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Of late the Fuehrer is making a comeback of sorts. And
it’s happening in cyberspace.
Recently, an article written in 1938 in Homes & Gardens
magazine about Hitler’s Bavarian mountain retreat was serendipitously
dug out and put on the web. Simon Waldman, who is the director of digital
publishing for Guardian Newspapers, sighted this article in a back issue
of Homes & Gardens and decided to put it on his personal
blog at wow.blogs.com/words.
Overnight, it became a major hit and traffic burgeoned. Later, Waldman
complied with the magazine’s request to prevent unauthorised reproduction
of its material and expunged the article from his blog.
The story doesn’t end here. A Holocaust revisionist historian,
David Irving, who has been researching on Hitler for a long time and
believes the Holocaust never happened, resurrected the article on the
web. Check it out at www.fpp.co.uk/Hitler/house/Homes_and_Gardens_Nov1938.
The article depicts Hitler in flattering terms and praises him as a
highly multi-faceted and talented person, who was an architect, decorator
and raconteur.
Despite repeated protests by the international community, Irving refuses
to pull it off his website. He told Wired News, “If I suspect
that an attempt is being made to suppress an awkward item -- which I
suspect may be behind the Homes and Gardens effort -- then I would dig
my heels in rather more, and hold out as long as I could."
In the U.S, this incident has raised an interesting debate about the
right to information under the First Amendment of the Constitution and
of public interest. Not surprisingly, Hitler has been in fashion on
the Internet for a long time. Even today, in most of the top search
engines, enquiries about Hitler figure in the top 50 searches. Type
in ‘Hitler’ in Google and you’ll notice that it throws
up over 2.9 million documents.
Two of the most popular websites on Hitler are www.hitler.org
and www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler.
The former houses the Hitler Historical Museum and is dedicated to his
writings, speeches, art and posters. The site claims to be politically
neutral. While at the latter, 24 chapters delineate the rise of Adolf
Hitler from an unknown commodity to the dictator of Germany.
The Internet also is a treasure trove of information about the major
war criminals and their famous trial before the international military
tribunal—the Nuremberg Trials (1945-49). The Avalon Project at
Yale Law School is an encyclopaedic collection of documents related
to the Nuremberg Trials (www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm).
You can further delve into the nature and causes of evil unearthed during
the Nuremberg Trials at the Harvard Law School’s online library
at nuremberg.law.harvard.edu.
While Hitler remains one of the perennial favourites of die-hard surfers
the whole episode in question raises issues of morality and copyright
infringement. And the amazing reach of Internet. On that, lemme give
Waldman the final word. On his blog, he suggests, “I don't know...for
a couple of years I blog away in a quiet little backwater of the blogosphere,
barely registering among the Technorati, writing my all matter of things
to a daily audience barely big enough to fill a minibus. Then all I
do is scan in a few old magazine pages and put them up...and before
you know it...global media exposure.”
Such is the power of this great equalising and empowering medium.
Carry on surfing!
strehan@hindustantimes.com
27th September 2003)
