Nov. 1938 HOME & GARDENS: A Home With Hitler

[eniksleestack]

Some blogger has found and scanned a copy of the November 1938 issue of Homes & Gardens (wasn't that a Hearst publication?) with a featured article on Hitler and his Bavarian mansion a-la Lifestyles of the Rich and Megalomaniacal

Pretty disgusting, given that Ribbentrop and Goring are just hanging out, the author playfully kids about world domination, oh and November 1938 was also the date of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), when Nazi stormtroopers descended on Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes and began the deportation of Jews to concentration camps.

Instead, America was ga-ga over Hitler's drapes and accent pillows.

http://wow.blogs.com/photos/hitler/cover.html

 

[patrick1987]

How bizarre. I'm not familiar with Homes & Gardens although I don't know a lot of British publications. Shilling was British not American. I have heard of American publications called Better Homes and Gardens, House and Garden, and House Beautiful, although I don't have their publication dates at my fingertips.

 

[eniksleestack]

Shilling was British not American. I have heard of American publications called Better Homes and Gardens, House and Garden, and House.

Oh yeah, I got the two different publications confused. That makes more sense -- the article talks about Anthony Eden and David Lloyd George, I doubt most Americans would have been familiar them . And now that I look it says "One Shilling" on the the cover.

 

[Fletch]

And the British were by no means universally anti-Nazi at that time. After all, hadn't Hitler been ever so accommodating with Mr Chamberlain at Munich? And he'd built all these lovely roads and things, and seen to it that the young folk got plenty of fresh air and physical discipline.

 

[nightandthecity]

Homes and Gardens is indeed British and still going strong http://www.homesandgardens.com/
It has always been aimed at a middle aged, middle class, demographic which tends to be politically and socially conservative…..the sort of people you’d associate with words like “respectable” comfortable” “conventional”.

Before WW2 people like this tended to admire Hitler. He was seen as a brave fighter against Socialism who stood for values like patriotism and order, for keeping the lower classes and the “lesser races” in their place and the Jews out of the golf club.

British Conservative newspapers were generally pro Fascist, and the paper that is still to this day the main Conservative tabloid (The Daily Mail) was equally enthusiastic about Sir Oswald Mosley and our own home grown Fascists.

We have to bear this in mind when reading stuff like that article today. To our modern eyes the article seems quite shocking, but unfortunately that is not how it would have seemed to many - probably most - H&G readers at the time.

 

[AlanC]

Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but the full extent of the atrocities of the Nazis were not yet known; many had not yet been committed. I generally see little outrage over the modern day romanticization over equally unpleasant figures like Che Guevara.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Lots of outrage at my house

Too true, AlanC, except I tend to get political over things like that so I'll monitor myself. Very interesting article, eniksleestack. At first I thought it was a fake like that Rules for Good Wives or whatever that keeps cropping up, but recognized the name of the magazine as an erstwhile publication.
Ashley

 

[dhermann1]

The interior on page 194 of the magazine has a color original that I've seen.
Speaking of pro Nazi sympathies in pre-war Britain, there were a couple of real lalapaloozas. Leopold Amery, a leading member of Parliament, and a possible successor to Chamberlain in 1940 when Churchill was selected instead, had a mentally unstable son who was a flaming Nazi. He made anti British broadcasts from Germany during the war, and was hanged fro treason after. Oswald Moseley started a "New Party" around 1935 that had a lot of leading people involved in it. He quickly morphed into a blatantly proto Nazi organization, with brown shirts and the whole nine yards. He was lucky enough to get thrown into prison before the war started, and so avoided the noose.
The appeasers weren't necessarily all pro Nazi by any means, they just thought they could buy Hitler off by giving him everything he demanded. They learned the hard way.

 

[eniksleestack]

Speaking of pro Nazi sympathies in pre-war Britain, there were a couple of real lalapaloozas... Oswald Moseley started a "New Party" around 1935 that had a lot of leading people involved in it. He quickly morphed into a blatantly proto Nazi organization, with brown shirts and the whole nine yards.

