What's all this then?


My name is Victoria Stiles and I'm an Early Career Historian currently doing whatever odd research / consulting / outreach / tutoring jobs come my way. I blog here about some of the interesting texts I've found.
My research focusses on books about Britain and the British Empire which were in circulation in Nazi Germany but you'll also find a smattering of school textbooks, witchcraft beliefs, bog drainage, bemused travellers and weird illustrations that caught my eye.
Translations from German are my own. Comments are currently unmoderated and are mostly spam for leather jackets anyway.

Tuesday 30 March 2010

"That's England!" Cover and index

I had my first visit to the British Library a few weeks ago (such a wonderful, friendly, relaxing place that for the first time ever I actually wished I lived in London) and looked at a couple of Nazi-era books on the British Empire. Time and money constraints meant that I only made a few notes and copied down the indexes, but they're illuminating enough.

First up, That's England! World Domination through Blood and Gold by Fritz Reipert, published either 1939 or 1940. It's only forty pages long, cheaply bound and priced at 40 Reichsmarks*. The cover alone puts it firmly in the categories 'popular' and 'subjective'.



Index: (Bear in mind that German employs exclamation marks far more liberally than English. The author also uses 'Britain' and 'England' interchangeably.)
1. England - same as ever!
2. The bloodstained path to a British Empire
3. The sanctity of contracts - as England sees it!
4. England in the stocks!
5. British conduct during the World War
6. Versailles: new edition - England's dream!
7. German peacekeeping - English warmongering
8. England is to blame for the war!
9. England's blood-guilt in Poland
10. Lies and horror stories - England's weapons!
11. Abuses of neutrality - the prerogative of British warfare
12. England's last resort - hunger blockade!
13. England's big mistake!

*Trying to figure out what that is in today's money, or any other meaningful comparison has me beaten so far. I'm still working on it.

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