Why do Nazi-themed tricks occur in the UK?

British Tory MP Aidan Burley has left his post at the Transport Department after taking part in a Nazi-themed party. The order of his dismissal was signed personally by British Prime Minister David Cameron, The Mail on Sunday writes.

Several days ago this newspaper published photographs of a party at a French skiing resort where Burley is sitting side by side with a man wearing an SS officer’s outfit. Burley’s behavior brought sharp criticism from oppositional Labour MPs. Tories also considered their colleague’s conduct “offensive and foolish”. Aidan tried to save his career by denying any sympathy for Nazism. However, The Mail on Sunday discovered that he was not a random guest at that party and it had been his idea to hire the SS uniform.

In all probability, due to the growth of unemployment in the context of an economic crisis and all kinds of migration problems, the UK is living through a certain upsurge of right-wing moods aimed, among other things, against Muslim people. These people are subject to attacks similar to those in the period of the Nazi heyday in the 20th century. In this connection, it is small wonder that one of the participants in anti-Nazi campaigns in the UK Max Levitas directly declares that “the problem of fighting against Nazism is coming to the fore again”.

The English Defence League (EDL) is the face of the British right-wing forces today. This group, which identifies itself as a nationalist movement fighting against Muslim attacks on British culture, has repeatedly arranged protests against “Islamic extremism” on the British Isles. Stirring up anti-Muslim feelings in the British, the EDL and other right-wing radical groups put a stake on immigration problems in the UK. However, the EDL ideology is reminiscent of the past when Oswald Mosley’s Nazi ideas were fashionable in the UK in the late 1920s-early 1930s.

At the same time, it is worth pointing out that problems with immigration, higher unemployment and lower living standards of the British are not the only reasons for the growing radical moods in the country and Nazi-style tricks which have lately become frequent. If we remember the aforementioned Aidan Burley or Prince Harry, who put on a “Nazi” costume at a home party in 2005, those men can hardly be considered unemployed or needy. There must be a different reason for this. We can suggest moral degradation or complete immorality.

It is not a coincidence that straight after the August riots in the country and also last weekend Prime Minister David Cameron spoke about a “moral collapse” in the British society. In my opinion, the roots of today’s right-wing moods in the UK are in the moral field. Even though today’s right-wing radical organizations still remain in the backwater of British politics, people pay much more attention to them than before. Suffice it to say that the British National Party received two seats in the European parliament in 2009.

We can neither ignore the fact that in recent years the British bestseller lists contain a lot of books about the Third Reich. These books are fiction, documentary research and even science fiction. In 2000, only 350 books about the Third Reich were published in the UK and last year 850. The 100 most popular books on this subject have brought their publishers 12mln pounds. I suppose that publishers think little about the ethical and moral side of things when they receive these high profits printing all kinds of books about Nazis.

It is a pity because unduly enthusiasm about the dubious literature describing the Third Reich can eventually have a pernicious influence on the young British minds and is fraught with unpredictable consequences. The lessons of the Second World War in which Russians and the British fought together against Nazism remind us of this.

The Voice of Russia

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Tory MP regrets stag party's Nazi toasts, SS costumes and waiter taunts

Aidan Burley, Cannock Chase MP, filmed with ski resort friends who used thick German accents to 'toast' Third Reich

A Conservative MP who attended a party where friends allegedly chanted Nazi slogans and dressed up in SS uniforms, has apologised for "any offence that was caused" at the event.

Aidan Burley used the social networking site, Twitter, to say he did "deeply regret inappropriate behaviour by some guests at a stag party" he attended and was "extremely sorry for any offence that was caused".

The apology, posted at 12.30pm on Sunday, was sent to the MP's 385 followers but was picked up by the Twitter community and passed around to many others. It failed, however, to assuage those outraged by his behaviour, with many continuing to call for his sacking and resignation.

The 32-year-old Cannock Chase MP was dining at a restaurant in the ski resort of Val Thorens, at Savoie, in the French Alps. Some of his 12 friends in the restaurant chanted "Hitler, Hitler, Hitler", according to the Mail on Sunday.

The paper claimed that the MP, who was elected in 2010, sipped wine while at least one man sitting near him goaded a French waiter, asking: "You are from Germany? No, you must be from Austria, then?" and "Are you insulting his Reich?"

Burley was filmed raising his glass in a toast before, the paper claimed, another guest beside him made a speech, in which he said: "Let's raise a toast to Tom for organising the stag do, and if we're perfectly honest, to the ideology and thought process of the Third Reich."

The party was said to have moved on to a British-themed pub, where partygoers adopted thick German accents and chanted: "Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer!", "Himmler! Himmler! Himmler!" and "Eichmann! Eichmann! Eichmann!"

