England's Mask has Fallen - Index

Another one from the British Library. England's Mask has Fallen (,,Englands Maske ist gefallen") is a 68-page paperback from 1939 with no attributed author. Priced at 30 Pfennig, it has the same cheap, flimsy feel to it as ,,Das ist England!" and the cover style is strikingly similar. I couldn't find a picture online (although there's what seems to be an abridged version knocking about on ebay and some rather questionable online bookshops) so a description will have to do.

Imagine, if you will, an angled, three dimensional map of the British Isles, with London marked as a black hole. Thin waves of smoke emanate from this blot, forming the shape of a looming figure of death, complete with scythe. In front of him is the disembodied head of Winston Churchill, with obligatory cigar and Union Jack top-hat. The title is jovially scrawled across the top in red, cartoonish letters. Classy, I think you'll agree.

For such a short publication, the index is amazingly detailed, although the subheadings don't appear in the main text (and until I read the whole thing, I wouldn't trust all of my translations):

The Strangler at her Side
England conducts an economic war - Pirates for centuries - The destruction of Poland is a slap in the face for England - English freebooters across the globe - How England robbed Spain, Holland, Portugal and France of their former power - The old enemy of neutral countries - Germany's correct treatment of neutral countries - England's blockade, this time without hope of success.

A Hero's Death for Money
England praises with silver bullets - Money, the soul of England's policy - Poland as the latest victim of English warmongering - South-east Europe withdraws from England's moneybag policies - Dishonourable English controls - The City charges usurious interest - England's currency wavers - Isolation attempts fall apart - Security in Europe only possible without England's machinations.

The Poison Trade
The infamous Opium War against China - A people's health is ruined - England destroys Chinese cultural artifacts - England's typical mass-smuggling operation - Use of violence against Chinese protests - England's ever-increasing blackmail of China - Trust in England not justified.

Protector of the Jews
The Jews rule in England - Kings and lords in the service of Jews - Jewish war profits in England for centuries - The Jew in the British Parliament - All influential positions overrun with Jews - Cromwell and Queen Elizabeth in Jewish hands - A Jew as British Prime Minister.

Hunger and Superstition
Areas of poverty in England - Terrible plight of the unemployed - A hundred thousand unemployed Englishmen undernourished - English working class families going hungry for years - The youth without vocational training - The impoverished people of England suffer from despair - Comfort through a love of gambling - The unemployed gamble away their pittance - Football betting a mass swindle - The richer England fails to care for the sons of its homeland.

An Empire Expires
Weakening vitality of the English nation - Decline of the population - Birth rates too low - England is aging - The old English hypocrisy - Birth rates in the British Empire also developing unfavourably - The English unwilling to raise families - 25 percent increase in birth rate needed to maintain England's population - The English no longer a pioneering people, but colonial rentiers - England's demographic and political decline.

Time is working against England
Germany has prepared in time - A long war is to England's disadvantage - England's currency in free-fall - England losing ground in world trade - Question mark over British Army's oil supplies - England's dependence on iron and food imports - England must risk her foreign possessions - England's gold reserves pumped dry - England's power is crumbling - Time is on Germany's side.

The two things that strike me about the structure, as set out above, are the amount of repetitions and the lack of chronology. I'll be interested to see how coherent the whole text is, and what level of detail is provided.

"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.

On leprosy, salmon, and Irish gluttony

Some medical information for you, heavily laced with no-holds-barred racial prejudice. This is from Irelands Naturall History by Gerard Boate (1657:

Ch. 24. Sect. 4. Of the Leprosie

The Rickets are of late very rife in Ireland, where few yeares agoe unknown; so on the contrary it hath been almost quite freed from another disease, one of the very worst and miserablest in the world, namely the Leprosie, which in former times used to bee very common there, especially in the Province of Munster; the which therefore was filled with Hospitals, expresly built for to receive & keep the Leprous persons. But many yeares since Ireland hath been almost quite freed from this horrible and loathsome disease, and as few Leprous persons are now found there, as in any other Countrie in the world; so that the Hospitals erected for their use, having stood empty a long time, at length are quite decayed & come to nothing. The cause of this change is not so obscure nor unknown, as it is in most other changes of that nature. For that this sickness was so generall in Ireland, did not come by any peculiar defect in the Land or in the Air, but meerly through the fault and foul gluttony of the inhabitants, in the excessive devouring of unwholesome Salmons. The common report in Ireland is, that boiled Salmons eaten hot out of the Kettle in great quantity, bring this disease, and used to be the cause why it was so common: and some famous Authors have not stuck to relate as much for a truth. But that is a fable, and Salmons have not that evill quality, which way soever they be eaten and prepared, but when they are out of season, which is in the latter end of the year, after they have cast their spawn: upon which they doe not onely grow very weak and flaggie, but so unwholesome, that over their whole body they break out in very filthy spots, just like a scalled mans head, so as it would loath any man so see them; nevertheless the Irish, a nation extremely barbarous in all parts of their life, did use to take them in that very season, as well as at any other time of the year, and to eat them in very great abundance, as easily they might, every river and rivelet in most parts being very full of them, and by that meanes that horrible disease came to be so common amongst them. But the English having once gotten the command of the whole Countrie into their hands, made very severe laws against the taking of Salmons in that unwholesome season, and saw them carefully observed; whereby hindering those barbarians against their will to feed on that poisonous meat, they were the cause that the woefull sickness, which used so mightily to reign amongst them, hath in time been almost quite abolished: which great benefit, with so many others, that hatefull people hath rewarded with seeking utterly to exterminate their benefactors.

(pp.184-5)