Hitler

"He died a couple of years ago. He was the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . He was a very grand German journalist who also wrote marvellous history books . It’s beautifully written and very astute about him. Obviously he finds him to be an appalling individual. He spends a lot of time talking about whether or not he’s a ‘great’ historical figure , who made a huge impact on his time. I’m ambivalent about that since all he left were ruins and dead people. But it’s a brilliant biography of him as a politician and warlord. It’s a life of the man rather than an attempt to do the times and somehow to put the man in it. Germans do fewer biographies , in fact. Here and in the US there is so much about fascism because it indirectly bolsters the left as the force of anti-fascism. Nazis provide the left with their anti-fascist credentials."