The paper quoted a French police spokesman who said that Burley's friends could face prosecution: under the French penal code it is a crime to wear or exhibit in public anything reminiscent of what was worn or used by the Nazis, unless required for the purposes of a film, play or historical exhibition. The spokesman added: "Anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi crimes are taken extremely seriously in France. Anyone suspected of breaking the law in this respect can and will be prosecuted."

Burley, a rising star in the Conservative party and senior aide to the transport secretary, Justine Greening, was thought to be close friends with the man who wore the SS uniform – Mark Fournier, 34, an accountant and graduate of Queen's College, Oxford University, for whom the stag party was held.

Fournier, the paper added, was frequently addressed by the others as "Himmler". His brother, John Fournier, 37, a businessman, gave the toast. Later, the elder brother gave another speech, saying of Burley: "This man is a Tory MP. He went to Oxford as well. A Tory boy. He was the candidate for Berlin East."

Burley, who was said to be standing a few feet away, was not seen to object to any of the speeches or the actions of his friends, the paper claimed.

The Guardian

The Village Where the Neo-Nazis Rule

Hitler salutes in the street and firing practice in the forest: Neo-Nazis have taken over an entire village in Germany, and authorities appear to have given up efforts to combat the problem. The place has come to symbolize the far right's growing influence in parts of the former communist east.

Horst and Birgit Lohmeyer have been working on their life's dream for six years, renovating a house in the woods near Jamel, a tiny village near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Birgit Lohmeyer writes crime novels, her husband is a musician, and both try to pretend everything is normal here in Jamel.

It wasn't easy to find their new home. The Lohmeyers spent months driving out to the countryside every weekend, heading east from where they lived in Hamburg, but most of the houses they saw were too expensive. Then they came across the inexpensive red brick farmhouse in Jamel. Slightly run-down, but not far from the Baltic Sea, the house sits surrounded by lime and maple trees, near a lake.

The Lohmeyers knew that a notorious neo-Nazi lived nearby -- Sven Krüger, a demolition contractor and high-level member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). What the Lohmeyers didn't know was that other neighbors felt terrorized by Krüger. He and his associates were in the process of buying up the entire village.

Jamel is an example of the far-right problem that has plagued Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for years. The rural region, once part of communist East Germany, has a poor reputation in this regard -- the NPD, which glorifies the Third Reich, has been in the state parliament since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of daily life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politicians from all the democratic parties has shaken the state. Sometimes hardly a week goes by without an attack on another electoral district office, with paint bombs, right-wing graffiti and broken windows.

Norbert Nieszery, leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the state parliament, calls it an "early form of terror." Nieszery's own office windows have been smashed twice. State Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) says he has registered a "new level" of right-wing extremist violence. He believes the NPD is trying to raise its profile through aggressive behavior ahead of the state parliament election in September. One local mayor requested police protection after receiving repeated right-wing threats. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has warned that the NPD is becoming increasingly influential in local municipalities and that the neo-Nazis are trying to entrench themselves in daily life.

Mounting Concern About Far-Right Influence

Nowhere have they succeeded as well as in Jamel. If the right-wing extremists left, the village would be empty. Jamel is no longer just a problem at the regional or federal state level -- even Berlin is growing concerned about the situation.

SPD member Wolfgang Thierse, vice president of Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, visited the village a few months ago. He spent half an hour in the Lohmeyers' living room and promised to support them in their fight against the neo-Nazis. So far, nothing has changed. Jamel has come to symbolize the fact that there are places in Germany where right-wing extremists can do virtually whatever they want.

When the Lohmeyers moved here in 2004, they started to fix up their country house and to make contact with the neighbors -- although not with the neo-Nazi Krüger. They were sure right-wing extremists wouldn't be the only people in Jamel.

Only gradually did they realize just where they had ended up. Plaster crumbled from many of the houses in the village and one roof had collapsed completely. Beer bottles, car tires and gas canisters were littered behind the bus stop. There were metal fences surrounding some properties and attack dogs strained against their chains in the front yards. No one bothered to remove the swastika scribbled on the sign at the entrance to the village.

Children Giving Hitler Salute

There were young men with shaved heads and army trousers in the village and Nazi rock music could be heard from across the fields on the weekends. Shots sounded from the woods, where the neo-Nazis practiced their shooting -- police later found bullet casings in trenches there. When the Lohmeyers walked through the village, children raised their hands in the Nazi salute.

Krüger has shaped the village. He grew up here, with a father who was known as a right-wing radical and who used to make his son salute each morning in the snow. Young Krüger was an outsider at school, an acquaintance remembers, and didn't find friends until he joined the skinhead scene. As a young man, he incited right-wing thugs to attack a campsite and spent time in pre-trial detention on suspicion of burglary. Still, for a long time, the Krügers were the only neo-Nazis in the village.

"Now," says Horst Lohmeyer, "they see Jamel as a 'nationally liberated zone'" -- a neo-Nazi term for places foreigners and those of foreign descent must fear to tread. The extremists took over the village in just a few years. They now own seven of the 10 houses and have driven out anyone who couldn't come to terms with them. They battered down doors and broke windows, slashed tires, flew the German imperial war flag and celebrated Hitler's birthday. In the 1990s, they stuck dead chickens on one family's garden fence with the warning, "We'll smoke you out."

