Dead Children without Importance

The civil war in Sri Lanka between the ruling Singhalese and the Tamil rebels is smouldering for decades now, with little attention here in the media and virtually none from the public. However, the bombing of what was described as housing for "child soldiers" by the Sri Lankan army finally made it into the news last week.

This flyer was given to me by Tamil neighbours. It was, so I was informed, drawn up as an refutation of the official line of the Sri Lankan government that those children had been "child soldiers" and thus combatants.

On Monday, July 14, 2006, 98 schoolgirls were killed in the North of Sri Lanka and more than 62 injured when the Sri Lanka's air force bombed an orphanage in Mulliavalai where more than 400 schoolgirls were attending a first-aid-classes. More than 16 bombs were hurled at the grounds of the orphanage in broad daylight. Mulliavalai is located in the district of Mullaitivo, which is controlled by the Tamil liberation movement of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The orphanage was established more than 8 years ago and is the home of Tamil girls who have been orphaned by the enduring civil war and the Tsunami. In Mullaitivo another children's home had been destroyed by the Tsunami and 93 children killed. Now again the lives of dozens of children were taken within minutes – but this time by human hands. In spite of the fact that the government of Sri Lanka is thwarting international help for the destroyed Tamil territories under the administration of the LTTE, the children's home could be re-built by own resources now more inland.

The raid on the orphanage is the lowest point of the months-long bomb raids on Tamil territories by the government of Sri Lanka. In the meantime, open warfare between the government and the LTTE rules. More than 50,000 Tamil refugees are fleeing from the raids by the Sri Lankan army. But there is no safe place. The day before the bombing of the children's home, a Sunday, a church where dozens of Tamil civilians were seeking refuge was shelled by artillery of the Sri Lankan army. 15 Tamils died, more than 20 were seriously injured.

We condemn the targeted attacks on innocent Tamil civilians. The international community must not close their eyes any longer to the state terror performed by the government of Sri Lanka. How long will they be supplied with weapons to oppress our people and keep it in poverty? How much more cruelty will have the Tamil people have to suffer until our legitimate claim to an independent life in freedom and justice is recognised by the international community?

I do not pretend to be an expert on the situation in Sri Lanka, all I know is that the civil war has cost an estimate of 65,000 lifes since 1983.

Also, granted for argument's sake that the bombing target WAS a "child soldier" training camp, that would imply that the Sri Lankan military doesnt't discriminate by age. Combatant is combatant.

Now I am asking myself… where is the outrage? Where are the candlelight vigils? The heartbreaking pictures (authentic or staged) of crying children? Where the human shields so graciously offered to an ugly dictator like Saddam Hussein? The UN resolution condemning the perpetrators? (The UNICEF broke their back and filed a protest, though, to be honest...) The useful visits of the White House, the Vatican and the EU of the representative of the Tamils? The media coverage of same visits? The calls for hauling up the Sri Lankan bloke in charge to the International Court in The Hague as a war criminal?

Please dear Crocodile, eat me last!

Last Wednesday, the German newsmagazine FOCUS printed an article, which I have translated. My English hasn't deteriorated, it IS badly written, but the content is stunning nevertheless:

Internet Curse against Islam Critic
16.08.06, 12:12
The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution consider a curse at an Internet platform for Muslims as a license to kill. German judges don't even want to see it as defamation.

How subtle will a supposed call for the murder of an Islam critic have to be so that German judges won't even recognise it as a defamation of the target? The case, which the Higher Regional Court Oldenburg will have to settle within the next couple of weeks is a potential lecture about the limits of the freedom of opinion and speech.
Yavuz Özoguz from Delmenhorst [near Bremen] hosts one of the busiest Internet platforms for Muslims in Germany. He says that Muslim-Markt can boast 50,000 to 70,000 visitors per week. 2005 he had written a prayer in one of his Internet fora, which cursed the author and Islam-critic Hans-Peter Raddatz. The disputed lines go like this: "And if Mr. Raddatz is a hatemonger [literally: Hassprediger=preacher of hate] and liar, then the almighty creator may punish him for his crimes…" [I add the German text for clarity: "Und wenn Herr Raddatz ein Hassprediger und Lügner ist, dann möge der allmächtige Schöpfer ihn für seine Verbrechen bestrafen ..."]

Raddatz understood the item, declared to be a prayer, as a call for murder and took Özoguz to court. The Regional Court Oldenburg refused to proceed with the trial against Özoguz. The "prayer" is, according to the court, no call for killing Hans-Peter Raddatz. Although punishment is mentioned, that implies, so the court, an appeal to God in the afterlife... The judges didn't recognise a call for other Internet surfers to commit a crime.

State Attorney Submits Objection

The Oldenburg state attorney Staatsanwalt Rainer du Mesnil de Rochemont disagrees. He thinks that the Internet curse would be no problem if the addressees were exclusively people with a Western-European appreciation of culture and religion. As it is, he thinks: "Active Islamists will understand it as a call [for murder]." He has submitted an immediate complaint against the decision at the Higher Regional Court .

Herbert Landolin Müller from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the state of Baden-Württemberg and one of the leading experts for extremist Islam in Germany argues in much the same way. A serious appeal to the conscience and the sense of duty of a Muslim would be sufficient for a call for murder.

