The Filth and The Fuehrer
Viewing the past through the prism of the present is slowly becoming accepted practice. At one end of the scale, we have the conspiracy industry that has now turned its attention away from the JFK assassination and UFOs onto the baby-eating, Satanic-abusing, kiddie-fiddling secret societies of which every 1970s BBC children’s TV presenter, politician and second division pop star was a member; at the other end of the scale we have last week’s BBC2 documentary, ‘Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners’, a programme that lifted the lid on the British slave trade of the eighteenth century. Of course the practice seems barbaric to us today and did to some at the time, but the programme failed to convey the cruel context in which slavery existed. Native Britons may have been ‘free’, yet the poorest were often treated with similar brutality by their masters. Hardly likely (considering its age), but if you ever come across a 1925 book called ‘London Life in The Eighteenth Century’ by Dorothy George, just read some of the accounts of apprenticeship cases from the Middlesex Sessions to see how home-grown ‘savages’ suffered.
Yes, it’s the tabloid silly season, but yesterday’s Sun front cover of the Queen and Princess Margaret as little girls goaded into jokingly attempting the Nazi salute by their uncle, the future Edward VIII, was another tiresome example of an archaic image being used as a weapon to aim at modern sensibilities. Context and perspective are everything in such a case, but nobody would expect the Sun to point this out. What it implies is that the Royal closet is stuffed with sinister skeletons in Swastikas. That the last German-born monarch of this country was George II (who died in 1760) or that Her Majesty and her heirs are distant descendents of the House of Hanover (even though no British sovereign ruled that tiny German Kingdom after William IV in 1837) is immaterial. What matters is seeing little Brenda imitating Hitler, even though we were not at war with the Fuehrer’s country at the time and everything we now know about Adolf was not known then.
Hitler certainly didn’t view Britain as a threat to his ambitions; he initially saw a potential ally. He was an admirer of the British Empire and found empathy with the British colonial mindset. The Fatherland’s ties with Britain stretched back years, way before the 1871 unification of Germany. Waterloo was so decisive because the Prussians played a vital role in it, and the Kaiser may have grown up resentful of Britain’s world dominance, but he was still the first to secure a spot at the deathbed of his beloved grandmother Queen Victoria in 1901. It was only the Entente Cordiale with France that formally ended centuries of traditional antipathy between the cousins divided by the Channel and joined heads in viewing Germany and Austria-Hungary as the new enemy. Yet, even after the Great War, the bonds that had predated the historic agreement of 1904 remained remarkably strong.
We now recognise Churchill’s fanatical mistrust of the Nazis as logical, yet throughout most of the 1930s he was largely written off as a maverick crackpot has-been ranting in the wilderness, a cross between Enoch Powell and David Icke. We see photos of Edward and Mrs Simpson shaking hands with Hitler and instantly come to the conclusion that the future Duke of Windsor was an honorary member of the Third Reich; yet, Edward’s actions were hardly unique for an heir apparent going through the official rigmarole of meeting world leaders. Lest we forget, the England football team were forced to give the Nazi salute before the kick-off when they played the German national side in Berlin in 1938; and Unity Mitford, a British aristocrat so British that she could trace her ancestry all the way back to the Norman Conquest, famously fell under Hitler’s spell, so it was not as if Edward’s meeting with the Fuehrer was conducted in isolation and marks him out as a special case.
Despite all the centenary coverage of the past twelve months, it’s easy for us to forget the impact of the First World War on the generation that lived through it; the fear of another global conflict breaking out less than twenty years after the end of the last one led the British into the arms of appeasement. It’s equally easy for us to dismiss Neville Chamberlain as a weak PM whose only role in history was to play a namby-pamby prelude to Churchillian glory and to reluctantly declare war on Germany. The 1938 signing of the Munich Accord was widely celebrated as a positive move to secure peace in Europe and to prevent the outbreak of a Second World War; what Chamberlain and his government may or may have not known with regards to what Adolf was up to is academic in the context of the times. After all, David Cameron is prepared to overlook Saudi human rights abuses in 2015 because the nation is seen as a vital and much-needed Middle East ally. What’s the difference?
