The End of the Reich: Two accounts of the Götterdämmerung

 Anton Joachimsthaler. The Last Days of Hitler (1995, translated 1996). James Lucas. Last Days of the Reich (1986) Bound together in one volume, these are written by amateur historians.
     Joachimsthaler is bent on disproving the apparently wide-spread notion that Hitler didn’t die in the bunker on 30 April 1945, but escaped to South America, and that the corpse burnt in the Reichstag garden was that of a double. He has taken the trouble of chasing down all available documentation, which is more than enough to show that Hitler did in fact shoot himself. He also shows that Stalin, for reasons only partly explained by his desire for favourable propaganda, ordered the record to be obfuscated. It may be Stalin really believed that Hitler escaped. Besides, he had already made plans to annex East Germany and other nations as a buffer between Soviet Russia and Western Europe.
     Lucas, disturbed by what he saw when in action in Carinthia (Austria) in April and May 1945, assembled an account of the military (and some political) events of April and May 1945. He apparently wanted to publicise the fact that in the days leading up to the final capitulations a good deal of very bad stuff happened, including the repatriation of partisans to Yugoslavia, where they were murdered; the desperate last stands of SS units with civilians caught in the cross fire; and the flight of Volksdeutsche from Silesia and elsewhere, many of whom died or were murdered along the way.
     About the only take away for me was confirmation that the western Allies’ willingness to let Stalin take Berlin was a mistake that caused a great deal of misery. Interesting for anyone obsessed with World War 2, and nice examples of the difference between amateur and professional history. Worth reading if you find it. **½

Mortimer and Friends (Murderers and Other Friends, 1994)

 

John Mortimer. Murderers and Other Friends (1994) Part two of Mortimer’s intermittent autobiography. Charming, humane, with occasional flashes of rage at injustice and stupidity. I enjoyed this re-read. Mother gave me the book for a birthday; she enjoyed Mortimer and Rumpole as much as I did. (So did all the family).
     Highly recommended, partly because it also portrays a time and Zeitgeist that’s now long past, partly because Mortimer understands the difference between law and justice very well, and partly because he’s just very good company. He’s a raconteur, he can make any event interesting and often a reason to reflect about what makes life worth living. If you could push Mortimer to pontificate, he might say something about good company, a loving family, satisfying work, and perhaps jousting at windmills in the sure and certain hope that some of them would prove to be giants worth slaying. Recommended. ****

Dogs aren't quite human: Fifteen Dogs (Alexis 2015)

 

Andre Alexis. Fifteen Dogs. (2015) Apollo and Hermes idly discuss a puzzle: If dogs could be self-aware like humans, would they be just as miserable as humans? Apollo thinks they’ll be even more unhappy, Hermes disagrees, so of course they have to conduct an experiment. They give fifteen dogs in a veterinary clinic the gift of self-awareness (mislabelled “human intelligence” by Alexis, who commits the common error of assuming that intelligence requires some kind of sentience). The gods also grant language, which enables the dogs to disagree about the value and purpose of their new abilities. That leads to conflict, murder, banishments and self-exile, politics, and poetry, among other things.
     This story proceeds in a ruthlessly matter-of-fact way. Alexis uses his knowledge of canine psychology to extrapolate plausible behaviours, and adds a few bits of anthropomorphic personality to create something of a plot. The result is a book that I read at almost one sitting. There’s a map of Toronto to help the reader to follow the dogs’ the travels and travails. Highly recommended. ****

Wexford and the secretive corpse: A Sleeping Life (1978)

 

Ruth Rendell. A Sleeping Life. (1978) A woman’s body found on a path isn’t much of a surprise, but one without any identification is an annoyance. Her handbag contains only keys and some cash. However, Wexford discovers her identity fairly quickly. What takes time is filling in the details of her life. Frustrating gaps and inconsistencies prevent a clear idea of who murdered her and why. Wexford stumbles on the solution when he hears a chance remark about eonism (that’s a spoiler). An alert reader will likely not need that clue, however.
     A satisfying Wexford. ***

Ursula Bloom on Stratford (re-read)

 

