Back when I was working for HBO, I was invited to a
spiffy lunch thrown somewhere in Century City. This was in the early days of
them producing their own movies—long before The
Sopranos and Six Feet Under.
The one thing about that event that’s stuck to me ever
since was that they’d brought in some consultant to tell us what sells and what
doesn’t. And Nazis sell. Basically he said that if your movie or TV show has
“Hitler” or “Nazi” in the title, your audience increases by 15%.
So, I’ve been contributing to that statistic in recent
weeks, watching Nazis: Evolution of Evil
on (oh, I can’t even bring myself to name the channel. Go look it up if you
care).
This is clearly a UK production—all the talking heads are
Brits, although the voice-over narration is American. I really only watched the
first installment because, hello: Nazis, but I got kind of
hooked when Professor Frank
McDonough of Liverpool’s John Moores University started in on the German
Workers Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).
That was the organization that German authorities paid
Adolf Hitler to infiltrate and rat on. The group he eventually co-opted and
turned into the Deutsche Nationalsozialistische
Arbeiterpartei.
Here’s how McDonough described (in his unrepentant Scouse
accent) the DAP at the time Hitler joined: “They were basically two blokes and
a ferret.”
I think I’m in love.
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