Martin
asked
Jacqueline Winspear:
From your research on the background to 1933 did you learn anything useful as to how a demagogue could be stopped in their tracks?
Jacqueline Winspear
Hmmmm, that's an interesting question you've put to me, Martin. I think I learned the significance of what did not happen more than what actually happened. If you're talking about Adolf Hitler, a failing was that people at first thought he was a bit of a joke. Indeed, in his WW1 military career, he wasn't liked at all - the other soldiers didn't want to play nicely with him and he received very poor reports from his superiors. But what he later developed was a good line in rhetoric that resonated with the disenfranchised - and they were understandably bitter due to unemployment and everything that poverty can lead to, so one cannot blame them when someone came along promising to be their saviour. But there were many, many people who disagreed with Hitler, who did not trust him, and they thought it would all be OK because his "regime" wouldn't last - so they just waited for it to end. But he systematically shut down the press, locked up anyone who countered him and managed to turn neighbor against neighbor, pointing the finger at the designated "outsiders." And he wanted to take over the world. But he never did really help those who elected him to power (unless you count the work of being in the army and sent to the Russian front) - look at the desperate state of the German people at the end of WW2. It was a human tragedy, along with all the other human tragedies of that regime and that war. The epigraph I chose at the beginning of A DANGEROUS PLACE was a quote from Albert Einstein: "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." There were many concerned people who thought Adolf Hitler would just wither and go away, that those sounding the alarm in a vociferous manner should just be quiet and let it go until things got better again - they thought they would wait it out, and so they did nothing. Then it was too late. Sometimes trying to keep the peace leads to war, to even more disenfranchisement, poverty and lack, it seems. That was what I learned from the events of 1933 onwards, and of course a whole lot more! As an aside, when I sat in the beer hall in Munich (not officially "open for business" at the time) where Hitler made that first big speech, the one that set him on his way, I learned that almost everyone there was completely drunk.
More Answered Questions
Carolinecarver
asked
Jacqueline Winspear:
How did you decide to choose WWI as your setting and time? It's lovely to watch Maisie's transition from young, tentative child to confident investigator. Did you have this in mind from the beginning or has she evolved as you started writing? The crime map is important to the cases; do you use a story map to plot your books?
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