Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the past seven days
Continue reading...Category Archives: Adolf Hitler
‘Discovered’ diaries of British socialite Unity Mitford reveal Hitler relationship
Diaries, believed to be genuine, chronicle 139 pre-war meetings between antisemitic aristocrat and Nazi leader
The diaries of an antisemitic British socialite who was obsessed with Adolf Hitler and struck up a personal relationship with the Nazi leader have been discovered, according to the Daily Mail.
The leather-bound journals, which had been lost to historians and unseen for eight decades, appear to reveal the extent of Unity Mitford’s relationship with the dictator.
Continue reading...Trump slams John Kelly for calling him a ‘fascist’ after Harris lauds comments
Ex-president launches online tirade against his former chief of staff and Democratic opponent over Hitler comparisons
Donald Trump has denounced his own former chief of staff, John Kelly, as a “degenerate” and a “low life” after the former US Marine Corps general gained the backing of Kamala Harris for calling his ex-boss a fascist.
With Kelly’s intervention effectively propelling the debate over fascism firmly to the centre of the US presidential election, the Republican nominee also turned his fire on his Democratic opponent. He inaccurately accused Harris of calling him Adolf Hitler after the vice-president amplified Kelly’s comments in a televised address before endorsing them in a CNN town hall meeting.
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Continue reading...Kamala Harris denounces Trump as ‘fascist’ who wants ‘unchecked power’
VP gives surprise speech after reports that Trump’s former chief of staff said ex-president repeatedly praised Hitler
Kamala Harris has denounced Donald Trump as a “fascist” who wants “unchecked power” and a military personally loyal to him after allegations emerged about the former president’s repeatedly voiced admiration for Hitler.
On Wednesday, the vice-president gave a surprise speech from her Washington DC residence, doing so in the aftermath of reports that John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, recalled how Trump lamented not having generals who swore loyalty to him in the same manner as military commanders served Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
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Continue reading...Four Germans caught marking Hitler’s birthday at his house
Police in Upper Austria province said the four were laying white roses at Nazi dictator’s birthplace
Four Germans were caught laying white roses in memory of Adolf Hitler at the house where the Nazi dictator was born in western Austria on the anniversary of his birth, and one gave a Hitler salute as they posed for photos, police have said.
Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn. After lengthy wrangling over the future of the house where he was born, work started last year on turning it into a police station — a project meant to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify Hitler.
Continue reading...Aide tried to stop Trump praising Hitler – by telling him Mussolini was ‘great guy’
Ex-president’s second chief of staff tried to convince him fascist dictator was ‘great guy in comparison’, John Kelly tells Jim Sciutto
Donald Trump’s second White House chief of staff tried to stop him praising Adolf Hitler in part by trying to convince the then president Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, was “a great guy in comparison”.
“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” the retired marines general John Kelly told Jim Sciutto of CNN in an interview for a new book.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland sale of Hitler memorabilia to go ahead despite outcry
Bloomfield Auctions rejects accusations it is acting immorally and insulting the memory of Nazis’ victims
A Northern Ireland auction house is going ahead with the sale of Adolf Hitler memorabilia despite an outcry from Jewish leaders.
The managing director of Bloomfield Auctions, Karl Bennett, rebuffed accusations on Wednesday that the sale was immoral and would insult the memory of those murdered by the Nazis.
Continue reading...‘Blind chance’ or plot? Exhumation may help solve puzzle of 1933 Reichstag blaze
Tests carried out on remains of young communist who confessed to arson attack that proved a gift to Hitler
When flames enveloped Germany’s parliament on the evening of 27 November 1933, six days before national elections, it was a political gift to Adolf Hitler, the recently appointed chancellor. The arson attack on the Reichstag by an “enemy within” secured his re-election and gave him the pretext to grab the dictatorial powers he craved.
Whether that gift fell into the Nazi leader’s lap by chance or was placed there via a covert false-flag operation has been the subject of bitter historical disputes ever since. Now, 90 years later, the body of the young communist whom historians have traditionally regarded as the sole perpetrator of the attack has been exhumed in the hope of finding a definitive answer.
Continue reading...Channel 4 buys painting by Hitler – and may let Jimmy Carr destroy it
Ian Katz says new show, Art Trouble, celebrates the channel’s tradition of ‘iconoclasm and irreverence’
Channel 4 has bought a painting by Adolf Hitler and will allow a studio audience to decide whether Jimmy Carr should burn it with a flamethrower.
As part of its latest season of programmes, the TV channel has bought artworks by a range of “problematic” artists, including Pablo Picasso, as well as convicted paedophile Rolf Harris and sexual abuser Eric Gill.
Continue reading...Newly released doctor’s letters show Adolf Hitler’s fear of illness
Carl Otto von Eicken, an ear, nose and throat specialist, treated Nazi dictator for 10 years from 1935
The Swiss descendent of one of Adolf Hitler’s doctors has released details of letters that show how he treated the Nazi dictator for voice problems, the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported on Sunday.
The letters show Hitler’s fear of serious illness. “If there is something bad, I absolutely have to know,” Hitler told the doctor after their first consultation in May 1935, according to the letters.
Continue reading...Russia accuses Israel of backing ‘neo-Nazis’ in Kyiv as diplomatic row grows
Moscow hits back at Israeli criticism of Sergei Lavrov’s claim that Adolf Hitler ‘had Jewish blood’
Russia has accused Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv as it escalates a diplomatic row with one of the few close US allies that decided not to join in sanctions against the Kremlin or send lethal military aid to Ukraine.
