Nazi textbook painted Britain as land of Fascists
The English-language book, published in 1942, paints Adolf Hitler as a man of peace and dwells at length on Britain’s class inequalities and “atrocities” committed in Ireland and India.
However, it also celebrates British landscape and culture, in particular the works of Shakespeare.
A rare copy of the work, entitled “Hirt’s Englandkundliches Lesebuch fur die Oberstufe an Oberschulen” (“Hirt’s English textbook theory for colleges and high schools”), will go on sale at auction this week.
The book’s front cover is illustrated with an idyllic picture of the River Avon and Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwick, where Shakespeare was baptised and buried....