The village emptied and Krüger encouraged his right-wing friends to buy the available houses. Few others dared to venture into Jamel anymore. Neo-Nazis greeted one couple that wanted to move there with "Piss off" -- and the couple's house burned down shortly before they planned to move in. One new property owner dared to set foot in the village only accompanied by police.

The Lohmeyers have made it their life's work not to let themselves be driven out of Jamel. Each year, they host a rock festival on a field behind their house. Governor Erwin Sellering of the SPD has been patron of the festival since 2009. Police fence in the area and guard the entrance, and in past years, things remained largely calm.

Help is Far Away

This summer, though, neo-Nazis jumped over the fence, yelling slurs and attacking concertgoers. Police stepped in and stopped the troublemakers. But police can't always protect the Lohmeyers -- the nearest station is 12 kilometers away.

Horst Lohmeyer sits in his kitchen, bent over a map, and runs his finger along the roads and through the towns -- Gressow, Neu Degtow, Grevesmühlen. It takes a quarter of an hour to reach the nearest police station. When Krüger got married this summer, the village was inundated with several hundred right-wing extremists from Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, including a number of high-ranking NPD politicians such as Stefan Köster, NPD party head for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Jamel has become a right-wing pilgrimage site -- they come from all over Europe to see the village where neo-Nazis call the shots. They celebrated Krüger's wedding until late in the night, with nationalist rock music and fireworks. The Lohmeyers lay awake in bed, frozen with fear.

Mayor Uwe Wandel is helpless in the face of the right-wing movement in his community. He sounds bitter when he talks about Jamel. "The police, the authorities, no one dares to intervene," he says. "The Nazis are laughing in our faces." Wandel says he has repeatedly asked the state government for help. The interior minister and a parliamentary delegation came by one time, he adds. "They stayed for 20 minutes, expressed concern -- then they left again."

No One Responsible

Jamel has become a lawless place, Wandel complains, and the authorities don't take decisive enough action against the right-wing extremists. He says Krüger is allowed to dump demolition waste and burn trash in the village with impunity. The head of the department of public order in nearby Grevesmühlen says higher-level officials at the district level need to tackle the problem. They in turn say the local authority is responsible for Jamel.

Krüger, meanwhile, has much bigger plans. He has been a member of the district council for the NPD since 2009 and has bought parts of a concrete factory in Grevesmühlen, which he uses for his NPD office and his demolition company. The company logo shows the outline of a Star of David being smashed; the slogan is, "We do the dirty work." Barbed wire encloses the factory premises and dogs bark. A sign above the entrance reads, "Better dead than a slave." Krüger prefers not to comment on the accusations against him. All he says is, "Nothing that's written about me is true. I don't stand a chance against the system."

Krüger has hired new employees in the last few months. He gets contracts from fellow members of the far-right scene, but also from local businesses. Mayor Wandel says he's appalled by how far these right-wing structures now extend. "I'm afraid of a second, third, fourth Jamel," he says.

Neo-Nazis placed a boulder at the entrance to the village. A plaque attached to the rock reads, "Village of Jamel - free, social, national." Signs next to it point the way to Hitler's birthplace ("Braunau am Inn 855 km") and to the formerly German cities of Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). No one has removed the rock. "We've given up on Jamel," Wandel says.

Only the Lohmeyers are left.

Spiegel Online

Stetchford soldier in "Nazi" picture storm admits being in BNP

BNP soldier Anthony Phipps still AWOL

A runaway Birmingham soldier condemned as a “Nazi” broke his silence to insist he would give himself up within days

BNP member Anthony Phipps, aged 21 and from Stechford, went on the run after being accused of having a tattoo in honour of the Third Reich and of making Sieg Heil-style salutes in internet pictures. Despite criticism of his political views, Phipps insisted: “I’m not a racist or a Nazi.”

Speaking as he laid low in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Iraq veteran added: “I do follow the BNP, that I don’t deny. But I didn’t join it to be racist. I can’t go back to the Army because I feel threatened.”

Phipps, a member of 3 Mercian Regiment (Staffs), said he fled his barracks in Fallingbostel, Germany, last weekend after a Sunday newspaper revealed pictures of his “Nazi tattoo”, which was originally posted on social networking website Facebook. He was also being hunted by Military Police officers and the Ministry of Defence urged him to give himself up. Phipps said he would hand himself over to the authorities within days. But he claimed the coverage he had received had made it “impossible” to return to his military duties.

“They’ve put me at risk and my family,” he said.

Phipps’s sister Andrea, a 24-year-old mum-of-two, said the picture of him appearing to make Nazi salutes was taken out of context.