We all accept today that Edward VIII giving up the throne may have thrown the spotlight onto his ill-equipped and deferential brother George VI, yet also served to spare Britain from the kind of spineless leadership the eldest son of George V could well have provided. Or that’s the common consensus. The ex-King was dispatched to the Bahamas during the War to keep him safely out-of-the-way, but who’s to say he wouldn’t have adapted to the wartime role demanded of him had that American woman not turned his head? To take a still from a pre-war home movie and use that as some kind of official authentication that the House of Windsor harbours untold Nazi secrets is a ludicrous distortion of the truth.
We have been here before, of course. The young Prince Harry photographed wearing a Swastika armband at a fancy-dress party was similarly seized upon a decade or so ago, yet it’s not that long since the ultimate anti-Semitic insignia was once viewed as little more than an upmarket skull-and-crossbones. When Sid Vicious paraded through Paris wearing a T-shirt bearing the symbol in 1978, it didn’t necessarily mean he was a Nazi-sympathiser. The Sex Pistols bassist had, like many followers of this here blog, been raised on a post-war diet of British war movies and comics in which the Swastika was freely used as simple shorthand for ‘The Bad Guys’ rather than an indication of pro-fascist beliefs. A simple soul such as Sid, and indeed the entire punk movement, revelled in upsetting the establishment, so their initial adoption of the Swastika was merely another provocative gesture designed to offend.
An earlier 70s bass-player, Steve Priest of The Sweet, dressed as an SS stormtrooper-in-drag when his band performed ‘Blockbuster’ on the 1973 Christmas Day ‘Top of the Pops’; David Bowie aimed what was perceived as a ‘Nazi salute’ to fans at Victoria Station in 1976; and Marvel Comics even had a villain called the Red Skull, whose costume featured the Swastika on his chest. As a consequence of my reading material and the wider culture, a Swastika would occasionally work its way onto my defaced school exercise books. Does that make me a closet Nazi? Nein. Having said that, if any of those exercise books emerge at some not-too future date, I may have to go on an extended holiday to Argentina…
Petunia Winegum
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July 19, 2015 at 9:08 am -
“The young Prince William photographed wearing a Swastika armband”
Ahem.-
July 19, 2015 at 9:13 am -
Prince Harry wasn’t it? William’s too goody two shoes to have a bit of fun.
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July 19, 2015 at 9:46 am -
Oh, balls!
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July 19, 2015 at 9:53 am -
Easy mistake to make when their paternal genetics make them look so similar !
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July 19, 2015 at 8:33 pm -
I am not at all sure about the paternal genetics of the younger one… looks too much like that louche James Hewitt… As for the Queen and her sister. What can one expect when one has a closet Nazi for an Uncle?
Ach, du lieber…
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July 19, 2015 at 8:38 pm -
Closet Nazi?
Did he insist that all his clothes-hangers hung to the left?
Socks in straight lines and colour ordered to be pleasing to the eye.
Today, the wardorbe! Tomorrow the chest of drawers!! -
July 23, 2015 at 11:01 am -
One only has to look at Princess Diana’s brother (if one must) to see that Harry’s looks can more easily be explained by the Spencer line than any wishful thinking about bastardry.
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July 23, 2015 at 11:06 am -
Yes, he was, and perhaps remains, quite a bastard…
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July 19, 2015 at 9:51 am -
It’s obvious, we must eliminate the nazi-infested Royal Family and replace them with President Blair, a man with absolutely no skeletons in his cupboards.
Conveniently forgetting, of course, that curious incident in Beaconsfield in 1983, the potential war-criminal issue, whether Cherie or Wendy would become First Lady, the shredded expense claims, the dubious business dealings with dictators ….. yup, a man of profound principles (i.e. you can’t get much lower).
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July 19, 2015 at 9:58 am -
Wallace Simpson was one of the greatest gifts America ever gave to the people of great Britain.
The Duke of Windsor was an idiotic, self-obsessed popinjay and had neither strength of character nor backbone.
For all his faults Bertie was more courageous and deserving and he even constrained Winston upon occasion, such as preventing him from landing with his troops on D-Day.
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July 19, 2015 at 10:21 am -
I recall a very good friend who was a fashion dsigner with a rather select clientelle that included nunerous Jewish ladies.
He was invited to a costume ball with a military theme and ran up the most superb Adolf Hitler costune that was highly comical when he dressed in it and was very much like one of the mid 1940’s cartoons depicting Hitler as the most ludicrous character (the cartoons had inspired him while he boyfriend and 2 pals dressed as classic tough 7 handsome looking American GIs like something out of South Pacific.
