Alan Clark 'was a Nazi'
Best read of the day award goes to Dominic Lawson and his demolition job on Alan Clark. It’s a refreshing riposte to the gushing surrounding the publication of the Tory bad-boy’s biography by Ion Trewin. We all enjoyed the diaries, but it’s worth remembering the unpleasant side of the man. Here’s an extract from Mr Lawson’s piece:
“He was indeed a notable historian of wars, one of his most acclaimed works being Barbarossa, an account of the Eastern Front in the Second World War. He was intent on proving Hitler’s talent as a military leader, but over the years it became clear that there was more to it than mere technical admiration of Hitler the war strategist. In 1981 his diary records: ‘I told Frank Johnson that I was a Nazi; I really believed it to be the ideal system, and that it was a disaster for the Anglo-Saxon races and for the world that it was extinguished.’
Johnson, who was then on the staff of The Times, gulps and tells Clark that he can’t really mean it. Clark really did mean it. But even when he complains in his diary that Johnson ‘takes refuge in the convention that Alan-doesn’t-really-mean-it’, his readers continue to believe that this is all an uproarious joke. Yet, and this is to his credit as a diarist, he does not attempt to mislead his readers about his true opinions: at one point he records his thoughts of defecting to the National Front, and when two NF emissaries come to visit him he writes, ‘How good they were and how brave [those] who keep alive the tribal essence’.”
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They tell us it’s new politics, but will it work?
May 13th, 2010 9:0128 Comments
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And to Theresa May the motor
May 12th, 2010 12:28
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The sun is shining, and football has finally been booted out of Downing Street – rejoice!
May 12th, 2010 11:29
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Governments change, government continues
May 12th, 2010 9:42
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Con-Lib is back on, which may be why Vince Cable has just been seen in the Treasury
May 11th, 2010 15:51
COMMENTS
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Isnt it funny how you get more right-wing as you get older
(with apologies to Fr Ted) -
I don’t care about Clark’s political views. His “Barbarossa”, which I have read several times, is a magnificent work. Even if he were an ardent admirer of Hitler his writing about the event was dispassionate. Indeed, it would take a spin doctor of considerable talent to make the Nazis out as successful, despite a reasonable beginning, in that campaign.
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At last somebody has said it. Actually, it’s been said before. The incomparable Craig Brown described Clarke as a `second generation mock toff’ and Auberon Waugh simply labelled him preposterous.
Clarke was a charlatan. He was a mock toff, a mock politician, a mock historian (remember `lions led by donkeys’ – a quote attributed to Ludendorff, which he made up) and a mock womaniser (anyone can score with ugly women).
A socially insecure a***hole.
Forgive my fence-sitting. -
He spoke very highly of you too Son of Boso!
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Dear me, the boy Dominic has come down in the world, writing for an unread leftie atheist rag like the Independent. Still, Clark is one person whom one can safely describe as a thorough sh**, and it’s good if Dom says so.
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Clarke was a nasty piece of work. A bully.
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No one who has read anything about Alan Clark could honestly describe him as a wonderful man and I am sure he could be perfcetly unpleasant and cruel. But that is to miss the point. Alan Clark’s popularity is founded because he represented the opposite of everything that makes us boil with frustration in New Labour’s nanny know’s best, finger wagging, puritanical state. We are lectured to by politicians, so terminally boring and dull, without a view on anything in case it loses them a vote here or there, about what to do and how to do it.
He had some views that some may have found distastful, but others may have found defensible. The point is not that he had those views, but that he was open enough to argue the toss and nail his colours to the mast. If more politicians took that line, then today’s politics would be a lot richer.
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NMCAV nails it. He dared to be horrible. He’s both repulsive and fascinating; I think the women in his life probably hated themselves, both before and after…