"Irresponsible and Dangerous"

This triggers off memories of the [Mohammed] cartoon affair. Specifically at a time when various expressions of written and creative freedom are taken as blasphemy and part of a culture struggle, "such verbal attacks ad personam are irresponsible and dangerous", the man from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution advises in his 19-page expertise, which the Oldenburg judges had seen as well. The host of the Internet platform courts the risk that the Islam critic "will not just be intimidated, but become, as personified enemy, the target of 'punishment action' the consequences of which are incalculable.

His language betrays Özoguz, so Müller, head of the competence team for extremist Islam of the Stuttgart [state of Baden-Württemberg] Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He uses for the German author the same vocabulary ("liar", "criminal") like for the writer Salman Rushdie who is living under the threat of a "death fatwa" or for the Dutch director Theo van Gogh who was murdered by an Islamist… Apparently, reminding of a historical pattern is enough "to inspire potential perpetrators".

But the Oldenburg court wouldn't even regard epithets like "liar" and "hatemonger" as defamation of Raddatz. After all, hadn't the writer "frequently criticised Islam harshly". The author, who repetitively denounces a pro-Islam cartel in politics and society and who polemises against Islam's "useful animals" ("Islam-Nützlinge") is annoyed: "It's your own fault" seems to sum up the judges opinion.

Raddatz is subject to Personal Security

Since the Internet-threat, Raddatz is living under personal security
and has to report any travelling to the police. Funny enough, so he says, since this threat all other threats have ceased.

Raddatz, a scholar of Islamic Studies and representative of the Deutsche Bank in the Middle East for many years, isn't overawed. In his latest book "Iran. Persische Hochkultur und irrationale Macht" (Iran. Persian High Culture and Irrational Power) he states that the Quran includes a "manual for mass murder" ("eine Praxisanleitung für den Massenmord").

Please be reminded that German courts are not always that indulgent.

The 61-year-old Manfred van Hove had sheets of toilet paper stamped with the word "Koran", after the London bombings in July 2005, which he had sent to German television stations, magazines and some 15 mosques. In an accompanying letter he had called the Koran a "cookbook for terrorists". Van Hove used to work for 15 years in Arab countries as a construction site manager and there he learned, so he said, to despise Islam. "Did you watch an execution there?" he snapped at the prosecutor. He was given a one-year prison sentence with a probation period of five years plus 300 hours of community service in February.

Hans-Peter Raddatz, graduated in Islamic science from Bonn university and spent many years in the Middle East, representing international banks and corporations. His books on Islam and the West obtained wide recognition: "Von Gott zu Allah?" (From God to Allah), "Von Allah zum Terror?" (From Allah to terror), "Allahs Schleier Allahs Schleier - die Frau im Kampf der Kulturen" (Allah's Veil - Women in the Clash of Civilisations) and "Allahs Frauen" - Djihad zwischen Demokratie und Scharia (Allah's Women - Jihad Between Democracy and Sharia. Also; he is one of the few German contributors to "Encyclopaedia of Islam", the renowned standard reference work for scholarly researchers.

'History does not change, but what we want from it does.'

German women wanted to slurp his bathwater. Hitler and Julius Streicher.

The fact that I am largely confined to offline writing and archived stuff is not all bad. One discovers things that would have remained buried in the hard disk bilges hadn't it been for this particular situation. Browsing through the old files is like getting some unexpected birthday presents. Some things that seemed to be of only marginal importance some years ago have gained considerable momentum lately, some unexpectedly, some very much not so.

Here we have an excellent article from Salon.com about a controversial book by the German historian Lothar Machtan. This entry is not a review of Machtan's book, which I haven't read yet, but a discussion of the, by no means new, question whether Hitler was homosexual and if yes, how far that might have influenced his politics, based on Machtan's core theses, as stated in the following article.

"The Hidden Hitler" by Lothar Machtan

Critics have been far too quick to dismiss this controversial new book alleging that Hitler was gay.
By Allen Barra

Jan. 14, 2002 German historian Lothar Machtan has been taking some lumps for his controversial book "The Hidden Hitler," and a great many of them are well deserved. Machtan sets himself up early in opposition to such writers on Hitler as Ian Kershaw (whose conclusion was "Take away what is political about him, and there's little or nothing left") and promises to show us "the whole man," not just the dictator.

Machtan doesn't succeed at this -- it would probably be more correct to say that he never really attempts it. If Machtan had simply called the book "The Homosexual Hitler" and stuck to that theme he would have had a better book and one less deserving of many of the brickbats being thrown at it.

[…]

But that's [i.e. blaming the entire Holocaust on Hitler's alleged sexuality] not what Machtan is trying to do; what he is trying to do is prove that Hitler was a homosexual. Not a maniac or a paranoid -- Machtan doesn't waste steam on what we already know -- but a homosexual, and the major resistance to this idea is coming, understandably, from homosexuals -- who are anxious not to see Hitler's name with "gay" in front of it -- and from sympathetic liberals.

I'm both sympathetic and liberal, but Machtan's case is simply too strong to be brushed aside. In a recent edition of LGNY.com, Paul Schindler points out that when "a print ad for the book that has run in the New York Times bears the headline, 'The first book to reveal Hitler's secret life and its calamitous public consequences' ... it's hard to escape the conclusion that anybody connected to the marketing campaign must have recognized that such a tease certainly suggested a link between homosexuality and the 20th century's most despicable crimes. In fact, media reaction to the book has played up exactly that link."