Yeah, I show the picture below of Mosley and his "Union of Fascists" sometimes in my European history classes and ask my students when and where they think it was taken. Nobody ever says England.

Have you ever seen "It Happened Here"? It's a pretty good counter-factual history flick about the Nazis seizing England during WW2, relying in part on the pro-Nazi sympathies of some British.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I saw this H&G article the other day, though i've heard of it - and probably seen it - elsewhere before.

Some lovely pictures. Pity about the person who owned the house and his friends.

As for Moseley. For all his trying he never appealed to the working class. Like the National Front and the British National Party, he is a marginal figure. The oft-cited British attitude "fair play" prevents him getting a toe-hold. We don't like to see the minorities trampled (at least not in Britain; on their own turf, and being trampled by us, is just fine, for Empire-types).

bk

 

[nightandthecity]

The interior on page 194 of the magazine has a color original that I've seen.
Speaking of pro Nazi sympathies in pre-war Britain, there were a couple of real lalapaloozas. Leopold Amery, a leading member of Parliament, and a possible successor to Chamberlain in 1940 when Churchill was selected instead, had a mentally unstable son who was a flaming Nazi. He made anti British broadcasts from Germany during the war, and was hanged fro treason after. Oswald Moseley started a "New Party" around 1935 that had a lot of leading people involved in it. He quickly morphed into a blatantly proto Nazi organization, with brown shirts and the whole nine yards. He was lucky enough to get thrown into prison before the war started, and so avoided the noose.
The appeasers weren't necessarily all pro Nazi by any means, they just thought they could buy Hitler off by giving him everything he demanded. They learned the hard way.

That's essentially correct. However, John Amery was convicted on several counts of treason, the most important being his organization of a British volunteer corps to fight alongside the Waffen SS and helping organize Mussolini's Salo Republic. He was one of only two Britons convicted of treason after the war: the other of course was William Joyce. The case against Amery was pretty clearcut, but many still think Joyce, as an Irish born US citizen, shouldn't have been convicted.

Mosely's followers wore Blackshirts not brown (nit picking!) and Sir Ozzie was imprisoned after the war started, not before, and was never in danger of execution (not nit picking!)

His followers split over the war. Mosely's official line was that whatever the conflict their duty was to support their country, and he ordered them to support the war effort. Many BUF men joined the armed forces. Others, however, remained pro-Nazi throughout the war. Several were convicted of acts of sabotage and some went underground. I still remember reading in the papers about one who had finally resurfaced - this was in the 1980s! Of course, if the Germans had invaded I'm sure Mosely would have reinterpereted "supporting you country" and would have put himself and his party forward as the obvious leaders of the British New Order (though I believe the guys the Nazis actually had lined up for the senior roles were mostly Conservatives).

Eniks, "It Happened Here" is a brilliant film......and incredibly, an amateur production made by two teenagers, one still at school! The idea of a Nazi occupied Britain has been tackled several times, but never as well. The use of amateur actors and the low budget combine to give it a quality of everyday ordinariness that a big budget production could never have acheived. Brownlow and Mollo went on to make one more film, an equally outstanding study of the Digger movement during the English Civil War
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073911/

 

[nightandthecity]

Obviously hindsight is 20/20, but the full extent of the atrocities of the Nazis were not yet known; many had not yet been committed.

Yes, the Nazis worst atrocities were to occur during the war. However, their crimes to date were widely known of in 1938. Everyone knew that the left-wing parties and the trades unions had been suppressed and their leaders and cadres interned in concentration camps, that democracy and the liberal freedoms had been supressed, that Jews were being driven out of public life. The point is that these things were often approved of by the H&G demographic, or excused as "temporary necessity".

To some extent pro-Nazi sympathies even survived the war and knowledge of the Holocaust. When I was at Grammer School in the 1960s and mixing with middle-class people for the first time I was shocked to occasionally hear the phase "Hitler was right" or variants on the theme of "They didn't get it all wrong", usually in the context of discussing Laura Norder, immigration or - strangely - eugenics. I wouldn't say these were mainstream sentiments, but they weren't that unusual. And it wasn't just nice middle-class parents and their parrot children, when I started drinking in pubs and working in factories you could here the same stuff from a certain type of canteen/public bar bore.... though they were far more likely to be challenged.

