The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism (History). David Olusoga & Casper W. Erichsen

I've often thought that we tend to overlook the continuities between aspects of German policy in 1933-45 and in 1890-1919.  The Russian territory that Germany occupied late in the First World War, for instance,  was the same general area that was again conquered in 1941- 42. Perhaps it would be useful to think of  land grabs in the East as part of a long-standing German preoccupation rather than a specifically Nazi policy. In the same way, the ruthless colonial exploitation of occupied Russian land was presaged by the similarly ruthless treatment of  South-West Africa in the 1900s. Some common features of both regimes give pause for reflection: dispossession,  exploitation, extermination camps and racially charged medical experiments. Perhaps these, too, were German obsessions rather than Nazi ones.  Not that other European colonisers were much better, as the pre-European occupants of North and South America, Australia, Africa and most of Asia could testify but I've always been vaguely aware that Germany's treatment of its African colonies was disgraceful even by the general standards of imperial powers. This book puts flesh on the bones of my limited understanding of a regime that made the neighbouring Afrikaners seem almost benevolent.

 The virtues of the book are that, while giving specific details of how Germany came  to control  South-West Africa and explaining the origins and cultures of the Herero and Nama peoples, it describes some continuities (even certain surnames recur) between colonial oppression in Africa and the occupation of Eastern Europe during the Second World War. It also points out how  many of the attitudes that underlay German excesses (Social Darwinism, for one instance; strange racial theories for another) were common to most European cultures at the time.

One war, the Nama uprising of 1905 was, in one sense, a cliché  of the Boys' Own version of colonial wars: one side enters into hostilities on a matter of principle as befits a civilised power conscious of its humanitarian obligations. It complies with all the standards one would expect: a formal declaration of hostilities, organised protection of  non-combatants, appropriate  respect for enemy dead and wounded. The opposing side feels untrammeled by such constraints and its relationship with its opponents is characterised by treachery, deceit, cruelty  and contempt. The civilised side was the Nama, in case you're wondering; the other one was the Germans.

Someone might write a history of Wilhelmine Germany specifically to emphasise the number of times it aped the worst aspects of Victorian Britain simply because Wilhelm II felt inferior to his British relatives. Bankrupting yourself by starting (as a land power) a ruinous naval armaments race might be one example. Casting around for an example of British expertise at which to excel them and saying to yourself "I have it! Concentration camps!" is another).

It seems that the Germans classified the various indigenous peoples who had fallen into their power as either potential serfs (to be cowed and dispossessed) or as unfitted for manual labour (and therefore to be exterminated). The concentration camp at Shark Island made no serious pretence to have any other purpose than killing the prisoners and little attempt was made to hide that purpose, either from the local German population or from the Government back in Germany. 

I liked this book for one of the best reasons I ever like any book. It taught me a lot about a subject on which I had previously known a little. I recommend it heartily. However I must have another whinge about the unwieldy sub-title epidemic: this book should be known as The Kaiser's Holocaust and nothing more. I'm sure the  graduates of university courses in marketing can expatiate about the purposes of long sub-titles that try to summarise the book. That's just one more good reason to ignore them (I refer to both the marketing graduates and the silly sub-titles).

Jude the Obscure (Novel). Thomas Hardy

 I don't suppose I'm giving too much away if I say that this Thomas Hardy novel doesn't end well for the eponymous Jude. Inevitably I'm reminded of GK Chesterton's cruel but funny description of Hardy's novels: the village atheist brooding over the fate of the village idiot. But Jude is not an idiot.  The point of the novel is that, seeing the position in society occupied by people of a certain intellectual stamp, he measures himself against them and, finding himself their equal, expects to rise to their level. The only obstacles in his way are his social class, his poverty and his openness to argument on moral issues. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course it isn't quite as simple as all that. Jude is himself enmeshed in the toils of  English Christianity, at  a time when Christianity not only meant most of what it said but exercised a baleful social and political power over the general population.

The novel follows Jude's relationship with his cousin, Sue Bridehead and her parallel relationship with Mr Phillotson (Jude's schoolteacher at the beginning of the book). All three possess a lively moral sense and a willingness to look at moral issues in non-conventional ways. At some times each of them conforms to the rules imposed by the Church of England  and at others  each reacts against those standards.  

This is one of those novels that I read for the first time when I was too young for it (early teens, I think). Re-reading it in the last couple of weeks I was struck by just how much influence religion had on the everyday lives of ordinary people in the late 19th Century. However I'm compelled to admit that you don't have to go back that far to find  similar influences. The experience of my own life underlines the fact that the Catholic Church in Australia, while not having the protected political position of the Anglican Church in England, still sooled its clerical heelers on to any member of its flock who showed signs of straying from the path. It would have been in the early 1960s that one of my father's friends ( a Protestant) asked him to be best man at his wedding. The wedding, of course, was to be in a Protestant church and therefore counted as a Protestant religious ceremony in which Catholics were forbidden (by their own Church) to participate.  Dad wanted very much to do this favour for his friend and he agonised about it for some time.  Eventually he discussed it with the Parish Priest  (a kindly, decent man, incidentally) who said "No dice. The Church's rules are clear.  You can't do it." Dad obeyed the Church, even though he felt that he was letting his friend down.