Hanging his Nazi outfit up in his salon on a rack near a dressing room a few days before the ball, he forget about it.
Serving 3 well heeled Jewish ladies who ordered thousand s of punds of outfits , he sent 2 to the dressing room to try them on for a fitting where one came acroos the Swastika festooned outfit aand immediately fainted.
It took him ages to work out why three customers stormed out in a huff and never returned. -
July 19, 2015 at 10:23 am -
sorry, new specs, Can’t see a thing out of them.
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July 19, 2015 at 10:24 am -
I often wonder if Chamberlain isn’t the willing ‘fall guy’. He knew that he was dying (he did so quite soon afterwards) and I just wonder if a PM would really hold up an important treaty in the rain and wind if he believed it had any value. All sorts of military things were set going in 1938-9, such as ordering aircraft, building various facilities, and so on, so it is difficult to believe that the writing on the wall wasn’t read by more than just Churchill.
Remember too that the swastika comes from India, and that was part of the British Empire. Funny thing, too, all those Romans giving Nazi Salutes to their Emperor!
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July 19, 2015 at 11:05 am -
July 19, 2015 at 11:38 am -
For a short while when I was severely housebound, I had a social worker come visit. On my living room door, I had stuck a rainbow holographic swastika that I had bought from the Hindu temple at Neasden (I collect art from all religions, even as a non-believer).
She looked at it and said she would not be able to support me if I had Nazi sympathies. I patiently explained the significance (it is a symbolised version of the sun) and showed a receipt for where I had bought it. She was afterwards apologetic, but the ignorance was somewhat disappointing in a professional.
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July 19, 2015 at 12:20 pm -
* She looked at it and said she would not be able to support me if I had Nazi sympathies *
Sounds more like a Nazi herself.-
July 19, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
She wore very sensible shoes. I think she was just a bit “earnest”.
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July 19, 2015 at 8:51 pm -
Nothing more earnest than the self-righteous.
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July 19, 2015 at 1:00 pm -
“…would not be able…”
Not a very capable social worker, then. -
July 19, 2015 at 2:28 pm -
This graphic may amuse you – all US advertising from before the swastika became indelibly associated with Nazis. I thought the metal coca-cola sign was particularly interesting.
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July 19, 2015 at 8:34 pm -
It all depends on the angle of the dangle.
http://www.swastika-info.com/images/current_news/campaign/hindu/Swastika%20Badge.jpg-
July 19, 2015 at 11:03 pm -
I have pre war UK editions of Kipling which contain swastikas on the binding. He got it from the old Indian religious symbol. It’s the reverse way to the Nazi version. The swastika long predates the Nazis. From the late 19th century it was increasingly adopted by Volkish and occult groups in Germany and Austria. Notable swastika enthusiasts were the occultist mystic Guido von List and the part Jewish racist cult leader Lanz von Liebenfals (young Hitler was an eager reader of his magazine “Ostara” in pre WWI Vienna). Both men were important as progenitors of what would become the Nazi ideology.
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July 20, 2015 at 12:16 pm -
Customs House in Sydney is covered with Swastikas on the floor & ceiling but it was built in 1844 so no Nazis there.
http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o542/society10/images_zpsxoj0jf2m.jpg-
July 20, 2015 at 12:18 pm -
July 20, 2015 at 1:55 pm -
One of the tube stations in London has a swastika as part of its tiled flooring, but I can’t remember which one now.
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July 20, 2015 at 2:05 pm -
Now we’re on a roll… …
http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Essex-County-Council-swastikas-linked-Masons/story-21119939-detail/story.html
Cathy Newman time again…
“Keith Gregory, the masons, an avenue that needs to be investigated?”…-
July 20, 2015 at 2:16 pm -
Upminster Bridge – far east end of the district line.
My mate Ant has just completed a project photographing every tube station. Well worth a look…
http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-07-13/every-tube-station-photographed-to-create-a-very-different-map/-
July 21, 2015 at 4:53 am -
Wow that’s a beauty. It’s sad that an ancient Hindu symbol was purloined by the Nasties so that is now forever linked to them.