She said: “He’s far from a Nazi. The photo was taken at his grandma’s funeral. They were pointing to a picture of his grandma. So what if he is a member of the BNP? He has every right to express his views. He’s a soldier fighting for his country and people are stabbing him in the back. It’s not fair.”

But Hall Green Labour MP Steve McCabe said: “Membership of the BNP is inconsistent with the values of the British Armed Forces. Army personnel are supposed to uphold the values of the Crown and the BNP’s views conflict with those.”

An MoD spokesman said Army personnel were allowed to join political parties as long as their membership did not “conflict with core values and standards”. The spokesman added: “Members of the Armed Forces are entitled to their beliefs provided their practice does not conflict with the Services’ core values and standards. Soldiers who are AWOL are urged to contact their units and to make arrangements to return to military service of their own accord.

“Advice is available from the Services Confidential Support Line – 0800 731 4880. Safeguards have been put in place to ensure those arrested are treated in a sensitive manner. There are many reasons why service personnel go absent and all absentees are afforded Army welfare and duty of care provisions upon return.”

Birmingham Mail

Police ready for clashes at British National Party festival

A recent RWB attendee complete with hardcore nazi Blood and Honour tattoo

Police are to conduct a huge security operation in a Derbyshire village this week amid fears of clashes at an annual British National Party gathering.

Eighty coachloads of anti-Fascists are to protest over the Red, White and Blue festival in Denby, which is likely to attract thousands of supporters next weekend. Up to a thousand police officers will be stationed in the village. There was violence last year and greater disruption is expected this time. It is the BNP’s first mass gathering since it won two European seats in June.

Lee Barron, a trade union organiser of the protest, said that a peaceful march was planned and that violent protesters should stay away.

The BNP advertises its festival as a family event involving historical re-enactments, Morris dancing and a dog show. However, previously there have been complaints by local people about skinheads with vicious dogs descending on their village and playing tapes of Third Reich martial tunes.

Police officers have been granted special powers across the four-day event, which begins on Friday, to prevent more than 20 people gathering in certain areas of the village, among other restrictions.

Residents asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution for speaking out against the BNP, but told The Times that the party was not welcome. One said: “It is a place of warmth and tolerance and we don’t want to be associated with these people.”

Simon Darby, the deputy leader of the BNP, denied that the location of the festival was inappropriate and said that the presence of two BNP representatives on the local council showed that the party had support. “We’d have the same problems wherever we had it. Its the Left that are causing all the problems,” Mr Darby said.

Weyman Bennett, of the Unite Against Fascism group, said that the BNP rally would be a “magnet for Fascists and neo-Nazis from across Europe”. Mr Bennett said: “We want to make sure that there is opposition.”

The festival, in its tenth year, was moved from Lancashire to Denby three years ago. It will be held on a 34-acre property owned by Alan Warner, a local BNP member.

Times Online

Nazi Strength Through Joy leisure programme to get museum in German far-Right proposals

The NPD - friends of the BNP and not even a little bit nazi

Germany's far-right NPD Party is on a collision course with the government over plans to build a museum celebrating the Third Reich's "Strength Through Joy" movement, which organised leisure activities for the masses.

Jürgen Rieger, the vice-president of the party that seeks to ban all immigration and sever all ties with the EU, has submitted plans to authorities in Wolfsburg - home to car giant Volkswagen - for the museum intended to "show the people what this organisation did and what it meant". But critics have accused Mr Rieger of using the museum as a way to spread pro-Nazi propaganda.

Strength Through Joy, at one time the largest tour operator in the world, was created to promote "a National Socialist people's community and the perfection and refinement of the German people" through its tightly structured recreational programmes. Battalions of Strength Through Joy workers built the massive holiday complex of Prora on the Baltic Sea intended to be used by 20,000 holidaying Nazi loyalists at one time. the organisation also controlled a fleet of cruise ships that allowed pre-war Germans to travel to far away destinations at rock bottom prices. And it also financed the production of the "people's car" by VW, which later became the classic Beetle of the post-war years.

By the time war broke out, it was virtually redundant, but had accomplished its task: binding the people to Hitler and controlling leisure the way every other activity was controlled under the regime.

Mr Rieger's plans to turn an old furniture warehouse into a museum have met with stiff opposition. Ralf Schmidt, a spokesman for the city, said: "We will use every legal means at our disposal to stop this from becoming a reality." Because Mr Rieger has made his application to have the museum as a "commercial enterprise", the initiative, which critics say "glorifies Naziism"will be more difficult to stop than if it were merely being opened as a political showcase for the NPD viewpoint.

Mr Rieger has already assembled a fleet of Nazi-era cars, propaganda posters, documents, flags and uniforms of the movement ready to go on display.

Local officials fear that the museum will become nothing more than a shrine to the far-right, who continue to indulge in violent racist attacks while attracting more vulnerable young people during the economic downturn. In June, Mr Rieger founded an association to promote the museum. A barbecue and music evening at the intended site turned bloody when NPD members with shaved heads attacked journalists who turned up to report on the event with clubs and beer bottles. Later the same night, a black man was beaten up at the main train station.

