The Good Germans by Catrine Clay ..... on the wireless

I dislike national  stereotypes.

My maternal grandmother was German, both my mother and uncle were born there and served in the RAF, while my father's parents were Scottish.

Added to this I have an Italian partner, whose family embraced me and my sons with open arms.

So I have always been mistrustful of national stereotypes.

And no where is this more so than in how Germany is often portrayed.  

It starts with those comics which my generation read, which managed to show Germans as cruel heartless automaton, while at the same time being blundering fools who were easily duped.  

And from there it developed with countless politicians seeking to rubbish first the Common Market, then the European Community and finally the European Union, by in part rubbishing the entire German nation, who just did as they were told, made cars better than us, and were always on the beach before British holiday makers had started their eggs, bacon and fried bread.  

But laying aside the personal "bit" I have always been suspicious of those who trot out national characteristics, usually either to advance their own political agenda or out of an ignorance, which assumes that any one south of the English Channel or north of Berwick on Tweed is somehow inferior but also out deceive.  

So here for another sixteen days is a series from Radio Four which challenges the image of Germany fostered over two wars and in particular during that short but brutal period when the Nazi Party have seized power set about creating a totalitarian regime.

"Within six months of becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Adolf Hitler had disbanded all political parties, put a boycott on Jewish businesses and placed the Protestant churches under Nazi rule.

Yet two-thirds of the Germans had not voted for the Nazis and, as Jews began to disappear and the first concentration camp was opened at Dachau in Bavaria, many Germans found the courage to resist. They knew that, if caught, they would be subject to incarceration, torture or outright execution.

Catrine Clay argues that this was a much more widespread movement than has been previously thought. Teachers, lawyers, factory and dock workers, housewives, shopkeepers, church members, trade unionists, Army officers, Social Democrats, Prussian aristocrats, Socialists and Communists, resisters, who worked throughout the war to sabotage German armaments, to spread propaganda against the Nazis, and to try to assassinate Hitler.

This book offers a rare glimpse into the growth of this movement - a movement which brought disparate bodies together with one common aim, to save Germany by dismantling Nazism.

The episodes investigate the impact of the terror regime on ordinary ‘good’ Germans, on German Social Democrats and Communists, as well Jews - both in microcosm, in the domestic detail of resistance, and in macrocosm, as Germany’s relationship with Britain is brought into sharp focus prior to the outbreak of war.

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4".

I missed the series when it was first broadcast earlier in the month, but will be listening this week.

Pictures; from the photograph album of the Bux, Hall and Simpson family

*The Good Germans by Catrine Clay, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nd9j