[…]

The problem here is that Machtan's book is being judged by its hype. And when you look past the hype to the book's central thesis you are left with the unshakable conclusion that Machtan is on to something. You may well ask why, with the thousands of books written on Hitler, no one else has caught on to this. The answer is that much of what Machtan says has been written about before and that many people have shared his opinions for decades. (Did anyone think the image of Hitler as flaming queen came solely from the fertile imagination of Mel Brooks?)

Several of Machtan's most reliable sources (including the classic biographies by Joachim Fest and Alan Bullock, as well as Bullock's dual biography of Hitler and Stalin) have raised many of the same points as Machtan has, though their authors chose not to emphasize them or pursue them at length. Why? Possibly for no more reason than that their author's interests lay elsewhere. As Voltaire is said to have said, history does not change, but what we want from it does.

[…]

Machtan's most intriguing contribution to the subject is the so-called "Mend Protocol," testimony from a dispatch rider named Hans Mend who had served with Hitler in the First World War and swore that he witnessed Hitler engaging in homosexual acts. This evidence isn't as solid as the author thinks it is; Mend was later discovered to be a liar and blackmailer. But one is entitled to point out that anyone who would be involved with Hitler would almost certainly be some kind of liar or scoundrel (and in any event Mend seems to have had no reason to lie about Hitler several decades later).

[…]

In and of themselves, perhaps none of Machtan's points prove his thesis. Perhaps it means nothing that as a youth in Vienna Hitler frequented the same areas that were notorious for homosexual activity. It may simply be coincidence that Hitler and his best friend lingered around Bayreuth, worshipping Wagner along with gays from several European nations. It may be a failure of historical research that we can't place Hitler in anything resembling a normal relationship with a woman prior to Eva Braun. Perhaps we are misreading Hitler's boyhood infatuation with August Kubizek to suggest it was homosexual in nature. Perhaps Mend and numerous other witnesses who swore that Hitler had homosexual tendencies were seeking revenge or trying to sell sensationalistic stories to the international press. But is it possible that all these stories, all these possibilities, all these indications are wrong, that they are simply the concoctions of sick or vengeful or headline-seeking minds?

[…]

So far the article.

Like Allen Barra, I think it's no good to bar reality for no other reason that it is not nice to homosexuals. The way to hell is paved with attempts at being nice.

Superman Supreme: Fascist Body as Political Icon
deals with those all-male, all-nude scenes, which so obviously conjure a
homoerotic narrative. The idealized depiction of an all-male community,
strong, virile and devoted to each other, was a centrepiece of Nazi
aesthetics.

Nothing is new about the probability that Hitler was homosexual. Anybody with eyes and a brain in his head always took the obese, bejewelled Fummeltrine (drag queen) Herman Göring, who wore more lipstick than Joan Crawford, as what he obviously was. Also, the reply to the question why Hitler got rid of his openly gay friend Ernst Röhm and the latter's equally openly homosexual cronies, shouldn't be too difficult to answer. Not to speak of the ruthless de-sexualisation of women, or the flagrantly gay stylisation of the male sex by Nazi- and Nazi-authorised artists, such as Arno Breker.

The evidence was always there, it was just ignored.

Hermann Göring: The guy who wore more lipstick than Joan Crawford.

Of course, Ian Kershaw's conclusion: "Take away what is political about [Hitler], and there's little or nothing left" is accurate. But it drags the problem just to a different level and the question remains, what IS political and what is genuinely and purely private.

As Allen Barra is stating in the above article, other Hitler biographers, Barra explicitly mentions Joachim Fest and Alan Bullock, have raised many of the same points already Machtan is discussing now, but chose not to pursue them any further. As an explanation Barra offers that the authors' interests may have been placed elsewhere.

Ruthless de-sexualisation of women: The Nazi party women's magazine.

This may be the case. But of course, it may have also deemed to those biographers, consciously or subconsciously, that it could be received as misplaced or indelicate to go ahead with this specific topic, because homosexuals had been a target of Nazi persecution themselves. This attitude, however, breaks with the standards of history as a science, and, although it may have been at the time those biographies were written (1973 resp. 1952) a not entirely incomprehensible attitude, it was a harbinger of today's odious political correctness.

It may give an idea of how eminently political the matter of Hitler's sexual orientation is if I say that David "If only the Führer had known all this" Irving's comprehensive account of Hitler's years in power, Hitler's War, doesn't bring in as much as a hint of any homosexual dimension, not even of the "Röhm Putsch", which Irving regards as a mere power struggle.

However, what may have been regarded as just a side issue or something better left alone for the time being decades ago has become a total non-topic for no other reason that the power axis has shifted. It has shifted because we have developed a victim culture where every sufferer is seizing his own Holocaust and anyone who "feels offended" can call for moderation, for dilution, and, ultimately, for censorship.

After Holocaust survivors we have, for example, rape survivors, abuse survivors, and even obesity survivors (As an aside: Notabene that most, if not all, members of those factions are female!), and the thought-police, hell-bent on protecting them, do not wield their control to serve some constructive or humanitarian ends, but to exclude any real or perceived unpleasantness, an unpleasantness which we have become too chicken to face. That is, by the way, why not only the power-hungry are into it, but why virtually all well-meaning people swallow that trick hook line and sinker.

