Posted: Oct 21, 2011 12:01 pm
Historical investigation requires methodical processes not conducive to journalism. If the current stories about the skull are correct, it is still quite an ambitious leap to conclude that Hitler did not commit suicide, still more that he went into exile elsewhere. Speculative history is fiction.
Journalists (and this is who we are dealing with re the History channel and alas, 'pop-history' / 'pop-investigation' books), love this stuff because it gets an audience. Reality in history tends to be far more boring as a rule.
I have read the book in question, and to me it offers nothing new except its limited use as a consolidation of various re-warmed breakfasts masquerading as new evidence.
The objections raised citing evidence against the main thrust of the book (i.e. contemporary witness testimony etc.) are very real ones, and wound the argument mortally IMHO.
In a way this book reminds me of ‘In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion’ by Clement Leibovitz & Alvin Finkel. This book was also lapped up by an audience willing to believe the contents (including one Christopher Hitchens who wrote the forward in one of his less-lucid moments). Those who pointed out its inaccuracies / assumptions were also ‘closed minded’ etc. etc. Chamberlain had his undoubted faults, but a Nazi collaborator? Please!
As for the ‘Hitler’ skull evidence astonishing ‘scientists’, well either the astonished scientists (whoever they are) need to get out more maybe or accept that Soviet forensic science in the 1940s may have been open to error. Well duh. This doesn’t seem quite so earth-shattering to me, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
Journalists (and this is who we are dealing with re the History channel and alas, 'pop-history' / 'pop-investigation' books), love this stuff because it gets an audience. Reality in history tends to be far more boring as a rule.
I have read the book in question, and to me it offers nothing new except its limited use as a consolidation of various re-warmed breakfasts masquerading as new evidence.
The objections raised citing evidence against the main thrust of the book (i.e. contemporary witness testimony etc.) are very real ones, and wound the argument mortally IMHO.
In a way this book reminds me of ‘In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion’ by Clement Leibovitz & Alvin Finkel. This book was also lapped up by an audience willing to believe the contents (including one Christopher Hitchens who wrote the forward in one of his less-lucid moments). Those who pointed out its inaccuracies / assumptions were also ‘closed minded’ etc. etc. Chamberlain had his undoubted faults, but a Nazi collaborator? Please!
As for the ‘Hitler’ skull evidence astonishing ‘scientists’, well either the astonished scientists (whoever they are) need to get out more maybe or accept that Soviet forensic science in the 1940s may have been open to error. Well duh. This doesn’t seem quite so earth-shattering to me, but whatever floats your boat I suppose.