Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Admiring review of "The Jews In Poland And Russia", by Antony Polonsky. "He has created the field of modern Jewish history as a subject to be considered and understood rather than simply a tragic past to be mourned"
Goebbels knew he had to engage the public, at home and abroad. "It was an effort that led directly to the creation of that oxymoron in four-bar form: A Nazi-approved, state-sponsored hot jazz band known as Charlie and His Orchestra"
Captivating review of Laurent Binet's new historical novel "HHhH", about rise and fall of Reinhard Heydrich. SS intelligence chief known as "Himmler's brain". Planned Kristallnacht, convened infamous Wannsee Conference. Assassinated
Former New Yorker writer excavates history of 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, home for many years of his former magazine and "bastions of the old East Coast Wasp imperium" such as the Algonquin and Harvard Club
Was Hitler a pagan? Was his ideology a political religion? Or was he unorthodox Christian? "What historians continually confirm is that Hitler developed an absolute faith in two things: An extreme form of nationalism, and himself"
Who knew that almost a thousand American servicemen lost their lives in a practice exercise for the D-Day Landings? Milton tells the little-known story of Exercise Tiger and how it went so disastrously wrong
Britain was desperate to persuade the US to join World War II. So desperate, it turns out, that Churchill sent an astrologer to America in an effort to convince the public that Hitler planned to attack. This is his strange story
A visit to Oradour, ravaged in WWII. "Here is a relic of something that once lived, but due to the intensity of the death which clings to it, manages to live permanently in a different guise, as a warning, as a lesson, as a witness"
Empathy periodically collapses on a grand scale – think the Holocaust or colonialism. Less appreciated is that it occasionally flowers on a collective scale. For example in the WW2 evacuations of children from British cities
On John Demjanjuk, whose death brings to an end the most convoluted case to arise from crimes of the Holocaust. In some ways an end of an era. Fitting that it should be a foot soldier of genocide. It was they who made it possible
Warning. Demolition in progress. "It's hard to think why a publishing house that once had a respected history list agreed to produce this travesty." The author has "put very little work into writing it and even less thought"
There never really was a de-Nazification after the war. A few leaders were executed, a lot of lies were told. But a Nazi past was no barrier to joining the West German establishment. Half a century later, the files are open
John T Pilot on Flickr