(Interestingly, the only victims who do not fall under that protected-area-scheme are the victims of the original Holocaust. They are criticised freely, uninhibitedly, fairly and unfairly and if they are answering back the old mantra "It's just not allowed to criticise Jews anymore" always seems to serve its purpose. Now imagine the same situation for any other victim group. Does "It's just not allowed to criticise fatties anymore" sound familiar to you? No? I am not amazed. Even more: IS there any serious criticism of the lousy attitude with which fat people instrumentalise their situation and are claiming victim status? No? I wonder why! The same applies, more or less, to all other "victim" groups.)

But back to our original topic: Now Hitler MUST NOT BE GAY, because.... why?

Would it make him a nicer kind of monster? Would it cast a shadow on the oh-so-perfect gay community that is working for decades now to sell us their lifestyle not as just an alternative, but as a PREFERABLE one? (Seen any nice "Hetero Pride Parades" with folks strutting around in G-strings, chains and leather lately?)

Maybe we have another one of those conflicts here where the politically correct thought-police declares ex cathedra that victims never can be perpetrators? Like non-Whites? Like women? (The Jews being the only and notable exception here again!)

The openly aggressive and violent (and disgusting) homosexual G-string, chain- and leather culture is, in the name of tolerance, supported and defended by those who normally abhor any violence, and the scientific findings of a historian, Machtan, are deliberately and ruthlessly suppressed because they don't fit into the world view of all those who can not or do not want to face the fact that there are less than perfect sides to the homosexual way of life.

If a David Irving bends historical facts to make them comply with his world view it's called "revisionism" and he gets his wrist slapped. If the propagandists of everything that is humane, benevolent, bright and beautiful do so it's just another good deed and makes us all feel noble.

The Mitford Sisters

This is a re-posting of the original entry (still available as a draft) without the original, now largely pointless, opening. I am re-posting it because of the many visitors it attracted via the search engines.

Here I give you a tiny hint of the famous Mitford family and a fascinating bit of 20th century history:

The parents of the Mitford sisters, David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles, were described as handsome, eccentric, cold, the father even as cruel, and remote. The Mitford children (six girls and a boy) grew up in relatively moderate circumstances deep in rural Oxfordshire. The parents didn't believe in education for girls, specifically not in formal schools. Lady Redesdale run a chicken farm, the return of which was duly invested in her daughters' scant education. The children were brought up by a nanny who, as it happens so often in English upper-class families, provided the only stability and warmth. A string of hapless governesses was employed to convey what little knowledge the parents thought girls needed. Contact with other children was very limited because Lord and Lady Redesdale were of the opinion that this might overexcite the girls. According to Jessica Mitford, Lord Redesdale wouldn't receive any "outsiders" such as "Huns", "Frogs", Americans, Africans and any other "foreigners", which included other people's children, most friends of the girls and almost all young men. An exception was made for some (but by no means all) relatives and some choice red-faced and tweed-clad neighbours.

This cruel and eccentric environment was mirrored by the girls from an early age. Merciless bullying among them was rampant, an "art" at which specifically the oldest sister Nancy excelled, an early sign of her later famous whip-lash tongue.

The parents split up after more than 35 years of marriage over the crucial question whether Adolf Hitler would be welcome as a son-in-law and whether a German invasion was appreciated or not. Lord Redesdale was against, his wife all for it. Exasperated, he left her and moved to the tiny Scottish island of Inch Kenneth near Mull, about the only bit of estate that had remained in the family, and from where he returned only after the war.

Nancy (1904 – 1973), the first born, became a celebrated writer, biographer and novelist. No lesser co-brain than Evelyn Waugh called her "an agitator - agitatrix, agitateuse? - of genius".

Nancy and Peter Rodd's wedding.

Her best known novels are the autobiographical The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949). I specifically enjoyed The Blessing (1951), in which the devious child of a broken-down Anglo-French aristocratic marriage plots to prevent a reconciliation between his parents, which convincingly undermines the politically correct belief that children are little innocents who never recognise that their bread is sometimes more thickly buttered on the separation side. Nancy's famous line (I quote from memory): "I like children. Specifically when the cry, because then somebody comes and takes them away" fits this bill perfectly.

She edited the extremely witty and funny Noblesse Oblige (1956), a delightfully eccentric analysis of aristocracy, Englishness and language. Here, she famously helped to originate the famous 'U', or upper-class, and 'non-U' classification of linguistic usage and behaviour, all with a amusing tongue-in-cheek twist.

Nancy 1969.

In private matters she was less successful. In 1933, after a long but doomed engagement to homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine, whom, so she erroneously thought, she would be able to lead to and keep on the straight and narrow, she married The Hon. Peter Rodd, the youngest son of the 1st Baron Rennell. The marriage to the cold and self-centred Rodd was not a success. Nancy and Peter Rodd, then separated for many years, divorced in 1958. At the end of WWII, Nancy moved to Paris, partly to be near French soldier and politician Colonel Gaston Palewski (Charles de Gaulle's Chief of Staff), with whom she had had an affair in London during the war. The largely one-sided thing lasted fitfully and ended unhappy when Palewski married somebody else in 1969.

