PictureEagles Nest on the Obersalzberg

When I was at Bryn Mawr College about 25% of the other students seemed to be from the New York area and northern New Jersey. And a large percentage of those were of Jewish descent. I got to know lots of them very well. Some became lifelong friends. I was treated to the “Jewish perspective” of things. One of my friends startled me one day by asking me if I felt guilty because I was German. At that point I hadn’t made a study of WW2. But I said, “No, I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t alive back then. I hadn’t been born yet.” They agreed that was honest enough.

You remember American movies? For a long time all sorts of villains were German and had German accents. Not that German Americans get discriminated against when it came to jobs, etc, mind you. There are too many of us. But Hitler is a cartoon character. So are all the Nazis. In America it’s a given that you assume the worst about Hitler and the Holocaust. And they also assume that the Jews were the only issue in WW2 just as they assume slavery was the only issue in the American Civil War. Look at the big American best seller The Winds of War and War and Remembrance written by Herman Wouk who also was of Jewish descent. That expresses the American attitude about Hitler and WW2 perfectly.

There is nowhere near the sophistication about the subject that you have in Europe. All the intelligent books about the subject seem to be published in England such as the Pen and Sword Series.

By the way in my novels where Hitler is a main character such as Captive At The Berghof and The Trinity Plot which haven’t been published yet I make sure that Hitler is the villain. Thriller novels have bad guys and good guys. There is no way that Hitler could be a good guy in America if you ever expect to get it published at all. It’s just that I have tried not to make him a cartoon character.

Somebody should write a more literary novel about the life of Hitler from Hitler’s point of view. It should be Faustian in theme. Even still it would cause a lot of controversy. But it will have to be written.