Telegraph

Archbishop of Canterbury warns recession Britain must learn lessons from Nazi Germany

The Archbishop of Canterbury warns today that Britain must learn the lessons of Nazi Germany in dealing with the effects of the recession

Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between Gordon Brown's response to the economic downturn and the Third Reich. In an article for The Daily Telegraph, he claims Germany in the 1930s pursued a "principle" that worked consistently but only on the basis that "quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn't".

Dr Williams, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, then appears to draw a parallel between the Nazis and the UK Government's policies for tackling the downturn, which he says fails to take account of the "particular human costs" to the most vulnerable in society.

"What about the unique concerns and crises of the pensioner whose savings have disappeared, the Woolworth's employee, the hopeful young executive, let alone the helpless producer of goods in some Third-world environment where prices are determined thousands of miles away?" he asks.

In an apparent reference to the Prime Minister, who has claimed to be guided by a moral compass, the Archbishop also observes "without these anxieties about the specific costs, we've lost the essential moral compass". It follows a disagreement with the Prime Minister last week in which the Archbishop likened Government policy on spending to "an addict returning to a drug". This prompted Mr Brown to allude to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan by claiming he could not "walk by on the other side" as people suffered.

The Prime Minister has pledged to spend his way out of the economic downturn, increasing public borrowing to a record £200m a day. The Government has pledged £500billion of taxpayers' money to bail out the banking system, and cut VAT by 2.5 per cent to get consumers spending again. But unemployment is predicted to top 2 million by the New Year as high street names such as Woolworths and MFI go under. Thousands have fallen into negative equity as the property market has fallen by 15 per cent. Millions of prudent savers are also suffering as interest rates have been cut to 2 per cent.

Dr Williams' comments may be perceived as a further attack on Mr Brown's efforts to boost the economy, and risk damaging the relationship between Lambeth Palace and Downing Street. It threatens a return to the 1980s, when the Conservative Government came under fierce attack from the Church over its social policies which were said to exclude the poor deliberately.

This summer, the Archbishop invited the Prime Minister to speak at a rally by Anglian bishops and hailed his commitment to ending world poverty. But after the collapse of banks around the world in September, Dr Williams called for governments to increase regulation of the financial sector and claimed Karl Marx had been right in his analysis of the dangers of capitalism.

Last week, the Archbishop admitted it would not be "the end of the world" if the Church's links with the state were severed, as it would no longer have to rely on ministers' approval for changes to canon law. He also claimed he did not take account of MPs' opinions before making public pronouncements, saying: "While there might be many reasons for watching what I say, being a nuisance to the people across the river [Thames] is not a big consideration."

He then denounced Mr Brown's plans to increase debt, saying: "I worry about that because it seems a little bit like the addict returning to the drug. When the Bible uses the word 'repentance', it doesn't just mean beating your breast, it means getting a new perspective, and that is perhaps what we are shrinking away from."

In response, the Prime Minister defended his "fiscal stimulus" policies by alluding to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. Mr Brown said: "I think the Archbishop would also agree with me that every time someone becomes unemployed or loses their home or a small business fails it is our duty to act and we should not walk by on the other side when people are facing problems."

However, Dr Williams has continued his criticisms of current economic policy in this newspaper. In his article he warns of the dangers of "unconditional loyalty to a system" that turned into a "nightmare" in Germany under Hitler, in which only certain groups and ideas were valued, while others were deemed dispensable and suffering was ignored.

He cites the lectures given by Karl Barth, a theologian who was driven into exile by Hitler, who had claimed that one of the benefits of Christianity is that believers are able to live without the "principles" that drive politics.

The Archbishop concedes some of the "principles" now being put forward are not as destructive as the 20th century ideologies of Fascism or Communism. But he goes on to suggest that some "principled" defences of the economy "block out actual human faces and stories", and defends the right of religious leaders to raise questions about the social implications of financial plans.

Dr Williams concludes that the message of the Christmas story is one of unconditional love, and the idea that every human life must be valued.

Meanwhile, a member of his staff has been sacked for making an offensive comment about a senior bishop in an official document that was sent to 10 Downing Street as well as other clergy. The obscene word was written next to the name of the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, in a confidential job application sent from Lambeth Palace.

Telegraph

The new spate of Nazi films

There is a disturbing tendency in recent films to offer a sympathetic portrayal of servants of the Third Reich

A spectre is haunting Europe. It wears jackboots, a swastika and a delicate tear-stained expression of angst-ridden introspection. And it's called the Touchy-Feely Nazi. It can be found in your local multiplex in a quartet of high profile movies - three of which are coming soon, one is already out - that take a fresh and sometimes bold new look at the Second World War almost exclusively and often sympathetically from the Nazi point of view. These movies are filled with stars (step forward Tom Cruise and Kate Winslet), they are primed for awardsseason kudos, and yet they speak of a profound and ultimately queasy shift in the way that we regard National Socialism, the Holocaust and Nazi Germany on screen.