Nancy Mitford died of Leukaemia in 1973.

The second Mitford child was Pamela (1907 – 1994). She was the only one of the sisters to remain in comparative obscurity. A dedicated country- and horsewomen, docile Pamela married a man as unlikely as the research spectroscopist and Oxford professor Derek Jackson. Enormously rich in his own right (he was, for example, a co-owner of the rag The News of the World), he had, among other things, devised the concept of the tin foil strips, which, dropped over the bombing target, rendered the German air raid defences inoperative. However, he served not just behind the scenes but rose to Wing Commander in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel during the war.

Pamela's and Derek's mutual interest had been horses and dogs, which remained the case even after they divorced.

Next was the only boy, Thomas (1909 – 1945). Educated at Eton, Thomas died without issue. He was killed in the war in Burma through the bullet of a Japanese sniper. The title eventually went to Lord Redesdale's brother.

Diana (1910 – 2003) was the third daughter. The opinions whether she or Deborah was the most beautiful of the girls differ. Diana Mitford married Bryan Guinness, scion of the immensely rich aristocratic beer-dynasty and heir to the title of Lord Moyne, when she was 19. When she was 22, she took her two children, left her husband and "nailed (her) colours to the mast" of the heavily married (to Cynthia, daughter of the former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon) British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, 14 years her senior. Mosley never intended to leave his loyal and long-suffering wife and his idea of two "wives" shocked even the debauched social circles in which he and Diana were moving.

Sir Oswald's wife conveniently died in May 1933 and grief-stricken Oswald promptly embarked on an affair with his youngest sister-in-law. Diana went to Germany with her sister Unity. While there, they attended the first Nürnberg party rally and returned again for the second rally the next year. Unity introduced Diana to Hitler in March 1935. They were his guests at the 1935 rally and, in 1936, Hitler provided a Mercedes-Benz to chauffeur Diana to the Berlin Olympic Games.

She continued to be Mosley's public mistress despite his endless affairs with other women.

1935, Diana was divorced from Bryan Guinness, who had pleaded guilty and provided "evidence" of his "adultery", as a man of his class was bound to do. In 1936, Mosley and Diana were married in a clandestine civil ceremony in Berlin, with Hitler and Goebbels attending. They made the marriage publicly known only after their first child was born in 1938.

During WWII, she and Mosley were interned at London's Holloway Prison under, thanks to Winston Churchill, relatively comfortable circumstances, their two small children went to live with Diana's sister Pamela Jackson. 1943, after two years, they were both released on grounds of Sir Oswald's health and placed under house arrest until the end of the war. Diana remained married to Mosley and a dedicated Nazi until the end.

She wrote two books of memoirs, A Life of Contrasts (1977), and Loved Ones (1985), as well as a biography of the Duchess of Windsor, whom she had befriended when they were neighbours in post-war Paris where she and Mosley went to live.

Diana Mitford (The Honourable Lady Mosley) died at the age of 93 as one of the many elderly victims of the heat wave that struck Europe in summer 2003 and with which the French had been evidently unable to cope.

Unity (left) and Diana (right), at the September 1937 Nürnberg Nazi Party rally.

The next in line, Unity (1914 – 1948), is, to me, the least interesting, most one-dimensional of the sisters, although she was (and still is) the most notorious one. Plainly obnoxious and fairly dim, she always got her way by sheer disagreeableness and even managed to unnerve her battleaxe of a father by staring him down. Different from her sisters', her eccentricity and obstinacy was not the means to an end or to express creativity, but its own reward. She loved to hurt and to wind people up for hurting's and winding up's sake. It started with releasing her pet rat in ballrooms as a deb and ended with becoming the world's first "polit groupie" to one of the nastiest dictators in history.

At almost six foot, she was impressive at best, frightening at worst. (The accounts of her attractiveness differ considerably.) One of the girls who did the season with her described her as "cold because she'd never known love".

Unity's "season" had, somewhat predictably, ended without an engagement in sight and, bored, she did exactly what her parents had told her not to do, namely to see her ostracised sister Diana. There she met Oswald Mosley and fell for him and his cause hook, line and sinker. She now expressed the wish to learn German and her parents, delighted and relieved that the notoriously indolent and useless Unity had finally expressed interest in something, let her travel to Munich. That was in 1933 and the rest is history.

She pursued Hitler and followed him like a dog until he finally took notice of her. Hitler, ever the petty-bourgeois, adored the fact that a girl from an English upper-class family should fancy him and indulged her and her every whim, together with, but not limited to, the gift of a lovely flat in Munich (char included) out of which a Jewish family had been thrown. Hitler's entourage unanimously hated her, her insolence and airs and graces, and dreaded the thought of the influence she might employ. An interesting snippet of information is that she had to be told by an older woman friend that she was not to make fun of and be rude to Himmler's wife.

Living in Germany, mainly in Berlin and Munich, on and off from 1933 to the outbreak of WWII, she met everything from raised eyebrows to stern disapproval at home, but only finally burnt her bridges when she sided publicly with Julius Streicher. Asked by a German diplomat's wife why she was getting involved with people like Streicher and his ilk Unity replied: "They help me get what I want", which sums up nicely her attitude towards life and the humankind in general. Three epithets describe Unity best: Nasty, nasty and nasty.