Ursula Bloom. A Rosemary for Stratford-on-Avon (1966) My copy was given to me by my mother, who received it from my uncle Paul Morgan. They grew up in Stratford–on-Avon, which enabled them both to add marginal notes.
     Ursula Bloom lived near Stratford as a child, and takes a proprietary interest. Much of her book is about Marie Corelli, who moved to Stratford towards the end of her career, apparently believing that she would be welcomed, respected, and lionised in such a literary shrine. She was, at first, but her quarrelsome nature soon antagonised the town.
     Bloom, who had a fair success as a novelist, writes her remembrance like a novel, with much invented dialogue between the worthies of the Town. That makes for amusing reading, but tends to create a rather confusing mix of attitudes and emphases. Bloom also romanticises the country town; this is nothing like the Stratford I remember, which was a determined market town with a hard-nosed attitude towards the tourism business that Shakespeare's Birthplace attracted. (Its other major industry was Flowers Brewery, which made real ale until it was acquired by one of the multi-nationals that now dominate that craft.) There’s no question that Corelli was a difficult person who overestimated both her talent and her eminence. But Bloom’s manner and tone, and the almost complete absence of quotations from contemporary sources, make me suspicious. A note by U.P. states that the book infuriated Uncle Peter (my great-uncle), and I’m not surprised. (Uncle Peter was a for a while assistant librarian at the Memorial Theatre.)
     An oddity, but a keeper because of the family connections. **

People worth knowing: Eleanor Wachtel's Original Minds

Eleanor Wachtel. Original Minds (2003) Sixteen edited interviews originally broadcast on CBC’s Writers and Company. I’ve read writings by most of them, and met Desmond Tutu when he visited the Anglican Diocese of Algoma during his tour of Canada. He was, despite the horrors of apartheid, a cheerful and happy man. All are worth listening to, but I especially enjoyed the interviews with George Steiner, Jonathan Miller, and Oliver Sacks, perhaps because they are among my favourite people.

     Wachtel is a wonderful interviewer. She may begin with a set of questions, and clearly shifts to some questions she wants answers to, but her interviews sound and read like conversations. She prompts her guests with comments and questions directly related to what they’ve just said. She’s also done her homework: one always gets the impression that she’s read at least the two or three most important works by her guests.

     A book worth re-reading. Find the program here: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany. ****

Waugh on God, and Kershaw on Hitler.

 

 Alexander Waugh. God (2002) Waugh has assembled all the passages from the Talmud, the Bible, and the Qu’ran in which God speaks for himself, plus a wide range of scriptural and other comments about God. This amounts to a portrait, both incomplete and inconsistent, which is no surprise. By definition, God is beyond human understanding, so any attempt to assemble a coherent description of the Deity is bound to fail.
    Nevertheless, worth reading, if only for the salutary reminder that what one may think the sacred texts and religious authorities said about God isn’t like that at all. ****

  Ian Kershaw. The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany 1944-1945 (2011). A thorough and thoroughly depressing account of the end of the 3rd Reich. Once again, I’m astonished at the denial of reality by men (and some women) who could or would not understand that their fantasies of Aryan glory were at best mere superstition. There were of course many people who disobeyed Hitler’s order to fight to the death and capitulated rather than suffer the destruction of their towns and villages. But as the Reich went under, many Nazis went on a last murderous and nihilistic spree of revenge and annihilation. On the Eastern Front, much of the fighting continued in a desperate attempt to stave of the vengeance of Russian troops and gain time for evacuation of troops and civilians. Many SS units fought rather than accept what they expected to be a harsh and unforgiving imprisonment.
     Apart from the unnecessary suffering inflicted on soldiers and civilians by Hitler’s refusal to capitulate, three other themes impressed me. First, the fantasy that Nazi heroic resistance to Bolshevism would be recognised and celebrated by future generations. Second, the Reich leadership’s stubborn belief that resistance would buy time during which the Alliance would disintegrate as the Western powers realised that they had a common enemy in Stalin’s Russia. The Alliance did disintegrate, but not until Stalin imposed his rule on Eastern Europe some months after the end of the war. Third, the belief by Doenitz and his rump government that they had some leverage for negotiating peace terms. Overarching the whole is the thesis that Hitler’s intransigence caused the self-destruction of the Reich.
     Kershaw’s account of the end of Hitler’s Reich seems much shorter than its 400 pages (plus 164 pages of notes, bibliography, and index). He manages to present this complex multi-stranded story clearly. For me, it was a page-turner. ****