 

[nightandthecity]

nit picking again...

That's essentially correct. However, John Amery was convicted on several counts of treason, the most important being his organization of a British volunteer corps to fight alongside the Waffen SS and helping organize Mussolini's Salo Republic. He was one of only two Britons convicted of treason after the war: the other of course was William Joyce. The case against Amery was pretty clearcut, but many still think Joyce, as an Irish born US citizen, shouldn't have been convicted.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073911/

I should of course have written "He was one of only two Britons executed for treason after the war" - several people were tried and convicted and given lesser sentences, mostly for their activities with Amery's "British Free Corps".

And it's spelt MOSLEY, whoops

 

[cookie]

The interior on page 194 of the magazine has a color original that I've seen.
Speaking of pro Nazi sympathies in pre-war Britain, there were a couple of real lalapaloozas. Leopold Amery, a leading member of Parliament, and a possible successor to Chamberlain in 1940 when Churchill was selected instead, had a mentally unstable son who was a flaming Nazi. He made anti British broadcasts from Germany during the war, and was hanged fro treason after. Oswald Moseley started a "New Party" around 1935 that had a lot of leading people involved in it. He quickly morphed into a blatantly proto Nazi organization, with brown shirts and the whole nine yards. He was lucky enough to get thrown into prison before the war started, and so avoided the noose.
The appeasers weren't necessarily all pro Nazi by any means, they just thought they could buy Hitler off by giving him everything he demanded. They learned the hard way.

The there was Diana Moseley who was married in Goebbels lounge room! That BBC (was it?) series on the life of Moseley was also very good.

 

[dhermann1]

Mosley (you're right about the spelling, my bad) was a fascinating guy. He was from deep in the heart of the aristocrasy. He married the daughter of Lord Curzon, the former Viceroy of India, and he had respectable politicians like Harold Nicolson supporting him. Nicolson saw what was going on and split. He did so early enough that his reputation was not damaged. I think a lot of people just saw that Tom Mosley was a nut job. Amery was even more clearly disturbed, but he went too far over the line to be saved.
Harold Nicolson's three volume diaries are a wonderful glimpse into the world of upper class England in the mid 20th Century. Big books, but easy and enjoyable reads.

 

[nightandthecity]

Mosley...Moseley....Mosely...Mozlee...

ha ha, it was MY spelling I was commenting on. I think i got it right first post, and then I morphed it into Mosely!

But not alone! A quick scan of the thread and I think we all got it wrong except Enikslee

 

[Tomasso]

Speaking of pro Nazi sympathies in pre-war Britain, there were a couple of real lalapaloozas .

 

[dhermann1]

She more than he, in all fairness. He was just into himself, basically.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

And she wasn't really into the fascist thing. She really was just fishing around for a way to grab power. I don't know if this goes some way to defending her or digs her further into disrepute. There's generally something a bit more disgusting who'll do something out of sheer opportunism than someone who actually Believes.

bk

 

[eniksleestack]

There were a lot of prominent Americans who got taken in by the Nazi sideshow too. Here's Charles Lindberg's German Eagle Cross he was given by Goring in 1938. The one he refused to give back until the shooting started.

Henry Ford got one too -- but I bet he never gave his back. Ford, GM, Coca-Cola, IBM and many other American companies did business with the Nazis and Mussolini's fascists during the dirty-thirties. Not probably because they all agreed with their politics, but mainly because the dictators we're buying.

Some companies like IBM kept communication channels open even during the war, for tech support.

There were also those businessmen who didn't like FDR's socialistic policies. In 1934 a plot was discovered to have a military overthrow of FDR backed up by executives from DuPont and JP Morgan. It all unraveled because they were trying to get the maverick US Marine Corps General Smedly Butler to help them and he went straight o Congress with the details.