A review I've submitted to FT.
The Hitler Conspiracies
The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination
By Richard J. Evans.
Richard Evans sets out to demolish five myths which are popular in revisionist accounts of theThird Reich's history and aftermath. In doing so he has upset not just neo-Nazis but historians both mainstream and amateur. Evans states: "This book is not about real conspiracies It examines five alleged conspiracies" and that "This is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative-facts'.
The protocols of the elders of Zion has long been shown to be a forgery but Evans questions whether it was actually composed by a Russian Spy as he traces the origins of the text. Hitler and Goebells doubted the veracity of the document but used it in their propaganda. Even here Evans suggests that the pamphlet had only an indirect impact on the development of Nazi Anti-Semitic laws and policies. He says that Norman Cohen's views to the contrary attempts to analyse the conspiracy in "psychoanalytical terms'' and is only convincing to followers of Freud.
There is little evidence that Hitler blamed the Jews for "Stabbing The Army In The Back" at the end of World War One. The Nazis were reluctant to put any blame on the Home Front for the military collapse, not wanting to alienate potential voters. General Ludendorff had warned as early as September 1918 that the Germany Army could no longer be relied upon. Hitler held the Kaiser and his ministers responsible for the defeat and the Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre Party for the harsh peace terms.
Hitler and his inner circle used to inflict practical jokes on each other so when Goebbels was first phoned about the Reichstag Fire he hung up thinking he was being pranked. Wilfried Kugel a parapsychologist, suggests that a Seance predicted the fire and the arsonist van der Lubbe was hypnotised by the Nazis into setting it. There is also the more mundane theory of Nazis entering the Reichstag via tunnels from Goering's office to burn down the parliament. Evans convincingly portrays Maximus van der Lubbe as the Lone Matchman.
There is no evidence that Hitler had prior knowledge of Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain but some interesting tales surround the event. When the Duke of Hamilton went to London to brief Churchill on his conversations with Hess, Churchill insisted on watching a Marx Brothers film first. There are many claims of a double being substituted for Hess and the double subsequently being murdered in Spandau, they waited a long time though. The best such theory is by Joseph P. Farrell who includes a Nazi UFO from Antarctica being responsible for Roswell in his Hess survival tale.
Did Hitler escape from the Bunker? A FBI list of reported sightings of him in late 1945 included a Spanish Monastery, an island in the Baltic and living with Bandits in Albania. He was also spotted in Dublin, dressed as a woman; this might fit in with a 1953 report from Argentina when Hitler was riding a ladies bicycle, selling herbs from door to door. .Eva Braun apparently had several daughters with Hitler, one of whom was Angela Merkel. Perhaps the ex-Fuhrer went to live in a Tibetan Monastery, died a remorseful old man in Argentina aged 83; though he might have lived to 98 but he could have flown UFOs in Antarctica, happily unrepentant. More books have been published in the 21st Century about Hitler's survival than in the previous 55 years, there are also documentaries such as Grey Wolf and Hunting Hitler but no real evidence has been unearthed. Hitler was a sick, prematurely aged man in 1945, he died in the Bunker but old and new media keep the survival legend alive.
Evans dispels the myths but his polemics towards his non-revisionist opponents may irk some readers.
8/10.
Páiric O'Corráin.
- Imprint: Allen Lane
- Published: 01/10/2020
- ISBN: 9780241413463
- Length: 288 Pages
- Dimensions: 240mm x 28mm x 162mm
- Weight: 499g
- RRP: £20.00