Of course, it throws some light on Hitler's personality as well, that he, at such an early stage of his rise to power, risked to antagonise his entire entourage and even his closest allies for this – platonic – infatuation with a vile little adventuress.

When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939 and all Britons were forced to leave the country, Unity, rid of her role, did the only plausible thing and attempted suicide. She shot herself in the head, but only suffered serious brain damage. She was returned to England, all German hospital bills paid for by Hitler, where doctors decided it was too dangerous to remove the bullet, and she eventually died at the age of 33 of meningitis caused by the swelling around the projectile.

Jessica and Esmond Romilly in their bar in Miami (top).
Jessica and Bob Treuhaft at a book presentation in the Seventies (below).

The next sister, Jessica (1917 – 1996), eloped to Spain at the age of 19 with 18 year old Spanish Civil War veteran Esmond Romilly, her second cousin and a nephew of Winston Churchill. Educated at Wellington, Esmond was a journalist who wrote two autobiographies before he was 21 and had attracted media attention as Churchill's 'red nephew'. In Spain he worked as a reporter, along with his friend Philip Toynbee, Arnold Toynbee's son. He and Toynbee collaborated on a journalistic account of the Spanish Civil War. Later, Toynbee wrote Esmond's biography Friends Apart.

The spitting mad parents did everything, even involving the Royal Navy who sent a destroyer, to make still under age Jessica return to England and only her announcement that she was pregnant made them relent. The young couple was allowed to marry at the British Consulate in Bayonne, both heavily disapproving mothers in attendance.

Jessica never saw her father, who had cut all bonds and disowned her, again. He even refused on his deathbed (1958) to see her.

Later, the Romillys settled for a brief while in Miami and opened a bar. When Britain declared war on Germany, Esmond Romilly went to Canada to volunteer. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea in 1941 after a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. He was 23. The news of his death were broken to Jessica by Winston Churchill personally.

Jessica went on to live in the USA, took on odd office jobs and worked hard for her living. She married the Harvard-educated lawyer and Civil Rights activist Robert Treuhaft. Lord Redesdale is said to have had one of his legendary earth-shattering tantrums when he learned of the existence of a new son-in-law who was a leftist and a Jew to boot. Later, she pursued an extremely successful career as an investigative writer. Carl Bernstein, who wrote the epilogue to Jessica's book The Gentle Art of Muckraking, conceded that her research skills were far above his. Her autobiography Hons and Rebels, which appeared 1960 (and which I haven't read) got much acclaim and throws light on her family and upbringing.

Deborah and Andrew Cavendish's wedding.

The youngest sister, Deborah (1920), married Lord Andrew Cavendish, second son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, when they both were 21. At that time, Andrew was not expected to inherit the title. Because his older brother William (who was engaged to be married to Kathleen Kennedy, sister of JFK), was killed in combat in 1944, Andrew became Marquess of Hartington and 11th Duke of Devonshire after his father's death in 1950.

Deborah Duchess of Devonshire never visibly put a foot wrong. She was considered the most perfect one of all Duchesses of Devonshire. There had been ten before her.

Deborah Mitford by Pietro Annigoni

She has been the public face of Chatsworth House, the Devonshire's seat in Derbyshire for many decades and remains so in her widowhood. She has written several books about Chatsworth and played a key role in the restoration of the house, the improvement of the garden, the development of commercial activities such as the Chatsworth Farm Shop (a business that employs a hundred people), and Chatsworth's other business operations. She has even been known to man the ticket office herself.

She became the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004 upon the death of her husband when her son inherited the title. Andrew and Deborah had been married for 63 years.

Deborah, consecutively The Honourable Deborah Freeman-Mitford, Lady Andrew Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, Duchess of Devonshire and Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, is the last surviving one of the famous Mitford sisters.

As all women, with the exception of Pamela, led very public lives, there are plenty of pictures around. To me, the most captivating ones are those of the old women, which clearly show how life had treated them – and they life!

There is, of course, plenty of information on the Mitfords in the Internet. For those with a deeper interest in the history of the 20th century from this particular angle, Nancy's and Jessica's autobiographical books are certainly worth reading, as are, I am sure, if one can stomach it, Diana's.

Jessica, Deborah and Pamela. In the background Alexander Mosley (son of Diana) and his wife Charlotte, Editor of 'The Nancy Mitford Diaries'. Book launch party held at The Reform Club, 23rd September 1993.

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I used apart from some of the above mentioned material a German book Die Mitford Sisters by Karlheinz Schädlich, Düsseldorf 1990, which contains a lot of information (plus some of the pictures shown here), but quite a few irritating errors and mistakes as well and which is not up to scholarly standard. Schädlich quotes extensively David Pryce-Jones, Unity Mitford. A Quest, London 1978.

Charlotte Mosley (Diana's daughter-in-law) wrote: A Talent to Annoy, Essays, Journalism, and Reviews by Nancy Mitford, London 1960.

A Nation of Middle East Affairs Experts

Although I'm cut off the Internet for the time being, I am following in the traditional media what is turning the collective German knickers in a knot right now.

