Michael Burleigh
Tropical Frenzy
The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism
By David Olusoga and Casper W Erichsen
Faber & Faber 400pp £20 order from our bookshop
For successive generations of British people, German militarism was symbolised by the spiked Pickelhaube helmets of the Prussian ‘Hun’ and the coal-scuttle Stahlhelme which became general throughout the Weimar Reichswehr and Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Camel-dung brown shirts are not so salient in the sumptuary roll of terror. The Storm Section (or SA) acquired them as a job lot of army surplus: they had been destined for General von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops in German East Africa, one of the colonies Germany forfeited under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency