Tag: Hitler

Making History

Making History

by Stephen Fry (Hutchinson, 1996)

audiobook ready by Stephen Fry and Richard E. Grant (Penguin, 2021)

Book cover: “Making History” by Stephen Fry (Hutchinson, 1996); audiobook ready by Stephen Fry and Richard E. Grant (Penguin, 2021)

A cleverly conceived, assiduously researched but poorly paced take on the classic ‘Kill Hitler’ time alteration tale. Fry writes in a conversational style and displays an undoubted gift for off-the-cuff storytelling. As a novelist, however, his expressiveness manifests too often as waffle.

The Great Dictator

The Great Dictator

dir. Charlie Chaplin (1940)

Chaplin_Great Dictator

A political satire that, even at the time, carried a poignance well beyond its surface humour. Chaplin, playing a Jewish barber Hitler lookalike, struck an uneasy but quite brilliant balance between serious filmmaking (Chaplin the writer-director) and comic business (Chaplin the actor).

 

 

Hitler’s Daughter

Hitler’s Daughter

by Jackie French (HarperCollins, 1999); audiobook read by Caroline Lee (Bolinda, 2014)

French_Hitler's Daughter

The framing narrative of this cleverly structured middle grade book sees three rural Aussie kids sharing a story while waiting for their school bus. The tale of Hitler’s daughter raises the disturbing question: should children be held responsible for their parents’ beliefs.

 

 

Wagner & Me

Wagner & Me

by Stephen Fry (BBC, 2010)

Fry_Wagner & Me

Truthfully titled, this documentary is perhaps too much about Fry’s passion for Wagner’s music, too little about the more historically significant equating of Wagner with Nazi Germany, and the extent to which Wagner’s powerfully operatic Gesamtkunstwerks may have informed Hitler’s nightmarish fantasy.