Chamblee54

PG listened to a radio show featuring John Lukacs, discussing his book The Hitler of History. The book has a lot of footnotes, and probably is not much fun to read.
LAMB (Brian Lamb, the host): All right. Here’s another one I wrote down. He was a thigh slapper.
Mr. LUKACS: Oh, well, that’s a very minor thing, but it has something to do with something very interesting. There is a photograph of Hitler that’s reproduced everywhere in history books. He’s dancing a jig. When the news comes to him that the French had surrendered, capitulated, that picture is fake. Long story behind this. There was a film strip with somebody faked up, you know, and so it gives the impression–makes him ridiculous, makes him jump up and, you know–no, he did not do this. He had a habit occasionally when he was very enthusiastic, very …slapping his thigh, you know. He didn’t do this very often. But that thigh s–slapping, through editing, through racing of the film, became a jig, and this enters many history books that Hitler couldn’t control himself, he was dancing a jig at this news. Not true. …
LAMB: How tall was he?
Mr. LUKACS: He was about–I can’t tell you exactly–I think 5’8″ or something like–5’9″. I tell you something that’s not in the book. I knew two people–don’t ask me who they were–who knew him rather intimately, two women. I knew other people who knew him, but they are very intelligent women. One of them’s a scholar, the other’s not, and don’t ask me their names. Both of them said, `You know, he had very ugly feet.’ This was news to me, a kind of feminine instinct. Independent of each other, they told me that.
There are some other things. Mr. Hitler never allowed himself to be photographed wearing glasses. Mr. Lukacs thinks the Winston Churchill had a great understanding of Adolph Hitler, which kept the allies from losing the war. Pictures for this post are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.