of technology on our (political) lives, and how radically that influence has shifted over the last century. Of course, it […]
I have removed this article for the time being as it now appears in my latest E-book “The Wolf’s Lair: Inside Hitler’s Germany” – apologies for the inconvenience… You can find “The Wolf’s Lair” here: “The Wolf’s Lair: Inside Hitler’s Germany” RM
Last week The Times carried a supplement devoted to the Polish role in spearheading the protest against communist rule in eastern Europe. It was, the paper reminded us, on June 4th 1989 that the ruling communist party held elections in Poland, in which they had (foolishly) agreed to allow some representation of the Solidarity-led opposition. Predictably, in […]
So, the Daily Mail tells us that the Germans are no longer ashamed of themselves and are now proud of their country. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184220/Just-dont-mention-Hitler-Young-Germans-learn-fall-love-country-again.html Even since I lived in Germany in the mid 1990s, I have always been stunned by the capacity of the German people – even those born long after the war and with […]
I received my advance copy of Christa Schroeder’s memoir: He Was My Chief, yesterday. Its a fascinating book. Schroeder was the most senior of Hitler’s four secretaries. She had been with him from before 1933 and stayed right up to the grim end in the bunker in Berlin in 1945, and was one of the […]
I had an interesting outing this week, to the Imperial War Museum, to take a look at the original ‘piece of paper’ waved by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he returned from a meeting with Hitler in the autumn of 1938. I had been asked to answer a reader’s query for the BBC History Magazine […]
I spent a very enjoyable afternoon, yesterday, lying in the bright spring sunshine at RAF Halton, whilst the children of Buckinghamshire cubs and scouts attended a service for St George’s Day. There has been much guff about St George’s Day this year – and rightly so – many seeking to reclaim the flag from the […]
I was given the opportunity to interview Adolf Burger, last week, during his visit to London. Burger survived Auschwitz before being transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin in 1944. There, he was involved in Operation Bernhard – the top secret plan to forge millions of pounds worth of sterling and US dollars. The 91-year […]