Lewis M. Weinstein's Blog, page 14
June 9, 2014
* Lew’s review of “Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power” by Henry Turner
*** This is probably the last major research I will do before beginning to organize and write Part Two of my new novel. It is a superb place to finish. Turner has done a magnificent job reporting the events and capturing the feelings of so many of the participants in the momentous events of January […]
May 12, 2014
* Lew’s review of SOLDIER OF CHRIST in which Robert Ventresca presents Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), in part knowingly and in part naively, playing a major role in Hitler’s coming to power.
*** NOTE: This review deals only with the first 86 pages of Ventresca’s biography including the events of 1932-33 which are the background to the next section of my novel-in-progress which I hope to write this summer. *** In his Prologue, Ventresca states “Pius XII has become an intensely polarizing figure … to some he is […]
May 10, 2014
* Germany’s Pursuit of Death Camp Guards
Germany’s Pursuit of Death Camp Guards LMW: In my opinion, it is far more important for German perpetrators and collaborators to admit their complicity and provide, as best they can, the reasons for their behavior, than it is to punish them at this late date. We are not done learning from these atrocities. I am hopeful that […]
May 9, 2014
* Lew’s review of “The Rise and Fall of Communism” by Archie Brown … the relevance of this communist history to Lew’s new novel
*** I only read the first few chapters, dealing with the origins of communism (surprise: read Acts of the Apostles 4:32) and its history in the 1920s and early 1930s. I am trying to understand the oft-stated argument that the Catholic Church’s support and tolerance of Hitler and his agenda was primarily driven by […]
May 7, 2014
* Lew’s review of David Kertzer’s “The Popes Against the Jews”
Kertzer presents a comprehensive, methodical, unemotional, fact-based examination that utterly destroys the assertions of the Catholic Church during and after the Nazi years regarding the links between the antisemitism of the Catholic Church and the indifference of many Germans and others to the extermination of Jews in the Holocaust. NOTE: Kertzer does not set out to prove that had […]
May 6, 2014
* James McPherson and Russell Banks on the role of history in a historical novel
NOVEL HISTORY is a book about writing concerned with the proper place of historical truth in a historical novel. Historians critique a series of novels regarding their historical accuracy, and the novelists get to answer. I just read the pages dealing with Russell Bank’s CLOUDSPLITTER, comprising first a short essay by the esteemed historian James […]
May 5, 2014
* Lew’s review of Nerin Gun’s “The Day of the Americans” … plus relevance for my new novel
Nerin Gun was a Turkish reporter who ended up imprisoned at Dachau. His book, published in 1966, offers stunning first-hand images of the day Dachau was liberated by American forces … *** three SS men are still on their turret … they have pivoted their machine guns in the other direction, away from us, and they […]
April 30, 2014
* Lew’s review (and quotes from) HITLER’S POPE … and the relevance to my novel-in-progress
Cornwell has written a devastating condemnation of Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII). So far, I have read the chapters describing Pacelli’s role in bringing Hitler to a position of dictatorial power by passage of the Enabling Act in 1933. To summarize Cornwell’s argument … Pacelli was fixated on reaching a Concordat with Hitler that […]
* Lew’s review (and thoughts for new novel) after reading Legacies of Dachau
Marcuse provides an excellent detailed study of Dachau when it was a concentration camp from 1933-45, and its continuing role as a reminder of the German depravity. There were several points regarding the postwar use that fit well with the observations my wife and I made at the “Terror and Fascination” exhibit in Nuremberg, which […]
April 24, 2014
* Nancy Petralia’s review of THE POPE’S CONSPIRACY … thank you, Nancy
Nancy’s review … I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The story of the plot to assassinate the Medici brothers is right in the sweet spot of Italian history that fascinates me. The author interweaves this historical account with the tale of a Jewish printer and his family who come to in Florence fleeing Spanish persecution. […]
