THE DEFEATED
THE FRAT WAGON, by Charles Whiting; Jonathan Cepe English price 12/6. HITLER AND THE ENGLISH, by Fritz Hesse; Allan Wingate, English price 18/-. | [HE FRAT WAGON reconstructs the last month of a Germany it was necessary to destroy and the beginning | of an occupation equally necessary. | Occupied and occupiers live in a jungle | of confusion, hatred and misunder--stancing. Mr. Whiting spares no details | of the horrors of dismemberment for | the defeated; and the . chief villains emerge as the insensitive and bullying English officers under whom tge young > author apparently served. He was under twenty, and felt a sharp despair. His heart-cry only makes me cry "Vae Victis." / Personally, I’m sick of books about Hitler-‘"I Blacked Hitler’s Boots," "I Warned Hitler," "Hitler Was Not German" sort-of-stuff. Fritz Hesse joins the ’ long list of Hitlerite apologists (he was Hitler's press attaché in London), and speaks always, as they all do, of his own great proximity minus all responsibility. The English (and English publishers) seem to welcome these obsequious afterthoughts as further "insight" on Inside | Hitler, (Indeed, many gallant British officers make it their present hobby to tour Germany shaking hands with the equally gallant not-so-Nazi officers who rubbed their noses in the mud: Hitler is fast becoming as much an Englishman as Napoleon.) But Herr Hesse does his best, always warning someone or other of this, or prophesying that, and playing a notable part in the last efforts to "save"? Germany by clandestine negotiations with any likely suckers. Poor Hitler did so love the English and try to understand them. ("fhe loss of Gibraltar would be a blow for which the British would never forgive us.") Churchill, one remembers, made no attempt to understand Germany, nor even to pronounce the word "Nazi." It may (continued on next page) — )
BOOKS (continued from previous page) be there are high-level conversations in this book not recorded elsewhere. Who’s
to care?
D.
G.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550513.2.24.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 13
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319THE DEFEATED New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 13
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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