Valkyrie is the biggest of these and stars Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, and a kind husband and father who hates the Führer just as much as he loves Germany. He's a man of action and nobility who is surrounded by a cast of equally honest souls, played with convincing sincerity by quality British actors such as Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh. In fact, with the exception of Hitler himself, and a few surrounding cronies, it's hard to find a nasty Nazi among them.

Then there's The Reader, with Winslet starring as Hanna Schmitz, a German tram conductor who becomes a concentration camp guard almost by default. She is, naturally, haunted by her part in the Nazi atrocities - and indeed Winslet plays her internal trauma with sterling conviction - but through her new relationship with a younger man (played by David Kross) and her love of literature, she has the chance to be partially redeemed.

We've already had The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which took a look inside the unfortunate family of the sensitive camp commandant David Thewlis, who nobly tried to shield his innocent son, Bruno (Asa Butterfield) from the horrors of the Final Solution. And still to come is Good, the story of a gentle German university professor, John Halder (played by Viggo Mortensen), who joins the SS simply because it's easier than remaining politically neutral. Naturally, when a close Jewish friend, Maurice (Jason Issacs), begins to feel the sharp end of Nazi rule John begins to regret his decision. But it's too little, too late.

What these films share is a common revisionist tone, and an urge to be taken seriously as morally mature storytelling. Indeed they were collectively applauded last month in Newsweek magazine for being “remarkable” and “more than black and white”, and for refusing to take an unambiguous stance on the ideological perils of living in Nazi Germany. “Look,” these movies seem to say, “being a Nazi wasn't that easy, and furthermore not everybody caught the bug.” Bryan Singer, the director of Valkyrie, was even more explicit when he announced recently: “Nobody wants to believe that all of a people are indoctrinated into evil, into murder and such hate. Nobody wants to believe that. So I think Valkyrie will be inspiring to people. I hope it will.”

And yet is there not a danger that this urge to redress the balance, and this desire to tell morally intriguing tales from the Nazi side, comes at a price? Richard Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University and the author of the definitive Third Reich historical trilogy, certainly thinks so. “There is a tendency, perhaps derived from the sources that film-makers use for these films, to show everyone as being very rational and reasonable,” he says. “Whereas only Hitler and just a few people around him - the top-level Nazis - are seen as absolute raving maniacs. And the fact is that Nazi ideology did go fairly wide and deep.”

Evans elaborates further, and points to plot holes in some of these movies - the child protagonist in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, for instance, would have been well-versed in Nazi ideology and not the innocent that he was on screen. Von Stauffenberg, though clearly an icon to Cruise, had characteristics that would have made him wildly unpalatable to a modern audience, namely he was an anti-Semite and someone who held, “a mystical belief in an eternal sacred Germany”. However, the von Stauffenberg whom we meet on film is unquestionably heroic, and someone who meets his martyr's end with near Christ-like dignity.

Trudy Gold, the chief executive of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and senior lecturer in Jewish history, says that this revisionism is more sinister than just fact-fudging. “Personally, I find this need to explain Germany away very peculiar,” she says. “Obviously, when it comes to the Holocaust, it is important to understand the perpetrators, and the fact that they were human. But when you start approaching this gradation of evil, it becomes morally dangerous.”

The film-makers, naturally, are sensitive about being described as Nazi apologists, and Stephen Daldry, the director of The Reader, has been careful to distinguish between the atrocious actions committed by Hanna Schmitz (she locks hundreds of Jews in a burning church) and the essential humanity of her character. Similarly, Viggo Mortensen, the star of Good, says that the film is actually asking you, at every narrative step, to question your own moral judgments. Cruise, for his part, simply announced recently with classic Cruise-like idiosyncrasy: “When I was a kid I always wanted to kill Hitler.”

Nonetheless, the intellectual subtlety of these defences is often lost in the mechanics of a medium that's at the mercy of visual iconography (the leather coats, boots and swastikas all carry a giddy primal thrill - part of what Gold calls “the human compulsion to go to the dark side of the moon”). More importantly, a mainstream movie's essential need for empathetic protagonists will inevitably render saintly what was once demonic. “The question of who you empathise with in a film that involves people who, historically speaking, are difficult to empathise with is a very important one,” Evans says. “It does involves a certain simplification of moral complexities.”

It is thus ironic that the very same quality that distinguishes these movies - their ostensible moral complexity - is actually responsible for their moral simplicity. Their 21st-century need to see both sides of the story has, taken cumulatively, resulted in an unfortunate Nazi whitewash. And though their intentions may be clear and honest, these films and their film-makers are ultimately, like Blake's description of Milton, “of the Devil's party without knowing it”.

