YESTERDAY afternoon, The Times published a story that revealed that a German historian had discovered that the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, had received a donation of 10,000 Reichsmarks from Adolf Hitler to thank him for praising the Nazi regime for hosting the forthcoming 1936 Olympics.
It’s a good story, but to my eyes – and to those who have kindly read my book Berlin Games – it’s not news. That book was published sixteen years ago, and in it, I revealed how the Nazis had effectively bribed the impecunious de Coubertin in May 1936 to endorse the Olympics.
Naturally, when I saw The Times story, I got into a bit of a huff, and tetchily tweeted about it, complete with photographs of pages from my book to show that I had got there first, and that the German historian hadn’t really discovered anything new.
After sleeping on it, I now wonder whether I should have been the bigger man, and just let it go. I don’t suppose that the historian had been acting in bad faith, and I suspect it was more a case of oversight. I’m not going to harangue him for not reading my book – it is sadly not yet published in German – and besides, the historian’s research has added a new element to the episode.
However, being the bigger person and letting things go, is not, I am afraid in the nature of many historians when they feel another historian has stolen a bit of their glory.
Although being peeved about such a thing is surely understandable, what is surely less acceptable is when historians get immensely proprietorial about other historians writing or commentating about what they see as ‘their’ topic. Fans of Viz magazine will readily equate this behaviour with the similarly proprietorial Farmer Palmer, who angrily entreats people to get orf his laaa-aand.
It’s easy to see why historians get like this. They can spend years – perhaps all their professional lives – researching, writing and broadcasting about a topic, and as a result, they feel an immense sense of ownership. So when some whipper-snapper turns up and starts looking at the same topic, it can feel like trespassing.
Of course, in an ideal world, historians should actively welcome as many people as possible researching ‘their’ topic, as that will clearly increase understanding, but many historians – including myself! – are all too human, and want our topic all to ourselves. (I really hope scientists don’t behave like this. Perhaps they do.)
Perhaps the most egregious example of this sort of ‘farmerpalmerism’ was the treatment my friend Hallie Rubenhold received from the self-styled community of ‘ripperologists’, who spent years haranguing her as soon as they found out she was writing a book about Jack the Ripper’s five victims. The ripperologists clearly did not like Hallie ‘straying’ onto ‘their’ historical topic – in short, she was a trespasser.
Things don’t often get this bad, and historians do try – but often fail – to behave in a collegial fashion and welcome through gritted smiles when a rival discovers something they’ve missed.
So I promise that the next time someone claims to have discovered something about one of ‘my’ topics, I shall do my very best not to moan about it on Twitter.
Even if I got there first.
I think this can apply to any piece of work where you’ve invested time and energy and seen it hijacked. I won’t elaborate but I recently wrote a guidance document that went on the web, following a spell of critical feedback, rewriting and much huffing and puffing on my part. I was browsing the web at a later date for some info and found a document that was strangely familiar… my efforts had been nicked and repurposed. I’m still not sure whether to be pleased because they thought it was a worthy piece of guidance, or annoyed because of all the aggro I went through to write it without any credit! Hey ho.
Well Walt – couldn’t agree with you more! Been happening to me for years. But it isn’t always historians who fail to give credit. Sometimes it’s governments!
In 1978 I wrote to The US Department of State telling them I thought I had located two bars of Reichbank gold, missing since 1945. Could they please help and investigate? Nope! I didn’t give up and in 1983 with some help from the Sunday Times I finally got their attention. The Department of State said they would investigate (although they knew nothing about it!) and could I send them all my records and research material which I did.
By March 1985 State reported it had been unable to ascertain the disposition of the gold bars so they were going to approach the German government to see if they could help.
Fast forward to May 1997. Bank of England issue a press release saying they had received 2 bars of gold bullion in September 1996 which were identifiable as the two bars of gold that I had written about in my book Nazi Gold published in 1984. Yes, the same two! So, I wrote to State to ask what was going on. Unfortunately, the Assistant Legal Adviser who had been ‘dealing with it’ from 1978 died in July 1997 and the new guy couldn’t tell me what had happened.
I only found out a couple of years ago that the two bars had been turned over to the US government by the German government in an official ceremony on the 27th September 1996. And I wasn’t even invited!!! How bad is that? There was a cover up by the British, US, German and French governments. I have the papers now but not a single acknowledgment from the US government. However, on a brighter note, the Secretary General of the Tripartite Gold Commission, knew the whole background and arranged for me to see, handle and be photographed with ‘my’ Nazi Gold in the gold bullion vaults of the Bank of England.
Here's another one. In 2010 the US Congress sanctioned the official publication of a book entitled Hitler’s Shadow – Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War. The preface states the book has ‘produced new evidence of war crimes ….post-war documents on the search for war criminals….
One section is devoted to ‘The Cases of Eugen Fischer and Anton Mahler’. This is the opening paragraph. ‘The cases of Eugen Fischer and Anton Mahler, two senior Gestapo officers in Munich and Augsburg, demonstrate similarities to the Barbie case. Historians have known about this since the 1980s that the CIC had relationships with them. But their CIC files provide many new details’. This is suffixed by Note 41 which does cite my book ‘America’s Secret Army -The Untold Story of the Counter Intelligence Corps’ published in 1989.
However, that casual nod is totally inaccurate because in a 1989 edition of World War Investigator (a magazine I had formerly owned) the lead article, splashed on the cover, is ‘America’s Gestapo Network’. Seven pages including the ‘new’ CIC files and a list of questions for the US Government on the case. So, if you read that story you didn’t have to wait another 21 years to learn what I had already exposed in great detail.