Tag Archives: Stoddard Martin

Joseph Goebbels, Chronicler of a Catastrophe

Joseph Goebbels, Chronicler of a Catastrophe Stoddard Martin transcends the tyranny of fact There are possible revelations to be inferred from Peter Longerich’s exhaustive biography of Joseph Goebbels, but when I started out on his long, rich account I had … Continue reading

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The “Flying Salzburger”

The “Flying Salzburger” Stoddard Martin considers the enigma that was Zweig Among German-language authors of the first half of the 20th century Stefan Zweig is now being re-positioned near the top. Some contemporaries saw him as in ‘the first rank … Continue reading

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Upwardly mobile couple

Upwardly mobile couple Stoddard Martin sifts through the Himmlers’ correspondence A petty bourgeois element runs through the history of National Socialism, with counterpoint from its traditional obverse – the bohemian. Himmler came from suburban Munich and had the provincial’s suspicion … Continue reading

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Mission to Kabul, a Footnote in Weltpolitik STODDARD MARTIN

  Mission to Kabul: a Footnote in Weltpolitik Stoddard Martin discerns a curious continuity in German foreign policy The Kaiser’s Mission to Kabul: A Secret Expedition to Afghanistan in World War 1, Jules Stewart, I. B. Tauris, London, 2014, HB, … Continue reading

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A Northern Light for Europe’s darkest hour STODDARD MARTIN

  A Northern Light for Europe’s Darkest Hour STODDARD MARTIN enjoys a new biography of one of the most admirable – if enigmatic – figures of World War Two THE HERO OF BUDAPEST: The Triumph and Tragedy of Raoul Wallenberg … Continue reading

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Father to the Man

Father to the Man The Confusions of Young Master Törless by Robert Musil, translated by Christopher Moncrieff, Alma Classics, 2014, 250pp, pb, £6.39 STODDARD MARTIN reviews a new translation of Robert Musil’s Bildungsroman In this year of the centenary of the … Continue reading

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World War Three

World War Three Stoddard Martin recalls the wartime exploits of three contrasting characters A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson, Peter J Conradi, Bloomsbury, London etc, 2012, 409 pp, £16.46; She Landed by Moonlight: The Story of Secret … Continue reading

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La Bohême

La Bohême Stoddard Martin visits Prague by proxy PRAGUE, CAPITAL of the TWENTIETH CENTURY: A Surrealist History, by Derek Sayer, Princeton University Press, 2013 There is a mystique about Prague which makes it for some the most alluring of European cities. … Continue reading

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Fuzzy Math

Fuzzy Math STODDARD MARTIN steps gingerly into an ethical quagmire Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz, Thomas Harding. Heinemann, Sept 2013. £20 Literature to do with the Holocaust implicates all of us. … Continue reading

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Beryl Bainbridge’s ‘major phase’

Beryl Bainbridge’s ‘major phase’ STODDARD MARTIN burns incense to a great 20th century chronicler, and her literary mentors The second half of the 20th century had no ‘Bloomsbury Group’ as such. In his first book, The Movement, Blake Morrison tried … Continue reading

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