MENTION NAZISM AND YOU ARE ONE !

The buying and selling of Nazi memorabilia is big business and getting bigger much to the annoyance of people who’d rather pretend that the Nazis never happened and think that complementing any aspect of Nazism is a sign of being one; Martin Salter suffers from this lefty ailment.

Whether you like it or not, the Nazis (pronounced 'Germans') did exist and although they were barbarous failures through poor leadership and ultimately a lack of support by the people, there were some things they did extremely well like designing a damn good uniform, building massive ‘power’ structures, staging events, motivating speeches and organising heavy industry.

The power of symbolism, well recognised by the Romans, Spartans and the Greeks was not lost on Hitler and his Nazi possee. Albert Speer built big to impress, inspire confidence and scare; their colour scheme, red, white and black was meant to be striking, to clash and to instil fear into its enemies which it did with aplomb.

I’d love to see all of Hitler’s paintings (and own one); to know what the young Hitler was and did and why he turned into the despotic coward that he became. I’ve waded my way through as much of Mein Kampf as I could stand (it’s a load of unreadable bollocks) and am just as interested to see/read the same of Gandhi and Mao Tse Tung.

“j’accusing” all as Nazis who buy an iron cross or post a picture of Dietrich von Choltitz (the saviour of Paris) on their blog is no less damaging than Nazism was.