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July 19, 2015 at 12:07 pm -
Chamberlain bought valuable time for the vital industries to get on to a war footing, in particular the aviation industry which had been starved of orders for many years. This enabled Hawkers to produce the Hurricane and Vickers Supermarine the Spitfire which put us on a much safer footing when war came. In my opinion Chamberlain has been very shabbily treated by history.
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July 19, 2015 at 1:15 pm -
This is exactly what my parents told me. They were both in the RAF during the war.
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July 23, 2015 at 11:15 am -
That was certainly the line I took in my recent WW2-related book. We weren’t in a position to put up a fight in 1938, and while it could be argued that we weren’t in 1939, either, we were in a better position than we had been a year before.
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July 23, 2015 at 11:17 am -
and by 1940 we were completely routed…
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July 23, 2015 at 3:38 pm -
On the ground, yes, but not at sea or in the air.
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July 19, 2015 at 10:56 am -
Nice piece, Petunia.
What no-one seems to mention is that, at the time (ca. 1932, so before Hilter had even become Chancellor), the Nazis were regarded, especially outside Germany, as something of a joke. Almost every-one was going around aping their ridiculous pseudo-Roman salute.
Well said, also, John Galt (190958A): not only was George VI courageous; Churchill, throughout his long career, played free and easy with the lives of Allied servicemen. As to accompanying the forces on D-Day: it was appropriate, perhaps, for Kitchener in uniform to visit French and the B.E.F. on the line — he had actually served as the senior officer he appeared to be — but Churchill had only ever been a junior officer in the Army and had no business interfering.
ΠΞ
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July 19, 2015 at 12:19 pm -
Mussolini had invaded Abyssinia and killed lots of black people to more or less universal European and American disinterest, and it was Il Duce’s highly successful fascists whom Hitler was apeing in the first instance. What good did the Romans ever do for anyone…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Benito_Mussolini_Roman_Salute.jpg
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July 19, 2015 at 11:23 am -
Back in the 1970s, my elderly embroidery teacher (my education was somewhat anachronistic) would read to us as we sewed. One particular favourite title of hers was ‘William the Detective’, written in 1935, in which, among other adventures, William and his friends decide to emulate Hitler by persecuting a Jewish shop owner.
The story has long since disappeared from publication but, in my opinion at least, having heard its light-hearted treatment of the subject, however incongruous it sounds to contemporary ears, is a great aid to seeing this video in context. If we obscure all but the most prescient and judgmental of pre-war cultural references, there is surely a risk that this censorship could prevent later generations recognizing any parallel phenomenon in its early stages.
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July 19, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
There’s a William movie on youtube I watched recently and the boys are pretending to be “Nasties” at one point, and yet the film was released in 1940, which makes you think that at least the British still had a sense of humour back then…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVby9-1Jnnc
There’s no Jews in it but there is a lot of child abduction, which makes it perhaps more relevant to the modern bogeymen…
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July 19, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
Imagine how different things might be now if the first-born had been due heir birthright.
http://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Princess+Anne+Olympics+Opening+Day+Royals+3Ytg0b36oVzl.jpg
We might still have had divorce in the family, but at least we’d have been spared the hysterical bitchery along the way.-
July 20, 2015 at 8:40 am -
Come on! Anne was born some years after Charles. She just looks older …
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July 20, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
Girls used to mature quicker I suppose. Who are the greatest English monarchs? Victoria, Elizabeth 1st and Elizabeth 2nd… The facts speak for themselves.
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July 19, 2015 at 12:51 pm -
Few people saw Germany as a threat in the 1930s, Churchill was the one important exception. In some ways he was probably like Farage today, making great speeches but viewed as being out of touch with the politicians’ vision of Europe.
My father was a great admirer of Churchill as he went to Germany quite frequently during the ’30s on business, and what he saw agreed with Churchill’s assessment of the situation. My father’s attitude was that anyone with any brains could see that Germany was preparing for war; the massive autobahns weren’t being built for private cars!
But, at the time, Germany was seen as a friend by most people in this country as well as a buffer against communism, and the majority would have had no problem with the Nazi salute.-
July 19, 2015 at 8:13 pm -
* Germany was seen as a friend by most people in this country as well as a buffer against communism, and the majority would have had no problem with the Nazi salute *
I suspect most British folk would have found it rather gauche and embarrassing on the basis it was simply “over the top”, and would have performed it much like a reluctant curtsey might be produced. I also suspect most British people didn’t like or trust the Krauts much after events at places like the Somme and Passchendale anyway.
