Historians spar over Hitler

Richard J Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University and author of several books about Hitler's Germany, wrote a scathing review of A N Wilson's biography of the Fuhrer, saying that the book was littered with factual errors and was "absolutely valueless".

Publication of the review prompted an increasingly bitter war of words between the two which culminated in Wilson telling Evans, "The war is over. Hitler is dead. Get a life." The spat played out in the pages of the New Statesman, where Prof Evans' review of Hitler: A Short Biography appeared on March 12, the Telegraph reported.

"It's hard to think why a publishing house that once had a respected history list agreed to produce this travesty of a biography," Evans wrote, claiming that Wilson used only English-language sources because he could not read German.

The professor said that while novelists and literary scholars have found new and provocative things to say about Hitler, "there is no evidence of that here, neither in the stale, unoriginal material, nor in the banal and cliche-ridden historical judgements, nor in the lame, tired narrative style; just evidence of the repellent arrogance of a man who thinks that because he's a celebrated novelist, he can write a book about Hitler that people should read, even though he's put very little work into writing it and even less thought. He hit back with two letters to the New Statesman.

In the first, he accused Professor Evans of writing a "spiteful review", claimed a knowledge of German and said the examples singled out by the critic were "not, strictly speaking, errors". A week later, Wilson conceded that the book contained "a few howlers" but defended his work.

"He wrote a rather silly review of my book, now he writes to claim that I can't know German — else, why do I only cite English books? As a matter of fact I do cite German books in my end-notes," he said.

"A generalist writer with no pretensions to expertise, but who does happen to know German, writes a book on Hitler. A don who thinks Hitler his special subject feels unaccountably ruffled. Why? I made a few howlers which have already been corrected in the reprint. Thanks, Evans, for pointing these errors out, though they were all minor. The war is over. Hitler is dead. Get a life, poor Evans,” he added. — ANI

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