No it is not the high unemployment rate, the general, and generally poor, state of the economics, nor the question how we will be able to go on funding a deluxe (And any German who has NOT suffered first-hand experience of the British NHS please shut up here!) health system. Neither of this. It is the German distress about and responsibility for the Jews, their manners, performance and conduct and how embarrassed we are if they are leaving a bad impression. We call that: "Our special relationship with Israel".

Here is my biased summary of the general mood in Germany, that of the man in the street, the politicians, the lobbyists, and, of course, the media who provide us with all this. If you think I'm exaggerating, you're wrong.

We are against Nationalism

We Germans are against nationalism. Look where it lead us! We learned our lesson! 70 years ago it was "Jews get out TO Palestine", which was a great mistake. Now it's "Jews get out OF Palestine!" As it ought to be. Zionism is, after all, the Jewish nationalism. And we are against nationalism. We are so much against it that we get all hot and bothered about a fifth-rate local conflict in a faraway tiny sliver of land with a death rate in the four-digit-range, when we don't give a damn about hundreds of thousands murdered in the Congo or elsewhere in Africa. There you see how objectionable we find nationalism. Of course, the "Palestinian" call for nationhood we find worthy of support because they are sure to snuff that troublesome Jewish nationalism. We are, after all, against nationalism.

We are anti-Fascists

We are anti-Fascists! We shudder at the thought of anything remotely "right wing extremist". Even if it isn't "right wing extremist". Then it still makes an excellent argument to discredit an unwanted opinion. We can prove that we are anti-Fascists. Aren't we suffering from collective insomnia over a party of little Nazi yobs that doesn't even manage to reach the magical 5 % of votes, after all? If that isn't proof enough that we are anti-Fascists, nothing is! And from this position of righteous anti-Fascism, we love to compare Israel's attempts at defending herself with Nazi-Germany because any crime committed by the Jews, real or perceived, makes us look a bit better and the Holocaust a smidgeon less awful. And don't you dare to call that antisemitic or clobber me with the Auschwitz-cosh! It just isn't allowed in Germany to tell the truth anymore! (In case you don't know, that is the politically correct version of that old Global Jewish Conspiracy thingy.) The Nazis hated the Jews. They were Fascists. We are anti-Fascists, so we can't be antisemitic per definitionem.

We are against occupation

We started WWII. We were occupiers. We have learned our lesson! We are against occupation! We specifically loath the fact that Israel "occupies" Palestinian territory, when the 50-year-long occupation of Tibet by China never worried us in the least. Or the previous occupation of the same territories by Egypt and Jordan until 1967, but generally, we are against occupation.

Of course we know that during 20 years of Arab rule in the territories male life expectancy grew from 42 to 44 and that during the next 20 years of Israeli rule male life expectancy grew from 44 to 63 and, correspondingly, female life expectancy from 45 to 46 and then from 46 to 67. That the Palestinian infant mortality rate decreased from 200 /00 to 170 /00 and during the next 20 years of Israeli rule from 170 /00 to 60 /00. That before 1967 113 hospitals had been in the territories whereas in 1989 that number was 387. That Malaria was finally eliminated during the Israeli "occupation". That before the Israeli "occupation" the percentage of illiterates had been roughly 27.8% among men and 65.1% among women. By 1983 illiteracy was reduced to 13.5% among men and 38.9% among women.

Of course we know all that. But did we say that we are FOR the Palestinians? We are AGAINST the occupation!

We have learned our lesson

We have learned our lesson from the war. We know what it means to be on the wrong side and it won't happen to us again. Ever! We know what it means to lose wars and WOW, weren't we graceful losers ourselves! Lose war, pay with land, specifically when you've started the war in the first place. A lesson as old as mankind's history. Nobody knows that quite like we do and how bitter it is. We've learned our lesson. That's why we are standing firmly at the Palestinians' side to make them understand that they, too, will have to … oh well, maybe not.

We are humanitarians

Another one of those examples of the UN's famous humanitarian efforts in the Middle East.

We are humanitarians. We'd never think murder is ever justified except when it's Jews that are murdered. Murderer of Jews have always the excuse that they are "desperate". Pals are very desperate, everybody says so, Kofi Annan too! Of course, Palestinian Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab societies out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, despite the vast Arab territory, but what does that matter? If it WOULD matter, they wouldn't be the only group of refugees worldwide who have that terrific special status with the UN. And carte blanche to kill Jews because the UN think that "despair" makes an excellent reason for that. And the UN can't be wrong or can they?

We are progressives

We Germans aren't reactionaries anymore. No! We are progressives now! No "kitchen church children" for our women anymore and we get our collective knickers in a knot about "gay rights" lest we may be called *shudder* "conservatives". We are progressives, wherever this progress thingy may lead to. We denounce the abuse of women and minorities. Everywhere! Specifically in the only country in the vast Middle East where they are not abused.

We are pacifists

We are pacifists. We have learned our lesson. We totally disagree with the use of military force. Anywhere. At any time. For any reason. Violence has never achieved anything. Well… yes, actually in history hardly any Evil has been brought down without it but who is interested in facts as long as the spirit is right. And here it is SO right! We will never get over the fact that those Americans used that bad bad violence against US to rid US of an Evil WE had fought so hard to retain. So who can blame us that we don't like it anymore. No, we are totally opposed to violence. Except against Israel.