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July 19, 2015 at 1:10 pm -
Judging from the reaction on social media and on this website, while this film has aroused predictable outrage in the tabloid press and from a few Guardianistas, the majority of the British public are perfectly sensible enough to appreciate that the 1930s were a different era and that it reflects a the time when I suspect the newly born Third Reich would have been viewed as being a not particularly nice regime, but one that was a much lesser evil than Stalinist Russia.
On paper this would probably have seemed a sensible view at the time, for just a year previously to when this film is thought to date from, Stalin had completed starving the Ukraine into submission which is thought to have resulted in the deaths of up to 7 million people. Putting this in perspective, everyone knows the number of Jewish dead in the Holocaust in a four year period between 1941 and 1945. If we accept this as the true number of those killed. then Stalin topped the total number of Jews killed from 1931 to 1932 in a the space of a year, and this brings me to the central question.
Would this film have caused anything like as much controversy if it had been of the royal family had been making a mock Stalinist salute? And does Communist insignia and political figures with a Communist past evoke nothing like the revulsion for Nazi insignia and those with a Nazi associated past that we’ve come to expect?
An example of this contrast can be seen in the fact that Max Mosley, son the wartime fascist leader Oswald Moseley, spoke recently in a 5 live interview that it would have been impossible for him to pursue a political career given his family’s past, yet as Chancellor Gordon Brown employed as his chief spin doctor a former Communist who had been a member of the party right up until 1990, and in whose book collection included a collection of the complete speeches of Stalin. Does anyone doubt that if it were discovered that if it were to be revealed that David Cameron had employed a former member of the BNP whose book collection included Mein Kampf it wouldn’t result in instant dismissal?
The common theme running through the reaction to this film has been to cite the fact that the Daily Mail supported the Blackshirts during the 1930s as proof of how the upper classes supported Hitler. What is less well known is the fact that while most Western journalists swallowed the Soviet propaganda that the Ukrainian genocide wasn’t happening, Malcolm Muggeridge, then a journalist with the then Manchester Guardian went to the area and reported the truth in reports that had to be smuggled out of the country, his reward for doing so earned him the condemnation of fellow socialists Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw, and led to his dismissal from the paper.
If the Daily Mail had censored reports of the Holocaust, then you can guess how it would be regarded; today you would have it cited as proof of the paper’s own instituationalised racist agenda in the left wing press and in BBC panel shows such as Mock the Week. Yet in 2008 Russell Brand clearly did not realize the irony in taunting the Daily Mail for its 1930s support for the Third Reich after it upbraided him for leaving a series of offensive messages on the voicemail of veteran actor Andrew Sachs, yet recording a resignation speech in an office which bore a portrait of Stalin.
Why the reason for this contrast?
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July 19, 2015 at 2:20 pm -
Would this film have caused anything like as much controversy if it had been of the royal family had been making a mock Stalinist salute? And does Communist insignia and political figures with a Communist past evoke nothing like the revulsion for Nazi insignia and those with a Nazi associated past that we’ve come to expect?
Had Hollywood been stuffed with Ukrainian exiles over the past 50 years, I suspect the mock Stalinist salute would have caused immense outrage. However. It isn’t, it wasn’t, and thus most people would have no idea what a stalinist salute looked like or why they should be in uproar.-
July 19, 2015 at 3:44 pm -
Just for the sake of clarifying the record, a Stalinist (or to be more precise, a Communist) salute is a clenched fist.
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July 19, 2015 at 8:09 pm -
as evidenced by Wolfie Smith.
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July 19, 2015 at 7:11 pm -
“Why the reason for this contrast?”
The Marxists won. -
July 19, 2015 at 8:04 pm -
* Why the reason for this contrast? *
Forty years of brainwashing I imagine. The USSR got a get out of jail free card for a while of course, because without Hitler’s idiotic invasion of Russia and the subsequent Napoleonic-like roll-back of the German armies as Mother Russia welcomed the Wermacht into it’s icy cold bosom,, then it might have been France that remained divided into two for 25 years rather than Germany.Just as an aside on the Ukrainians, an awful lot of them did got to America, to escape Stalin’s Communist wave, and I strongly suspect they are a caucus that has had some influence in high places in the USA recently, just as the Irish diaspora had influence when it suited the overall US foreign policies towards the British Empire.
