LATEST POSTS Churchill: No penpal of Mussolini Another day, another great piece of junk history. (Hat-tip: the estimable Adrian Weale.) Today's effort comes from the Italian press and was picked up by the Telegraph (nobody's immune, you know). According to one Pierre Milza, who is apparently an expert on fascist Italy, Winston Churchill may have wanted Mussolini killed in order to hide the existence of a secret and compromising correspondence conducted between the two leaders. Writing in his new book, Les Derniers Jours de Mussolini, Milza further theorises that the reason why Churchill chose to spend a holiday in Italy in August 1951 was because he wished to retrieve the letters. "Perhaps he went there just to paint," Milza speculates. "It is credible, however, that he was there for other reasons, as one now know… Read More Mossad agent Simon Wiesenthal walking in a Jewish cemetery in Eisenstadt, Austria, that had been vandalized by right-wing extremists. Photo: EPA There has been a lot of news today about the revelation made by Tom Segev in his new biography of Simon Wiesenthal that the Nazi hunter worked as a Mossad agent in Austria in the 1940s and 1950s. As I'm reviewing Dr Segev's book for the Sunday Telegraph, I shall refrain from commenting at length, but I thought, in the interests of accuracy, that I should draw the attention of readers to the claims made in a book called Hunting Evil published last year. (Full disclosure: I wrote the book.) If you look at page 223 of the… Read More Ballerina-turned-Abwehr agent Marina Lee Everybody loves a good spy story, and none better than one which involves a glamorous woman. The latest Security Service releases from the National Archives appear to contain a real gem – the tale of the beautiful ballerina Marina Lee, a German secret agent who somehow managed to wheedle the campaign plans off Sir Claude Auchinleck when he was conducting the ill-starred fight against the Germans in Norway. If you put your trust in the vast majority of the news stories, you might be forgiven for thinking that the story was true. However, if you look at the original MI5 file, KV 2/3281, which is downloadable for free, the picture that emerges is somewhat different. Beware of Nazis telling tall tales... As we mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the media is in overdrive with all sorts of guff about the events of the summer of 1940. Those expecting a completely revisionist post in which I claim that the battle wasn't important and it was the Navy wot won it anyway will be disappointed, but there are a number of misconceptions that need to be addressed. By far the most authoritative work on the battle is the latest book by James Holland, and I recommend it for anybody who wants to know the true story unvarnished by wartime propaganda. You may have heard James at 8.30 this morning on the Today programme, and he'll also be appearing on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 today. (Declaration: James Holland is a great friend, but please trust me – it's a really good and important book.) 1…. Read More Two practitioners of Junk History Although David Cameron is rightly being excoriated for suggesting that the United States was fighting Nazism in 1940 (yes, yes, I know about American convoys and Lend-Lease, as well as the odd American in the RAF), David Miliband's knowledge of Second World War history is similarly unimpressive. "1940 was our finest hour," the shadow foreign secretary commented. "Millions of Britons stood up and gave their lives to defeat fascism. We were not a junior partner. We stood alone against the Nazis. How can a British prime minister who bangs on about British history get that so wrong? It is a slight, not a slip." First, it's worth noting that although millions of Britons did stand up to fascism, millions of Britons did not give up their lives, as Mr Miliband seems to suggest…. Read More Haus style: A must-have picture for the bedroom? What would you do if you found a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging in your hotel room? That was the situation faced by a man from Nuremberg who visited a small guesthouse on the outskirts of Frankfurt last September. Although the guesthouse was full, the owner, Horst S., allowed the visitor to use a room in the private part of the building, which was where the picture of the Führer was hanging. The guest was so enraged, that a little later, he returned with two police officers and the hotelier was charged with breaking the law that forbids the displaying of images of Hitler in public. Last Tuesday, the case eventually came to trial, and the guesthouse owner won, because he proved that the room in question… Read More At lunchtime today I appeared on the Jeremy Vine show to discuss whether it is acceptable to call someone a Nazi on the airwaves. (The segment appears at 1:08.25.) The issue has arisen because DJ Jon Gaunt has lost his legal battle with Ofcom concerning an on-air exchange in which he labelled a local councillor as a Nazi. The transcript of Gaunt's interview can be found here, and can be heard on YouTube if you google "gaunt youtube nazi". (Skip to around 2 minutes.) During Jeremy's show, I presented the case that calling someone a Nazi is unacceptable. It not only cheapened the word, but it insulted those who were – and continue to be – affected by the monstrosities of the Nazi period. Furthermore, using "Nazi" is a tired and offensive form of ad hominem attack, and is typical of a type of verbally aggressive "shout radio"…Read More OK, so I know I should win a prize for the most boring headline ever to appear on a blog, but bear with me. At the moment, I'm thoroughly enjoying The Nine Lives of Otto Katz by Jonathan Miles (declaration: we share an editor, but sincerely, it's great) and it's good to read something that's both well-written and well-researched. What's also welcome is that the book contains both endnotes and numbers placed within the text that refer to those endnotes. Recently, many publishers have eschewed the use of these 'superscript numerals' because of the mistaken belief that they irritate readers. As a result, many perfectly decent history books now have to adopt the following methods of noting source material. (Stop yawning in the back!) 1. Endnotes listed with pullquotes and no numbers in the text This method is almost entirely useless. I had to endure it at the insistence of a previous editor… Read More It's hard not to appear a bigot if one questions the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court to allow the appeals of two gay men from Cameroon and Iran against being refused asylum in the UK. As I understand it, under the Refugee Convention Act, applicants do not have to be granted asylum if their situations in their homelands are 'reasonably tolerable'. As a result, the Supreme Court justices ruled that covering up their sexuality would be to deny the men a 'fundamental right', and that their lives would indeed be intolerable. I think this is the correct decision, but it does surely provide an opportunity for others to claim mendaciously that they too are persecuted homosexuals in order to be granted asylum. However, I wonder whether we will soon be seeing an influx of young Iranian men with mullets and…Read More Pope Pius XII has been criticised by scholars and Jewish groups for not taking a firm, public stance against Hitler (Photo: Getty) With the Pope's visit to the UK just under 11 weeks away, we can expect scores of stories bashing the Roman Catholic Church over the summer. My colleague Damian Thompson suspects that such a campaign is gearing up, and he may well be right. One line of attack will presumably be directed at Pius XII, often referred to as "Hitler's Pope" because of his seeming tolerance of Nazism and regimes such as the Ustashi in Croatia. So much junk history has been written about Pius XII, especially by those with an anti-Catholic agenda, that received… Read More No! No! No! Churchill did not order the assassination of Mussolini
It's not news that Simon Wiesenthal worked for Mossad
Nazis and beautiful spies: How tittle-tattle becomes history
Battle of Britain myths
Mr Miliband is wrong: Britain never stood alone
Hanging Hitler in your own home
Is it Nazi to stop people calling each other Nazis?
In praise of endnotes and superscript numerals!
Can Iranian mullet-wearers be granted asylum?
Those who bash Pius XII ignore the other side of the story – his efforts to save Jews