NAZIS ON FILM The story so far

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Filmed while the outcome of the Second World War was very much undecided, Major Heinrich Strasser (played by Conrad Veidt, who himself fled Nazi Germany) is the model of eerie intimidation. “Do you mind if I ask you a kvestion?” he says, glaring at Humphrey Bogart’s Rick. “Vot is your nationality?”

The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk, 1958)

Marlon Brando hams it up deliciously as the idealistic, blond-haired ski instructor with a penchant for the ladies who becomes a Nazi lieutenant stationed in Paris. He eventually asks for a transfer, is sent to North Africa and suffers a magnificent, spinning, rolling, bullet-ridden death scene.

Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, 1976)

Laurence Olivier is utterly sinister as Dr Christian Szell, a former concentration camp sadist, dubbed “the White Angel” of Auschwitz. In 1970s New York, he frets about his secret stash of diamonds, carries a retractable blade up his sleeve and can do terrifying things with a dentist’s drill. Remember,“Is it safe?”

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)

Major Arnold Toht (Ronald Lacey) is the giggling, leering, crazy-eyed SS hatchet man who calls women “Fräulein” and then tortures them with hot pokers. He meets an unfortunate end, however, when his screamingface is melted away by a floaty blue spirit from inside the Ark of the Covenant.

Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

The banality of evil is masterfully underscored by Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth, a camp commandant who kills Jews for sport and because he can. Fiennes humanises Goeth with moments of eccentricity and doubt, but never once makes him sympathetic.

Times Online

Nazi church seeks future as bulwark against fascism

A rundown Protestant church built to glorify Hitler's Third Reich is hoping for a new lease of life as a memorial against Nazi oppression. The place of worship in southern Berlin is a unique example of the Protestant Church's adoption of Nazi propaganda, with furnishings rich in symbolism favoured by the dictatorship.

From the entrance hall chandelier shaped like an iron cross military medal to the wooden carving of a Wehrmacht soldier on the pulpit standing on the right-hand side of Jesus, the atmosphere is heavy with reminders of Hitler's rule.

The brown-brick church that once reverberated to the swell of Nazi anthems badly needs repairs. This week, the parish launched a bid to secure fresh investment to rescue the building completed in 1935, two years after the Fuehrer took power.

"The building shows how such a murderous ideology could infest itself in a 'normal' society," said local pastor Hans-Martin Brehm.

"I think every generation risks doing terrible things if it's not mindful of the past," he said.

Brehm estimates the building, which is no longer used for regular services, needs 3.5 million euros (2.79 million pounds).

"If nothing's done, it's going to collapse," he said.

Brehm wants the Martin Luther Memorial Church to become a place of remembrance that is used for regular cultural events, not a museum that he says would render it a "dead stone" relic. Authorities appear sympathetic to the church's plight.

Given the building's link to the Nazi era, it is a strong candidate for public funding, said Anna Maria Odenthal at Berlin's office for the conservation of historical monuments.

The building's origins go back to the anti-Semitic Deutsche Christen (German Christian) movement which claimed to have hundreds of thousands of Protestant members by the mid-1930s. A study by historian Manfred Gailus calculated that about a quarter of Berlin's Protestant parishes were run by pro-Nazi clergy, with many others acquiescent.

Towering over the church's chancel is a "victory arch" of tiles decorated with images that alternate from traditional Christian symbols to the blank faces of helmeted soldiers and Nazi stormtroopers from the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung (SA).

According to locals, an image of Protestant reformer Martin Luther inset in the wall of the entrance hall was replaced by Hitler's face. Luther's likeness has since returned. Swastikas that once adorned the church have also been removed. The Nazi symbol is banned in modern Germany. But many other reminders of the period remain. On a raised platform above the entrance is an organ first played at the Nuremberg Nazi party rally of 1935 -- where anti-Semitic race laws where passed.

Yet despite its purpose-built design, the church has never become a shrine to neo-Nazis, nor was it a shining example of obedience to Hitler's regime, said Brehm, 55.

"The parish rejected all the mass baptisms and uniformed parades, apart from when they were officially prescribed. They went on in the neighbouring churches," he said.

Just weeks after the infamous Jewish pogrom in November 1938 "Reichskristallnacht" (Night of Breaking Glass), the local pastor wed a Jewish woman to an "Aryan" German in the church.

"That was strictly forbidden then," said Brehm.

Reuters

German TV star pays for hailing Nazi 'values'

She was Germany’s favourite newsreader - a blonde, blue-eyed television star who became a campaigner for old-fashioned feminity.

Now Eva Herman has fallen from her pedestal - she has been sacked for praising Hitler’s policies towards women, families and motherhood. The Nazi years, she said, while presenting her latest book, The Noah’s Ark Principle, were a cruel time. They had, though, a redeeming quality: they celebrated family values. “There were the good things too, that is to say the values, the children, the mothers, the families, the solidarity . . .”