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July 19, 2015 at 10:33 pm -
Muggeridge had been a leader writer for the (Manchester) Guardian and was basically a communist when he went to the USSR. He thought he was going to paradise when he set off for Russia and doubted he would return to England at all. What he saw soon wised him up (just as his experience in Spain confirmed the socialist Orwell in his detestation of communism and his opposition to the fellow travellers who sympathised with it) and he spent his subsequent years deploring and exposing the way a lot of the left jumped into bed with Stalin and lied and covered up the atrocities/repression. It’ s ironic that the Germans were greeted as liberators by a lot of the inhabitants of the USSR and even many members of the Red Army when they invaded in 1941 – who wished to join the Third Reich’s fight against the vicious Stalin regime. They mistook the Nazis of 1941 for the Kaiser’s German Army of of 1918 and Hitler and his gang could not contemplate allowing “inferiors” into their ranks or treating these newly subject peoples with decency – Nazi brutality soon disabused Stalin’s former subjects of their illusions about their new masters and made them hate the Nazi monsters even more than the Bolshevik ones.
Let’s remember too that Denis Healey had been a member of the communist party (he joined in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s murderous purges), as was New Labour’s John Reid. Both men were nevertheless to become Labour Defense and Foreign Secretaries. New Labour founding father Peter Mandelson was in the Young Communist League, the youth wing of the Communist party of GB. New Labour’s Jack Straw wrote of being mentored on Trotskyites in the 60s by the man who called himself “Bert Ramelson” (really a Ukranian originally named Baruch Mendelson) – the industrial organiser of the British communist party (he also mentored the young Arthur Scargill).
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July 23, 2015 at 11:23 am -
Western intellectuals visiting the Soviet Union were stage-managed as much as visitors to North Korea are today. Webb and Shaw fell for it, while Muggeridge and H.G. Wells – who famously interviewed Stalin aand Roosevelt back-to-back – didn’t.
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July 19, 2015 at 1:14 pm -
I know people will accuse me of answering my own question, but I thought I’d upload one of the final editions the late Alistair Cooke recorded for the BBC before his death in 2004. In this edition, he compares Hitler and Stalin: – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00sq02l.
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July 19, 2015 at 4:36 pm -
Thank you for your valuable contribution. Listening to Alistair Cooke is not only a joy but always informative.
On a divergent note, could anyone imagine such commentary emanating from the BBC today, far too erudite, far too “judgemental”, far too educational, and worst yet, presented by a WOG (white old guy) not some screeching harpie with a female “perspective”.
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July 19, 2015 at 7:27 pm -
Thanks for the link. I’ve heard or read many of Cooke’s essays, but not that one, which is one of his best. A truly great man.
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July 19, 2015 at 2:01 pm -
What I found *really* offensive was the sanctimonious editor of The Sun proclaiming on C4 news “of course we’re not attempting to infer that the Royal Family were Nazi sympathisers…” – Of course you f**king are you condescending tosser….
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July 23, 2015 at 11:32 am -
It’s been notable that managing editor Stig (!) Abell has been more prominent in defending these decision to publish, as opposed to actual editor David Dinsmore.
This BBC piece from teh time of Abell’s appointment explains his role:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23664582
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July 19, 2015 at 2:53 pm -
Well, it’s silly season. After all, apart from Greece, Syria, the Mediterranian refugee crisis, the Labour leadeship contest, reform of the NHS, a constitutional crisis caused by Scottish politics, whether or not the UK should withdraw from the EU and several major sporting contests, what’s going on in the world?
I suspect the Sun is engaged in a mission to divert attention from the England cricket team’s performance at Lord’s. No doubt their proprietor will admonish them shortly.
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July 19, 2015 at 3:09 pm -
I thought Rupie hated the UK “establishment” and that would have to include the Windsors. I expect he is wryly chuckling at the mock outrage.
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July 19, 2015 at 4:36 pm -
I gather Uncle Rupert is a republican (though whether mildly or virulently I don’t know), and I did have my tongue rather in my cheek. Rupe won’t be too bothered either way, especially if sales are up a bit. Everybody’s talking about The Sun, and you can’t buy that sort of advertising for any money!
