by finn ballard | Oct 1, 2020 | Blog
This month, it has to be ‘The Death of Adolf Hitler: The Final Word’ by Jean-Christoph Brisard and Lana Parshina, which you might well read in one sitting. At last the myths surrounding Hitler’s suicide – and his corpse – are dispelled in...
by finn ballard | Sep 24, 2020 | Blog
This month, let’s think about Julius Leber (born in 1891, executed on January 5th 1945). Leber worked as a journalist and teacher before volunteering for military service. Wounded during WWI, he remained in the German Army until 1920, when he resigned in the...
by finn ballard | Sep 17, 2020 | Blog
This month, I’d like to recommend ‘A Nazi in the Family’ by Derek Niemann. From the first sentences – the author’s memories of wintertime gingerbread and other German delicacies – this story of a very Scottish family with Nazi...
by finn ballard | Sep 10, 2020 | Blog
This month, let’s think about Hilde Meisel. She was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna, and her parents moved to Berlin while she was still an infant. As a teenager, she moved to England, where she joined the International Socialist Combat League,...
by finn ballard | Sep 3, 2020 | Blog
Today I wholeheartedly recommend the much-lauded family autobiography ‘Red Love’ (2009) by East German journalist Maxim Leo, born in 1970. Leo presents a German family perhaps remarkable, perhaps indeed very average, in which can be found traces of...
by finn ballard | Aug 27, 2020 | Blog
This month, I am thinking of August Landmesser, born on May 24, 1910, of whom rather little is known. He was a shipyard worker in Hamburg, and loved a Jewish woman named Irma Eckler. He had, in fact, joined the Nazi Party in the hope of gaining better employment, but...
