5 Feet of Fury

‘Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich’: the UK’s obsession with books about Nazis

BBC News:

The late Alan Coren famously published a collection of humorous pieces in book form, called Golfing for Cats. And he put a swastika on the front cover. He had noticed the most popular titles in Britain in those days were about cats, golf and Nazis.

That was in 1975. Thirty-six years on – and now more than 60 years since the end of World War II – Nazi books are going stronger than ever. A staggering 850 books about the Third Reich were published in 2010, up from 350 in the year 2000. (…)

The stand-up Henning Wehn, who styles himself Germany’s comedy ambassador, recounts the fact that on his first visit to Britain, he turned on the television and it happened to be showing a documentary about the war.

What were the chances of that? He now knows there are always programmes on about the war. Some channels seem to play nothing else.