So Many Nazis, So Little Time

A few years back, I finally reached the rarified height sought by many and reached among the millions of dedicated TV watchers. I became a Nielsen family.

For a month, I wrote down my TV viewing routine in a diary supplied by the Nielsen organization.  Instead of trying to throw the results with something noble, like seven hours of PBS a day or C-SPAN symposiums on labor disputes of the 1970s, I decided to record what I really watched.

The results probably caused some Nielsen data clerk to heave the thing out the nearest window. The diary consisted mainly of:

1. Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasts.

2. The Fox Business Channel’s Countdown to the Closing Bell, but only on days when Liz Clayman showed up for work.

3. Turner Classic Movies.

4. The History Channel and its offshoots for any World War II documentaries.

Or, to be specific, any documentaries dealing with Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. If there’s going to be Nazis in it, I’m there.

It’s hard to tell where my fascination with Nazis began. I recall that I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer during a junior-high-school summer, and I’ve kept going for another four decades. I’d estimate that I’ve read at least 400 books on various topics, and there are at least 60-odd volumes on the bookshelves here in the house.

It’s hard to find some topic I haven’t explored, from biographies of Hitler’s finance minister to a detailed aesthetic critique of Hitler’s artistic sense and the parallels to how he viewed the world.

Not all the books are dry historical tomes. I’ve read through a number of novels, including the excellent Bernie Gunther series of detective stories by Philip Kerr, as well as David Downing’s “train-station” series with American hero John Russell.

Of course, I’ve also taken in hundreds of hours of films on various aspects of the Third Reich, from Schindler’s List to Swing Kids to old groaners from the 1940s like Hitler’s Children. A wealth of movies came from Germany in the past few years, such as Downfall, North Face and Napoli.

It’s the explosion of documentaries, however, that provide plenty of viewing time. At one point, critics began calling The History Channel by the knock-off of The Hitler Channel, and the broadcaster began wheeling its massive collection off to lesser subsidiaries like Military Channel and that treasure trove of the Third Reich, the Military History Channel.

It’s not unusual that’s I’ll fill an odd hour with a documentary about those naughty Nazis. Most people would think this dull – surely this is just repetitive stuff. After all, Hitler keeps dying in the bunker at the end, doesn’t he?

Well, yes, but the history of Nazi Germany is one of those topics that seem to enrich itself as time goes on. The cottage industry of books about Watergate and the assassination of John Kennedy seem to have played out, but the goods on the Nazis seem to get better and better.

Part of this is an effort – especially among British historians – to dig deeper and find more information. While some of this is terrific (Alan Kershaw’s new look at Hitler with his two-volume biography) and some is just plain silly (the Fuhrer’s drug intake as detailed in the documentary High Hitler).

It’s all fascinating to me. When people ask me why, my stock answer isn’t something about a love of history, or some pining for a revival of fascism. No, I keep watching and reading because I want to spot the Nazis when they come back.

And that’s not said as a joke, either. It may not be with rallies and banners and storm troopers, but that same wave of ideas to save us from peril – at a very high cost – is certain to return. If it happened in an enlightened, cultured and common-sense place like Germany in the 20th century, it can happen anywhere, anytime. It’s the challenge of Spot the Totalitarians; the more you know about the last time it happened, the better prepared you are to stem the next tide.

And, there isn’t going to be any end of this soon, as illustrated by a recent BBC radio documentary called Nazi Gold about the perpetual interest in the Third Reich. The narrator noted the example of the late British humorist Alan Coren, who collected a series of essays and decided on a joke title to boost sales. He teamed up two big trends in publishing – golf and cats – and called the book Golfing for Cats. And, just to jump on the Nazi publishing bandwagon, he put a big swastika on the cover.

The book sold like hotcakes.

Me and My Kindle

Yeah, I’ve heard all the arguments against the Kindle and other e-book readers. At times, the cases being made seem to implicate these electronic tablets in some sort of conspiracy against the written word, as if we’re destroying something by using one to read a book or a magazine article.

I should be one of these people railing against these little devices. I write for a living, and – for at least 45 years or so – I’ve rarely spent a day without a book at hand. I know I’ve owned thousands of books in my life, and my condo includes at least eight bookcases full of volumes ranging from the complete set of Martin Beck mysteries from Sweden to the best of P.J. O’Rourke to collections of Soviet propaganda posters.

And yet I’d gladly pay someone a small fee for transferring each of those books to its own MOBI file. Because – yes – I own a Kindle, and I find it to be the best think I’ve received since that day in the early 1960s when I received my first public library card.

Frankly, the shouting against the e-book misses the mark completely. These nifty little pads enhance, not deter, the reading experience. And I’m reading more – and more widely, as far as content – because of my Kindle.

I learned to read at a very early age; I also became quite good at it. I remember being taken away from art classes in kindergarten and first grade and sitting in front of nice ladies who asked me to read things and talk about them. These turned out to be skills tests, and they found out that – in first grade – I was reading at a sixth-grade comprehension level. (My inability to draw anything is likely the the cost of learning my young proficiency.)

Today, I still read faster and at a greater comprehensive level than most people. A massive tome didn’t bother me, as long as I found it interesting. One of the best Christmas presents I ever received was Shelby Foote’s three-volume history of the Civil War, and it took me seven weeks to read all of it – some 1,945 pages.

I like big, thick books. And yet I’m ready to throw them over for this thin electronic tablet, because I’ve tired of carting around and hold big, thick books. Stuffing a bunch of them in the memory of my Kindle, with all of them at the ready for a good read, is a marvelous innovation.

Many people make a big deal of the feel and smell of books. I’ve never been one to go gaga over the turning of pages and holding a book, and the only universal smells I associate with reading are the odors of bad ink and the dust that leads to sneezing fits.

I also can’t recall a book where the physical attributes enhanced the book. Does anybody remember the color of the pages of their favorite books? (By the way, they’re rarely white.) Are you a stickler for page size? Have you ever bought a book because it’s in an appealing weight of a favorite font? E-books often offer a one-font-fits-all format, but it’s the words themselves – not the typestyle or package that make a difference.

The lack of the physical presence of turning pages also seems to enhance my speed in reading – I find can get through books faster on my Kindle, and that spurs me to put more variety in my selections. In the past few months, I’ve read biographies (admittedly my favorite type of book) of Robert Oppenheimer and Roger Ebert, spy novels from Len Deighton, historical mysteries from Philip Kerr, a detailed history of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, Graham Greene’s Travels With my Aunt and Ross MacDonald’s The Zebra-Striped Hearse.

E-book readers also offer the idea of the sample, where you can download a portion of the book for free. This isn’t just a couple pages of browsing – some of the samples run for 60-70 pages. This also enhances the idea of trying something new, and you don’t have to wait for the popular volumes to return to the New Book cart at the library.

Not that e-book readers are perfect substitutes for books. Many books aren’t available in e-book form. Photographs remain problematic in reproduction, and detailed maps – the essentials of books detailing modern warfare – are a travesty at this point. Some of the general tables like Apple’s iPad seem to do better here, but the backlit nature of computer screens aren’t as good for reading as the non-illuminated surfaces of e-book devices.

I haven’t sworn off printed books, but it’s been a bit – months, actually, since I’ve picked one up for a start-to-finish read. I’ve found my Kindle to be my new companion, service as a small personal library on the go. I don’t need all the pages and binding and cover to remind me that I’m reading a book … even in electronic format, the words touch me all the same.