Nazis
The Green Man's journey from Nazi to sweetcorn salesman
The other day I visited a psychic medium in Croydon, south-east London. Mavis Grimstick (not quite her real name) boasted…
Save the innocent swastika!
There is a nice row of swastikas at head height in Burlington Gardens, behind the Royal Academy. They are carved…
What is a serious film festival doing opening with Hail, Caesar!
What is a serious film festival doing opening with Ethan and Joel Coens’ turkey Hail, Caesar!? James Woodall reports from Berlin
Jeremy Corbyn and the hard left are wilfully blind to the evils of Islamist Nazis
Many people watching Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on Marr last Sunday will have been shocked by his remarks about the need…
What’s it like to have a Nazi for a father?
This is a documentary in which three men travel across Europe together, but they’re not pleasurably interrailing, even though there…
Allan Massie’s Bordeaux Quartet: truer to Occupied France than any history
In a recent book review, the historian Norman Stone wrote: ‘Maybe the second world war can now be left to…
The house that Alfred built
This is a book about boundaries — and relationships. At its heart is the eponymous house by the lake, which…
Did Hans Asperger save children from the Nazis — or sell them out?
Simon Baron-Cohen wonders whether the humane Hans Asperger may finally have betrayed the vulnerable children in his care in Nazi-occupied Vienna
How anarchy was responsible for Auschwitz
In September 1939 Britain went to war against Germany, ostensibly in defence of Poland. One big secret that the British…
Better than Robert? Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern reviewed
In 1978, shortly before she died, the artist Sonia Delaunay was asked in an interview whether she considered herself a…
Woman in Gold review: even Helen Mirren is weighed down by the script’s banalities
Woman in Gold feels rather like a Jewish version of Philomena as this too is about an older woman seeking…
‘You are always close to me’: Unity Mitford’s souvenirs of Hitler
Hitler’s adoring notes to Unity Mitford – and her family’s campaign to stop my book
Suite Francaise review: what is this film playing at, when it comes to Jews in attics?
Suite Française is being billed as a second world war romance about ‘forbidden love’ and, in this regard, it is…
The madness of Nazism laid bare
‘If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me if the people perish in it.’ Bruno…
Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem review: too clever by half
Big event. A new play from Sir Tom. And he tackles one of philosophy’s oldest and crunchiest issues, which varsity…
The Nazi origins of the Vienna Phil’s New Year’s Day concert
Vienna’s New Year’s Day concert is still tarnished by its Nazi origins, says Norman Lebrecht
Haunted by the Holocaust: Three novellas by Patrick Modiano
Earlier this year Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for the art of memory with which he has…
Paddington review: put your mind at rest - no one gets marmalade up the bum
‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely,…
The woman who invented the Italian resistance
Italo Calvino, the Italian arch-fabulist, wrote a foreword to this celebrated wartime diary when it appeared in Italy in 1956.…
Many more Germans were displaced in 1945 than Indians during partition
What Radio 3 needs is a musical version of Neil MacGregor. The director of the British Museum and now a…
Fury: the men blow stuff up, then Brad Pitt takes his top off
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
Tate Modern’s latest show feels like it’s from another planet
‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…
A wooden UFO lands in Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The New York-based sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard comes from a long line of Polish and Ukrainian peasant farmers. She was…
The cold, remote plateau of Vichy France where good was done
It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome…
Generation War does something very un-German – bottles it
I was so looking forward to Generation War (BBC2, Saturday) — a three-part drama series covering the second world war…