Within hours Herman, 48, was dismissed from state television. She has lost her talk show with immediate effect and her position as the presenter of the cult quiz programme called Did You See . .?

Part of Herman’s appeal to viewers was her campaign for a return to old-fashioned feminity. In an earlier book she pleaded for motherhood to be respected by society. Feminists accused her of trying to recreate the traditional German values of Children, Kitchen and Church.

The far Right seemed to agree. An organisation run by the Austrian nationalist Freedom Party invited her as a speaker - she cancelled at the last minute - and she is celebrated by far-right blogs.

This time she seems to have gone too far in blurring the boundaries between traditional German virtues and Nazi policies. “This is the worst I have heard in a long time,” the German Jewish novelist Ralph Giordano said. “Frau Herman should realise that the distinguishing feature of the Third Reich was not the way it treated mothers who were supposed to produce cannon fodder. The distinguishing feature was the use of the gas chambers.”

Herman said: “You have to see my remarks in context. This is not about Hitler’s values but about basic human values which were abused in the Third Reich.”

Under the Nazis, mothers who bore four healthy children were awarded a medal, the Mother Cross. Pregnant Aryan mothers were given generous maternity leave in the 1930s but primarily to free up work for the male unemployed. Children were encouraged in order to create the army of the future and to populate the captured territories in Eastern Europe.

“Whoever knows me and reads the book will be aware how deeply I reject left and right-wing extremism,” Herman said.

Her central thesis is that women have been forced to deny their true nurturing nature by the social pressure to succeed in the workplace. This in turn has robbed men of their sense of manhood and is contributing to Germany’s very low birthrate.

Times Online

Jewish works found in Hitler's personal record collection

Relatives of a Russian officer who looted Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Berlin bunker in 1945 have unearthed the Führer's personal record collection among his belongings.

What they found does not make sweet music to those who still worship the racial quackery of mankind's greatest tormentor. For amid the Wagner and the Beethoven, were works by Jewish and Russian composers - Hitler's greatest enemies - including Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Borodin.

Throughout the 12-year lifespan of the Third Reich, Hitler forbade his followers to listen to anything other than German composers. Even jazz was banned as "negro swamp music" and orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic were forbidden from playing anything other than Teutonic classics. The rest Hitler labelled "sub-human music"

Now the pillaged recordings, taken by a Red Army officer, Besymenski, after Berlin fell in May 1945, show that Hitler was a hypocrite as well as a monster.

Besymenski, himself a Jew, was fluent in German and conducted the interrogation of Field Marshal von Paulus after the Sixth Army was destroyed at Stalingrad in 1943. When Berlin fell, the Russian officer was despatched with others to make an inventory of artefacts in the bunker and Hitler's destroyed Reichschancellery above it.

While his comrades set about recording - and pilfering - the monogrammed silver and swastika-embossed porcelain, Captain Besymenski noticed that many cabinets had special locks and were still sealed.

Years later, he wrote these words: "They were all packed with paperwork indicating they were to be sent to the mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden. Among electrical appliances and things like washing machines, were the records."

According to Alexandra Besymenski, his daughter, her father kept the records as souvenirs and first showed them to her at the family dacha outside of Moscow in 1991. The much honoured history professor and lecturer at the Moscow Military Academy kept them in the loft at the dacha at Nikolina-Gora.

"I stumbled across them as I was looking for a football," his daughter Alexandra told Der Spiegel.

The family thinks that the Russian captain hid the records, which bear the stamp "Führer headquarters" across them, because he did not want to be thought of as a common looter.

Not that it was not common practice for the Soviet military elite to take home the spoils of a war that cost 26 million Russian lives: Marschall Zhukov, the victor of Stalingrad and Berlin, took home 55 classical oil paintings, seven boxes of valuable porcelain and silverware, nine gold watches and 713 silver ornaments pilfered from the castles of Potsdam.

But the records were both a sense of shame and pride for the music-loving Besymenski who died two months ago, aged 86. During his life, he played them for himself and a small clique of trusted friends.

Now Alexandra has revealed the story of how Adolf Hitler's record collection came to be in the hands of his sworn enemy.

The usual Hitler favourites are there; Beethoven's rousing Ninth Symphony, the Flying Dutchman by Wagner, several works by Brahms, Schumann and Mozart.

But the discovery of the recordings of Russians and Jews show that Hitler did not practice what he preached to his people. There are works featuring prominent Jewish soloists, including Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman and the voice of Russian baritone Fyodor Shalyapin on a recording of Mussorgsky's Death of Boris Godunov.

Many of the records are scratched, indicating they were played over and over again while the war that Hitler began cost millions of lives across Europe and the wider world.

"I think my father found it astonishing that millions of Jews and Russians had to die because of the ideology of Hitler and here he was all the time enjoying their art," said Alexandra.

Alexandra said will make a decision over what to do with the collection of several hundred records in the coming months.

Independent