The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92687 Message #1775290
Posted By: LadyJean
04-Jul-06 - 12:55 AM
Thread Name: BS: The British who fought for Hitler
Subject: RE: BS: The British who fought for Hitler
There was, of course, Unity Mitford and her family, who referred to Hitler as "Hittles". That's almost funny. Poor Unity shot herself when England declared war on Germany. But she survived for a couple of years.
P.G. Wodehouse was living in France when the Germans invaded. He was interned as an enemy alien. So, he did what any writer would do, he began a chronicle of his experiences as an internee. I've read some of his pieces. They are classic examples of Wodehouse's low key humor. The Germans don't come off looking very well in them. He has a lovely description of the very fat camp commandant climbing a hill. Wodehouse was asked if he wanted to broadcast his essays. The United States hadn't joined the war yet. Wodehouse had lived in the U.S. He had a number of friends over here, and he decided that this would be a good way to communicate with them. So, he told the world about the fat camp commandant, and other entertaining items. (If Nazis had any brains, they wouldn't be Nazis.) Wodehouse was denounced as a traitor, by his fellow Britons. You will still read that he was a quisling who made propaganda broadcasts. Like all internees, he was released when he turned 60. (His roommate at the camp, a piano tuner, was released at the same time, because he was also 60. Though, as Wodehouse pointed out, he had tuned no German pianos.) Like most people from his generation, he had friends in Germany, and he spent the rest of the war with them. Afterwards he left England for the U.S. and remained here until he died. 30 years after Hitler fell, Wodehouse was knighted. He was past 90 then, and too old to attend the ceremony. The true irony of this is that Wodehouse had satirized the British Facists. The moronic Bertie Wooster falls afoul of the head of the Black Shorts. Jeeves saves him by telling him that the Facist owns a lingerie store. Find the story. It's a howl!