Was Adolf Hitler A Drug Addict?

“The moral danger is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding. …Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible. To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.”

Timothy Snyder author of ‘Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin’

When British humorist Alan Coren released his latest collection of comedic essays in 1976, he sought to increase his lolling sales by appealing to the high street reader’s predilections. Discovering that books on golf, cats, and the Third Reich tend to be big sellers, he aptly titled his book ‘Golfing For Cats’ (way before the time of internet cat memes) – and shipped it in a gaudy red book-cover with a big black swastika on the jacket.

Despite the opportunistic title and presentation, Coren’s subsequent long-term tenure as editor of the British satirical magazine, Punch, did more to cement his reputation as one of the more provocative – and at times unsavoury – figures on the UK comedy scene. The book has since drifted off into the afterlife – joining the millions of other out-of-print titles that you may be lucky enough to stumble across while deep diving into a charity shop bargain bin. The appeal of catching a reader’s eye – more so perhaps now in the crowded marketplace of ideas on social media – through the utilisation of the vulgar, indecent, and profane, has not changed one iota.

The age of clickbait and chumbox yellow journalism is upon us.