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July 19, 2015 at 8:07 pm -
Rupert’s retired pretty much and whilst he no doubt finds the British good for a laugh, I suspect he has much bigger fish to fry on his Barbie over at Fox and whatever else he owns in the USA.
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July 19, 2015 at 5:48 pm -
Call in Brian Leveson, somebody get a comment from Hugh Grant or Tom Watson!
Yawn, nudge me if any any Princess Margaret porn gets revealed.
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July 19, 2015 at 8:14 pm -
Heads up surely.
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July 19, 2015 at 7:43 pm -
Like many I guess, I don’t hold today’s Germans responsible for the repellent behaviour of their grandparents & great grandparents. Equally I refuse to accept ‘we didn’t know’ from those generations.
Even so, there are sensitivities. I do think anyone who’s not a total prat would respect those sensitivities even today.
But a 1930’s photo of children- what a load of crap!
I still consider Germany to be on extended probation – just how I see it, & not much impressed with the Greece thing so far.
We know best is never a good place to be starting from.-
July 19, 2015 at 8:16 pm -
* I still consider Germany to be on extended probation *
So do the French.* not much impressed with the Greece thing so far *
The French think it’s great because it keeps the Boche in their boîte.-
July 19, 2015 at 9:32 pm -
As ever, Pierre will have mis-read Fritz completely.
The Germans are being able to ‘pilot’ their latest ‘banks-not-tanks’ approach on the small, safe, distant canvas of chaotic, corrupt, mis-managed Greece, initially using their mercenary ‘sleepers’ based around Brussels in their Belgian vassal-state.
Once the pilot phase has been completed and analysed, lessons learned, techniques improved etc, then Fritz can start to roll-out the finished process across all his usual roll-over targets, France being far higher on the list than the French may like to acknowledge, although there may be a beta-test or two with Portugal, Spain or Italy first. The ‘Fritzkrieg’ is coming.
You just can’t keep a good German down – assuming there is one, of course, somewhere.-
July 20, 2015 at 6:41 am -
Very droll MudP.
But our people can sleep safe in their beds- safe knowing that Stan Lee’s American Superheroes are there to save the world. They know they’re real, they’re on TV.
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July 20, 2015 at 12:01 am -
Let’s be honest. If you come across a pic of the queen doing a nazi salute you’ve got to publish it, no matter what the context.
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July 22, 2015 at 8:30 pm -
She wasn’t Queen at the time. With Edward still to become King or even just after he did, depending on when the film was shot, she and her mother could not have known they would become Queens, let alone the filmmaker, allegedly George, become King. To them it was clearly a fun family game well before the true meaning of Nazism became a reality
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July 20, 2015 at 11:14 am -
I sigh when I see those massed German soldiers goose stepping once again across the TV screen when OH is doing his old age surfing. Hitler is lording it with his arm at an angle and not right up in the air. Stalins lot had the goose step too. All I recall is a row of miserable overweight old gits behind a parapet and the rocket parade below. A killer empire, like a rampant virus spread over the world for a long time. Still festering in places too. What a crappy century was the twentieth! Now we have religion twisted into a plague on all our houses and for how long? Thanks PW for your erudite presentation. Funny that the clenched fist is so often used in sport but bent at the elbow. You have to raise your arm to court trouble. Gestures are potent so it seems.
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July 21, 2015 at 4:55 am -
My pal reckons everyone has got it wrong and that the Queen Mum and little Liz were hailing a cab outside Buck House.
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July 21, 2015 at 7:18 am -
Since the Queen undoubtedly would pronounce, “Hail” as “Heil”, this seems to explain the whole thing.
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July 21, 2015 at 1:22 pm -
I’ve found these comments very interesting; particularly those from people who remember that era. The best discussion of this topic I’ve come across. Fifty years ago we were goose stepping round the playground, clicking our heel and doing the “Heil Hitler”. I put much of this current furore down to the History Channel, the GCSE obsession with Nazis and the Holocaust and the consequent school trips to Auschwitz.
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July 21, 2015 at 2:53 pm -
macheath’s comment prompted me to purchase a 1935 edition of a Richmal Crompton “William” book. I hope I’ve tracked down the right one… oy vey!…
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