In my teens, I read:
"'...that is the way of the Boche. He's never so happy as fouling another's nest.'"
-Dornford Yates, Cost Price (London, 1949), CHAPTER I, p. 19.
"'...German hands are too filthy to finger such a treasure.'
"Be sure I agreed with him."
-(ibid., p. 20)
"'Austria is a gentleman: Germany is a cad.'"
-op. cit., CHAPTER IX, p. 277.
"'Jonathan's right,' said Jenny. 'Germany is a cad. She is the cad of Europe, as England is the peer.'"
-ibid.
(Jenny Chandos is a beautiful character but, like all of Yates's heroes and heroines, she is a mouthpiece for her author's opinions and for no others. Yates was living in France but had to get out before the Germans arrived.)
I regret to record that I did not regard these remarks as reprehensible. How was I being brought up? Two American sf writers to the rescue: first, James Blish told me that he liked many things about Germany, including the language. Secondly, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol reflects that Nazism:
"...would not, could not have come to power in the country of Bach and Goethe, except through the unique genius of Adolf Hitler."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1935, p. 424.
Bach and Gothe: filthy cads?
2 comments:
Large chunks of the National Socialist attitude and program were circulating in Germany long before Adolf.
In fact, with the single (but of course important) exception of trying to kill all the Jews, Germany did much the same things in WW1 as in WW2.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I agree, the prejudices nations can have of one another can be bad and irrational. But sometimes I found some of them amusing: e.g., I think the French used to say English people had tails!
Mr. Stirling: It does make me wonder what might have happened in OUR timeline (not the Black Chamber's) if the US had not intervened in WW I (or done so only in 1918)? Would the Central Powers have won the War? Possibly, but perhaps not as DRASTICALLY as we see Germany doing in your BLACK CHAMBER books. For one thing there was no nerve gas at that time.
That bungler, Woodrow Wilson, was President then, not the vastly more able Theodore Roosevelt. And Wilson did not conquer Mexico. A very different timeline would result!
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment