'Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich': Knifecrime Island's Worsening Nazi Obsession

The BBC asks why the British Nazi obsession seems only to be growing:

The late Alan Coren famously published a collection of humorous pieces in book form, called Golfing for Cats. And he put a swastika on the front cover. He had noticed the most popular titles in Britain in those days were about cats, golf and Nazis.

That was in 1975. Thirty-six years on - and now more than 60 years since the end of World War II - Nazi books are going stronger than ever. A staggering 850 books about the Third Reich were published in 2010, up from 350 in the year 2000.

And they mostly still have a swastika on the front cover.

The phenomenal and continuing success of books about the Nazis includes fiction, non-fiction and science fiction.

They include the occult and the Nazis, Nazi magic, Nazi weaponry and Nazi doctors. There's the history of SS uniforms, SS staff cars, SS recruitment and propaganda.

You can read counter histories imagining Britain if the Nazis had won or post-war histories of the exploitation of Nazi scientific discoveries by America and the other Allied powers.

There is a first hand account of Himmler's masseur.

There are serious histories, adventures with the Panzer Division, and secrets of the Gestapo.

Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich by James Yannes is not an invention of Private Eye but a work, I suppose, of genuine scholarship. There's even a book about the Fuhrer's own collection of books - Hitler's Private Library.

So what is going on here? Are British book-buyers still looking for a warning from history or are some of them attracted by the ghastly glamour of history's most evil baddies?

Nazi Gold: Publishing the Third Reich, presented by Clive Anderson, is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 17 March, 1130 GMT

Comments

[Alex]

My interpretation: If the UK didn't have really sucessful experiences in the last 60 Years, they have to dig deeper in history back to the victory over the Nazis.

If they will feel one day as being a strong, succesful and self-confident nation again, they will be able to loosen their Nazi-obsession.

So their still rising Nazi-obsession is a strong indication of a society lacking optimism and self-confidance for presence and future.
Sad for the UK.

[Jubal]

@Volker: there's nothing better than a proper display of real German moral superiority. ;-)

[Volker]

I think Dietmar Wischmeyer said it best:
"Die Inselwesen fressen Fisch aus alten Zeitungen, saufen schales Bier und sind neidisch auf die Deutschen, weil die den
Nationalsozialismus vor ihnen erfunden haben. Um etwas von dieser faszinierenden Welt
des cholerischen Schwachsinns nachzuholen, sind ihre Zeitungen voller
Hakenkreuze und Blitzkrieggeschichten."