Sometimes I reflect on the changes in society since I was a kid and regret this alteration or that one: but let there be no doubt that our society in 2020 is saner and healthier than it was in 1960 if for no other reason than that religion has less power and less influence. If I'm ever tempted to doubt this conclusion I might read Jude the Obscure again; on the other hand I might just remember my poor father, whose god insisted that he disappoint his friend.

The ‘45. Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Untold Story of the Jacobite Rising. (History) Christopher Duffy

 

This is the best book I have ever read about the 1745-46 civil war in which the Stuart family tried to recover the throne of “Great Britain” from the usurping German dynasty that still (November 2020) occupies it. In reality, of course, all kings are usurpers. Every monarchy began as a protection racket and no king has any more legitimacy than Al Capone.

Many accounts of the ‘45 make a point of trying to correct the sentimental excesses that have bedevilled so many tellings of the story.. The excision of romantic fantasy from history is always to be encouraged but ...how can I say this … much of the story is irretrievably romantic. Mr Duffy emphatically reminds us, however, that those genuine romantic elements are not the whole story. We must also take note of treachery, betrayal, execution by public torture, prisoners murdered or sold into slavery, an attempt to stamp out an ancient culture and other endearingly human traits. And, of course, Bonnie Prince Charlie wouldn’t have been a real Stuart unless, from time to time, he left his devoted followers in the lurch. Still, he was smart, brave and resourceful. If his command group had not been so divided, if he hadn’t been relying on the French and if he had had just a bit more luck he would have won. He deserved to. But then, Collingwood deserved to win the 2018 Grand Final and that’s another hard luck story.

The author of this book knows so much about 18th Century warfare that I was afraid the work would turn into a series of arid academic arguments. How wrong I was. He not only knows the relevance of weather, geology, drill, smuggling, agriculture and religion but he writes interestingly about them in the context of war.

History without anecdotes is like fish and chips without salt and Mr Duffy includes an appropriate seasoning. To give just a couple of examples:

“The MacDonalds of Glencoe insisted on mounting a guard to protect a mansion …(that) was the property of the Earl of Stair … whose grandfather …(had been) the author of the massacre of Glencoe in 1692.”

“... an old woman remained in a house … where some (Jacobite) officers were quartered. After they had supped, she said to them, “Gentlemen, I suppose you have done with your murdering today, I should be glad to know when the ravishing begins.”

That last story indicates one of the myths current at the time - that the Highlanders who formed part of the Jacobite army were all unprincipled barbarians not fit for decent society. It is part of the author’s rationale for writing the book that the myths perpetuated by both sides persist to this day.

“To test this claim I have made a point of asking professional historians at random about their impression of the Jacobite forces.With slight variations in wording, the answer has invariably been: “thieving Catholic Highland bastards”. “

Mr Duffy points out that one factor working against the Jacobites was England’s savage penal code, designed to protect the property of the rich, which had effectively disarmed a segment of the population from whom the Stuarts had reason to expect support. And I had not realised how much potential and actual help for the Jacobite cause came from smugglers, one of the few categories of Englishmen “who had firearms and were willing to use them.” They were “capable of bringing together 500 armed men at short notice”.If you’re interested in history at all you really should read The ‘45. It flows like a novel and I don’t think you’ll ever find a better treatment of this fascinating episode.

Hellhound on his Trail (History) Hampton Sides.

 

So impressed was I by the previous book that I sprinted to the library and grabbed another one by the same author. It was nearly as good. It tells the intertwined stories of Martin Luther King and James Earl Ray in the period leading up to Ray’s murder of King and their almost equally fascinating denouements. Some parts of it (the Ray thread) reminded me of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song and that is high praise from me.

My most poignant memory of this book is the scene where King and his brother talk to their mother on the telephone and play what seems to be a traditional game in their family of taking on one another’s identities to confuse her. So very human. 

King was the only orator of international status since Winston Churchill and I find it infinitely depressing that his great “I Have a Dream” speech has now been sidelined by the sneers of the “woke”.

Something has to be done about the plague of subtitles that has infected the publishing industry.   Sadly, Mr Sides seems to have caught the bug. This book's is "The Electrifying account of the Largest Manhunt in American History" while the previous one's was "The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette".  At least neither of them  includes the word “genius” (as an adjective) or “epic” or "adorable". Perhaps there’s still hope.

In the Kingdom of Ice. (History). Hampton Sides

 

It’s not so often that you come across a book that genuinely deserves to be described as a ripping yarn. This is one, about an American expedition that aimed at being first to the North Pole. I found the whole story engrossing and well told. I had never heard of this voyage before and I was intrigued by the weird and wonderful geographic theories that were current in the late nineteenth century and by what the explorers hoped, consequently, to find. I love a book that tells me things I hadn’t previously known.