The dispute over remarks by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who said in an interview that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that the “most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews”, has threatened to unsettle Israel’s careful position over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Peruvian prime minister’s praise of Hitler sparks wave of protest
Aníbal Torres said his words were misunderstood but offered to apologize in person to Israeli ambassador Asaf Ichilevich
The Israeli embassy in Lima has led a wave of protest after Peru’s prime minister Aníbal Torres praised Adolf Hitler, on the grounds that the fascist dictator turned Germany into the “first economic power in the world”.
In a week in which the government of Pedro Castillo has been engulfed in a political crisis caused by rising fuel and fertiliser prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the president’s own blundering efforts to calm the unrest – Torres’ inopportune remark on Thursday drew opprobrium from all quarters.
Continue reading...‘It became crystal clear they were lying’: the man who made Germans admit complicity in the Holocaust
With Final Account, the late director Luke Holland set out to obtain testimonies from those who participated in the Nazi atrocities – before their voices were lost. The result is a powerful mix of shame, denial and ghastly pride
One day in 2018, the prolific documentary producer John Battsek received a call from Diane Weyermann of Participant Media, asking him if he would travel to the East Sussex village of Ditchling to meet a 69-year-old director named Luke Holland. Weyermann said that Holland had spent several years interviewing hundreds of Germans who were in some way complicit in the Holocaust, from those whose homes neighboured the concentration camps to former members of the Waffen SS. The responses he captured ran the gamut from shame to denial to a ghastly kind of pride. Now he wanted to introduce these testimonies to a mainstream audience, and he needed help.
“Luke wasn’t consciously making a film,” Battsek says. “He was amassing an archive that he hoped would have a role to play for generations to come. We had to turn it into something that has a beginning, a middle and an end.” As soon as he saw Holland’s footage, he knew it was important: “It presented an audience with a new way into this.”
Continue reading...How the ‘art of the insane’ inspired the surrealists – and was twisted by the Nazis
The author of an acclaimed new book tells how Hitler used works by psychiatric patients in his culture war
On a winter’s day in 1898, a stocky young man with a handlebar moustache was hurrying along the banks of a canal in Hamburg, north Germany. Franz Karl Bühler was in a panic, fleeing a gang of mysterious agents who had been tormenting him for months. There was only one way to escape, he thought. He must swim for it. So he plunged into the dark water, close to freezing at this time of year, and struck out for the far side. When he was hauled on to the bank, soaked and shivering, it became clear to passersby that there was something odd about the man. There was no sign of his pursuers. He was confused, perhaps insane. So he was taken to the nearby Friedrichsberg “madhouse”, as it was known then, and taken inside. He would remain in the dubious care of the German psychiatric system for the next 42 years, one of hundreds of thousands of patients who lived near-invisible lives behind the asylum walls.
Bühler’s incarceration disturbed him, but it also marked the beginning of a remarkable story, one in which he played a leading role. It reveals the debt art owes to mental illness, and the way that connection was used to wage history’s most destructive culture war.
Continue reading...Emmanuel Macron takes legal action over Hitler poster comparison
Police speak with wealthy billboard operator who depicted French president as Nazi leader
Emmanuel Macron is taking legal action against a wealthy billboard operator who displayed posters depicting him as Adolf Hitler.
Lawyers for the French president are suing after the large images appeared in the Var in the south of France.
Continue reading...Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book says
- Remark shocked John Kelly, author Michael Bender reports
- Book details former president’s ‘stunning disregard for history’
On a visit to Europe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war, Donald Trump insisted to his then chief of staff, John Kelly: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”
Related: Nightmare Scenario review: Trump, Covid and a lasting national trauma
Continue reading...Republican congresswoman Mary Miller quotes Hitler during rally – video
US Congresswoman Mary Miller of Illinois tells a crowd outside the US Capitol: Hitler was right on one thing – "Whoever has the youth has the future. Our children are being propagandised."
Miller has since apologised for quoting the Nazi leader at the right-wing rally, issuing a statement on Twitter saying: "I sincerely apologize for any harm my words caused and regret using a reference to one of the most evil dictators in history"
- Illinois Republican Mary Miller sorry for quoting Hitler in Capitol speech
- Capitol attack: two men believed to have brought zip-tie handcuffs arrested
The neo-Nazi symbol posted by Pete Evans has a strange and dark history | Jason Wilson
The sonnenrad is associated with a grab bag of esoteric racist nonsense, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful as a symbol of hatred and murder
If you weren’t aware that the symbol posted by Pete Evans is functionally equivalent to a swastika, that’s because part of its attraction to contemporary neo-Nazis is its slight obfuscation of the true nature of their movement.
It’s also because it has been more widely adopted as a symbol for the racist politics of fascism as the focus of that movement has changed its emphasis from ultranationalism to a transnational focus on supposed dangers to the white race, wherever they may be.
Continue reading...Austria unveils design to turn Hitler’s house into a police station
Conversion of building where Nazi leader was born will cost €5m and be completed in 2022
Austrian authorities have unveiled a design for turning the house where Adolf Hitler was born into a police station – while trying to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify the Nazi dictator.
A design by Austrian architects Marte.Marte beat 11 competitors in an interior ministry tender, officials said on Tuesday. The refurbishment is expected to be completed around the end of 2022 and will cost about €5m (£4.5m).
Continue reading...On the trail of a Nazi war criminal: ‘It’s my duty as a son to find the good in my father’
East West Street author Philippe Sands uncovers secrets and lies on the trail of Otto Wächter, his devoted wife – and the son brought up to believe his father was a decent man
In the 1960s, my brother and I often visited our grandparents in Paris, near the Gare du Nord. As children, we understood that the past was painful, that we should not ask questions. Their apartment was a place of silences, one haunted by secrets. They only really began to be addressed when I was in my 50s, the consequence of an invitation to deliver a lecture in Lviv, in Ukraine. Come talk about your work on crimes against humanity and genocide, it said.
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