The German tycoons who got fat on the Nazi killing machine
After his men discovered the charred and bullet-ridden bodies of a thousand slave labourers murdered near the northern German town of Gardelegen in April 1945, US Army…
Traitor King by Andrew Lownie review: Edward VIII was even worse than we thought
The meat of Lownie’s absorbing and easily digestible book, however, is embodied in its title. “Traitor” is a strong word, but it is not melodramatic: in purely…
The ‘Nazi porn’ TV train rolls on – and so does its Churchillian interpretation of history
There is then much debate about whether Chamberlain thought he had bought time by refusing to fight over the Sudetenland, or whether he genuinely thought, in his…
The worst final season since Game of Thrones? How Peaky Blinders fell apart
After six seasons, dozens of slow-motion montages, and more Nick Cave songs than you could shake a red right hand at, Peaky Blinders reaches the end of…
The worst final season since Game of Thrones? How Peaky Blinders fell apart
After six seasons, dozens of slow-motion montages, and more Nick Cave songs than you could shake a red right hand at, Peaky Blinders reaches the end of…
Channel 4’s Traitor King documentary felt like a nail in the coffin of Edward VIII’s legacy
Andrew Lownie, historian and author, suggested that the Duke supported a German plan to put him back on the throne as head of a puppet state, although…
Stalin lost Kyiv in 1941 – and Putin is repeating his mistakes
An uneducated, former manual worker who liked to drink, Voroshilov’s chief qualification for the job was that he could out-toady anyone when it came to sucking up…
Putin has learnt nothing from his beloved Soviet history books
Given the events of the 1930s in Ukraine, it is perhaps not surprising that a number of Ukrainians initially wanted to help the Nazis. In doing so,…
What Vladimir Putin’s taste in literature tells us about the man
Later on in the Outdoor Life interview, Putin expresses a fondness for the works of Ivan Turgenev. “His well-known A Sportsman’s Sketches has been a favourite book…
Rise of the Nazis, review: if only BBC Two would show more proper history documentaries like this
What is the point of BBC Two? According to its remit, it exists to provide “knowledge-building programming”. Really, though, it has become a channel on which to…
Operation Mincemeat, review: punchy musical about an outlandish Allied subterfuge
A buzz louder than a doodlebug surrounds Operation Mincemeat, a new musical about the wartime deception that enabled the Allied invasion of Sicily. That outlandish subterfuge, which…
The double life of Munich’s ‘good German’ – and would-be Hitler killer – Adam von Trott zu Solz
In 1939, Trott made several trips back to England to lobby British officials and his friends – which included his meeting with the Astors and Chamberlain while…
Was Neville Chamberlain more than the coward who kowtowed to Hitler?
The man von Hartmann hopes to contact is the other main confected figure in Harris’s story, a young Foreign Office diplomat, Hugh Legat (George Mackay), with whom he had…
Munich: The Edge of War: like a bumper episode of The Crown
12A cert, 130 min. Dir: Christian Schwochow It’s been a while since likening a film to a television programme could automatically be considered an insult, and Munich:…
A Kitten for Hitler: the most offensive Christmas film ever made
Out of the kindness of his heart, and in the hope of achieving world peace, Lenny travels alone to Germany, and presents Hitler (Phil Pritchard) with a…
The Spectre of War by Jonathan Haslam, review: a book every intelligent person should read
When the movers and shakers of London, Paris or Berlin compared the rather vulgar Führer with Stalin and his works, it was no contest. In 1936, when…
‘Eradicating the bad stuff’: the unwelcome return of book burning
Bishops have often led the way with British book burning: in 1599 the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London prohibited the publication of various satirical…