Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder

I came across this book after reading an article by Timothy Snyder on the history behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In his piece, Snyder discusses the long history of invasion experienced by Ukraine and other Eastern European nations existing in the dubious space between belligerent powers. This is an area he explored more broadly in Bloodlands, the title of which refers to a swath of land roughly contiguous with Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine. where the vast majority of civilian death in the European theatre occurred between 1933 and 1945.

Much of this death was part of the Holocaust, but Snyder demonstrates that the Nazis were not the only genocidal force operating in that particular time and place. He provides a detailed rundown of the atrocities that the Soviets committed in these lands as well, from the imposed famine in Ukraine to the Great Terror to the purging of Polish intellectuals. He emphasizes that many of these places were subject to not just one invasion, but two or three, as the Nazis and the Soviets moved from allies to belligerents, and the Nazis from invaders to a broken, retreating army.

Of course, the Holocaust is given much focus, as its deliberate and racist intentions arouse particular loathing, but Snyder makes it clear that the Ukrainians and Poles were at times targeted almost as deliberately by the Soviets, if not with the same absolutist intention to eliminate them.

Snyder’s prose is academic but approachable, engaging and clear without much ornamentation. He had a tendency to repeat certain points, which I suspect is an effective way to ensure the general thesis is clear, though it sometimes grated a bit to hear the same fact several times. Overall, an important study of a particularly brutal stain on human history, one which it is hard to look at but must never be forgotten.

Too Naked for the Nazis: The True Story of Wilson, Keppel and Betty - Alan Stafford

I sometimes come across books through odd channels. In this instance, I read a review for a movie (I don’t even recall exactly which movie) that made a passing reference to the Sand Dance. Curious, I looked it up on Youtube, and found an intriguing video of two extremely thin men with fake moustaches in what likely would have bee described at the time as “oriental garb” doing a tap dance routine on a carpet of sand. After a bit more digging, I discovered the duo was really a trio, and that there was a book about them called Too Naked for the Nazis.

With a title like that, how could I resist?

As the full title suggests, the book tells the story of the vaudeville trio Wilson, Keppel and Betty, largely forgotten now but nearly a household name in Britain during their heyday. Wilson and Keppel began as a duo, but made an inspired addition of a talented young chorus girl named (or rather, stage named) Betty Knox. A young mother with a history as a runaway and a love of performing, Betty helped shape the act for over ten years before departing on good terms, lending her name to a host of other Bettys, including her own daughter.

The book chronicles the ups and downs of the troupe’s career, but the real star is Betty. We are treated to a description of her early life in much greater detail than Wilson or Keppel, and follow her in depth long after she leaves the trio. I can’t blame Stafford for this decision, as her life post-Wilson and Keppel was as intriguing as her life during her days with the troupe. Drawn almost by happenstance into journalism, she became a war correspondent, first known for her lighthearted articles on Anglo-American relations during the war, and later for her coverage of the Nuremburg trials, where her sense of justice for all, even former Nazis, earned recriminations from many in the press. To be clear, Betty was no Nazi sympathizer, but she felt that the trials of lower-level defendants lacked the rigor of true justice. She even claimed to have been writing a book to this effect, but the manuscript has sadly never been found, if it ever existed in the first place.

Stafford has a good, breezy writing style, unornate and clear. It reminds me of Irwin Chusid’s writing in Songs in the Key of Z: clearly the work of a devotee, but well researched and discussed without gushing. Too Naked for the Nazis provides a neat snapshot of a period in entertainment history far removed from what we have today, using one longstanding and widely celebrated act as a lens to view music hall as a whole. Recommended for anyone interested in such things.

The Berlin Stories - Christopher isherwood

This is a hard one to categorize. The Berlin Stories is a collection of two previously published novellas, Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, the latter of which is itself a collection of smaller stories surrounding, and closely related to, the principal novella, Sally Bowles. Despite this slightly hodgepodge origin, the book works as a thematic whole, and could in its way be construed as a single episodic novel with a consistent narrator, albeit one who changes names midway through. For Mr. Norris Changes Trains is narrrated by one William Bradshaw, a clear standin for the author, whereas the stories of Goodbye to Berlin discard the pseudonymic pretense and are simply narrated by Isherwood. There is even a character who appears in both books—the landlady, Frl Schoeder—offering further continuity.

Despite the name swap, there is no real difference in behaviour or voice between Bradshaw and Isherwood. They are effectively the same character, and both books have a very similar flavour, dealing as they do with misfits in the simultanerously glamorous and squalid Berlin of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Politics plays a part, but it is largely relegated to the background, despite isherwood (sorry, Bradshaw) and many other characters being closely involved with the German Communist party. The real focus instead is on the people, largely outsiders, with strange jobs and stranger hobbies, orbiting on the outer ridges of Berlin society. Many are apparently based on real people—including Mr. Norris and Sally Bowles, the standout pedestal protagonists of Trains and Goodbye, respectively. What their attitudes were to being so intimately captured in prose, I’m not sure.

Isherwood’s writing is superb, rich and elegant, evokative without being too showy. He has a way of capturing minute, superficial details in people that brings out something deeper from them—Sally’s nails, Norris’ teeth. I would be interested in reading his other works at some point.

Incidentally, I struggled whether to classify this as fiction or non-fiction. The works are clearly presented as novels, but based as they are on real people and event,s you could make an argument either way. In the end, I chose to call it fiction, for the simple reason that Isherwood catalogued it as such. Plus, it reads more like a novel, regardless of how much if any of it was invented.