A Fascinating Radio Four “Today” interview with Hitler’s personal Lawyer’s son

For our Polish correspondents, Herr Frank was Governor of Warsaw during the Second World War.

A criminal of the first grade ...

ATB from George

Thanks for posting this George.  I have been reading much about Poland during the second world war recently.  And right now I'm reading The Zookeeper's Wife, which is based on the memoirs of Antonina Żabińska, who, along with her husband Jan who was director of the Warsaw zoo, managed to save the lives of up to 300 Jews following the German invasion.  

Dear Richard,

In a World that either chooses to a large extent to ignore the lessons of WW II or even deny that the lessons are there to be learned, an eye-witness commentary such as this is crucial.

My late Norwegian grandfather was in the Milorg [Underground or Resistance] during the War under occupation, but the number of people who actually lived in that era are necessarily few by now.

Good of the BBC to do this short interview in my view.

ATB from George

Thank you George.

What an amazing and brave interview. "He didn't believe - it was just his career." What a lesson.

david

Hans Frank was indeed a scumbag of the highest order George, as the historical record and the Nuremberg transcripts demonstrate. One of his most egregious acts at Nuremberg (it can be found in books by Tusa, Neave, etc) was to try and deflect his guilt by trying to shoehorn in wartime acts by Poles, Czechs and Russians "against Germans".

His son seems to be made of sturdier moral stuff.

I recently re-watched the whole of the landmark 1970s series The World At War, which is in some ways now out of date (pre-dating, as it does, the opening up of the Soviet and Chinese archives and the declassification of many Allied documents), but which is worth watching because so many of the participants were still very much alive, including Speer and Dönitz - one of the striking things about it was how completely unrepentant many of them were, and how matter-of-fact.

This feeling was even stronger watching Laurence Rees' 1997 series The Nazis: A Warning from History, in which many (by then elderly) Nazi thugs, functionaries and collaborators again seemed blasé and unrepentant.

You had it back! A shame really as I had not finished reading it.

But you still have my Mozart Clarinet Concerto recording with Alan Hacker, but I now give it you as the simplest solution to the logistics.

ATB from George

Dear Kevin,

I have the World At War DVDs. Watched several times right through over the last years. I read the Lawrence Reese books - many years ago now, as loan from my grandparents in Norway.

I think my real interest in this subject came from two sources.

At junior school we had a brilliant history teacher, who would veer wildly from the planned lesson according to whim. We would be doing the Wars Of The Roses, and would come into the class room to be confronted with something else completely on the black-board.

One such lesson was where she waited for quiet and wrote in very large chalk letters:

Warsaw Saw War.

I think you can imagine that the subsequent lesson sunk right in - never to be forgotten ...

The other encouragement was my late Norwegian grandfather, who had many tales to tell from his exploits in the Milorg. In reality he almost never finished the story as I suspect that what had to be done was not necessarily all that nice. I think it affected the rest of his life, turning him into someone who was both firm in his opinions and also not all that much at ease with his actions. To kill is to kill, even it it is the lesser of two evils. The trouble with fighting the dragon is that you cannot help being inoculated with the dragon's blood ...

ATB from George

I'm a big fan of that series and have watched it many times, originally on VHS and now DVD.  The many eye-witness accounts is I think a particular strength of the series. It must have taken ages and huge effort to track these participants down and to persuade them to be filmed, especially the German and Japanese contributors.  Indeed, given the Cold War was very real at the time the series was made, getting to the Russian participants can't have been easy.  

Mike   

Certainly the World At War series was an immense work, and perhaps it is a surprise that it was a Thames [Independent] TV production rather than something from the BBC.

If this thread has served any purpose it seems to have been that it has drawn attention to this series.

I have just made a reprise of it. Rather bleak, but not all viewing need be saccharine. Will take a week or two ...

ATB from George.

The other very striking thing about that series is the extremely high quality of the writing.

Here is the opening passage of the first episode:

"Down this road, on a Summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead.

"This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle.

"They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a world at war." [then comes that stunning opening credits sequence].

All narrated beautifully by Lawrence Olivier. The writer of that passage was, IIRC, Neal Ascherson.

I can feel the temptation to dig out the series once again.

I can too, haven't watched it since it was transmitted. Had a look and the version readily available (The Ultimate Restored Edition) has been converted to widescreen. There is some criticism of this but the original 4:3 version is much more expensive. Any thoughts on which to get?

david

The restoration is fine.

Don’t pay more for the unrestored edition ... A collectors item only ... Unless you are a collector of course ...

ATB from George

This is the box set I have, which I got many years ago.  I play it on my home theatre 5.1 system which has a modern wide-screen TV and despite being 4:3, black and wide, and mono sound-track it lacks nothing. I'd buy it again if I had to.

Mike

Not at all, Both very adept at providing content. Today it's all about platforms. But I digress....

chris