Of course, for people with ethics as eminent as ours, even self-defence is out of question. If it isn't targeted at Jews, that is. Then it's "despair" and justified. And Israel's self-defence is excessive by virtue of being Jewish anyway. Jews should only settle the aggression against them through surrender. As they always did. As we used to know them. As we used to like them, in particular after they're dead. We deeply feel that it is our duty to stand with praise and censure at the Jews' side as ethical probation officer to keep them from committing a second offence.* Specifically we as Germans should be qualified to speak out about that. Who else, if not us?

*Wolfgang Pohrt's thoughts, not mine.

PostScript: Yesterday night, on the wireless (WDR 2), after detailed reporting of the killing of some [non-violent] Lebanese peasants who were just [peacefully and unsuspectingly] loading vegetables on a [non-military] truck when they were [out of the blue] hit by an Israeli projectile and who will, with some probability (Wasn't IDF-victim-extraordinaire Mohammed al Doura who famously "died in his father's arms" seen alive and well in Gaza lately?) turn out to be Hezbollah terrorists loading weapons on a armed vehicle (I may be wrong), a remarkable and previously unheard (at least by me) statement was made.

Please note, that the news of this station (sober, mainstream, public-owned) are listing each and every Arab casualty, including age, sex, and specific degree of defence- and blamelessness of the victim(s), whereas Israeli casualties are non-existent. Not to speak of the fact that Hezbollah is doing everything to let civilian casualties happen, whereas Israel is doing everything to avoid them. Or the fact that a frighteningly large majority of the Lebanese people support Hamas. I have given up to expect any knowledge of or interest in facts from the media quite a while ago.

However, at the end of the news report the presenter said something to the effect that Israel is suffering losses on a daily basis as well.

And here we were, thinking that those Jews are just having a ball killing innocent and helpless Arabs who want nothing but to live in peace with them.

Therefore, obviously, that needed spelling out.

Racism That Must Not Be Called by Its Name

Another one of my archived pieces! Will political correct idiocy stop someday, somewhere?

This is from The University at Buffalo Reporter, not new, but still topical, nevertheless.

...thousands of Africans emigrated to Germany during the past 500 years, many of whom were brought to Germany as "living curiosities" or as slaves. The establishment of German colonies in Africa at the end of the 19th century increased the number of encounters between Africans and Germans [...]

With the American occupation of Germany after World War II, Afro-Germany was reborn from relationships between black American GIs and German women. Their ranks swelled further as many thousands of immigrant workers from Mozambique, Angola and Namibia were imported to deal with East Germany's chronic labor shortage. African students and refugees who settled in Germany have brought additional depth and breadth to the Afro-German cultural mix.

"One of the reasons that Afro-Germans have captured the interest of scholars across the humanities, ...is because looking at their experiences allows us to see another dimension of the 19th- and early 20th-century ideas of race that led to the Holocaust.

"The experiences of Afro-Germans in today's Germany offer insight into the transformation of that nation-willing or not-into a multicultural society, ...Our discussion is especially timely in light of the wave of violence against foreigners and persons seen as such in Germany since its reunification."

Granted, for argument's sake, all this is factually right, which it isn't (there has never been intermarriage or cohabitation on a larger scale between Germans and Africans and what impact are "thousands" bound to have on a population in the millions and over several centuries anyway, nor has slave-holding ever been part of the German culture): If I understand this shameless bit of politically correct drivel correctly it is trying to convince us that there are enough Black genes among the German population to make us more open towards the ideas of multi-culturalism and to renounce racism and anti-Semitism.

Of course, this implies that openness towards other cultures (whatever that may be worth), racism (or freedom from it) or antisemitism (or freedom from it) are genetically pre-determined, which is - racist. But that's okay as long as such racism is only focussed on Whites.

To what length will the politically correct idiot brigade in America go to make us believe that 1) Whites can per definitionem not be the victims of racism, that 2) Blacks are better people and that 3) a multicultural society has the slightest merit. (Or that antisemitism and racism are the same, but that's a side-issue here).

"Black genes" would help us Germans to become better citizens of the World my ass! A thoroughly racist statement if I have ever seen one.

And now excuse me, I am going to join the Reverend Louis "Calypso Louie" Farrakhan's congregation in search for God, peace of mind, love, tolerance and philosemitism!

Excessive force against Arabs by virtue of being alive and Jewish

I found this in my archives. It's from an AP news update from January 28, 2004:

The family of Beni Avraham, one of the three soldiers captured by the Hizbollah 3 1/2 years ago, expects an answer to its questions from a German-mediated prisoner swap in a secret location near Munich tomorrow. Israel will give Hezbollah 436 prisoners in exchange for Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and three soldiers, including Avraham. Army rabbis have declared the soldiers dead, but all three families are clinging to hope that they will still be alive.

The three soldiers were captured in October 2000 when Hezbollah militants detonated a bomb on their unarmoured jeep during a patrol along the Lebanon border. Despite the rabbinical declaration that Avraham and two other soldiers are dead, the family still has some hope that he will get off the plane on his own two feet rather than in a coffin.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah refuses to say what happened to the soldiers, and stated that the families will know on Thursday for sure.

May the blood of those soldiers and of all Israelis killed by Hezbollah and the grief of the parents come upon those who decided that negotiating with that scum may be an option.