Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener’s historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all ‘make’ history.
Programme 3
17 April 2007
Holidays with the Third Reich
Making History listener Mary Johnson has some photographs of her father as a 23 year old on holiday in Germany.
What interested Mary was that this was in 1937 and her dad was a left-wing Labour voter who never went on holiday abroad again and spent 4 years as a Prisoner of War during the Second World War. What was he doing visiting the Third Reich she asks?
Nick Baker put this question to Petra-utta Rau of Portsmouth University.
Germany was an important holiday destination in the thirties. Much cheaper than the UK and easily accessible by boat from Harwich, it was a place that many middle class and a few working class people could afford to visit. So, as well as the well-documented fascination with Nazi Germany in certain quarters of the British aristocracy, there was also a more innocent tourist trade which was heavily exploited by the German propaganda machine. Petra-utta Rau says that Thomas Cook received payments from Goebbels' propaganda ministry from 1934-1937 to help advertise trips to Germany and that in 1937 the 'contribution' was as high as 50,000 Reichsmark to produce a brochure advertising the beauty of the German landscape with seemingly depoliticised images. This is an example of the kind of advertising seen in Britain at the time:
Whether or not Mary Johnson’s father was aware of the true extent of the Nazi’s excesses at this time, though, is difficult to establish. Petra-utta Rau reminded the programme that the Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933 and in 1937 anyone with just a little understanding of the German language would have understood the signs outside many German towns and cities discouraging Jews from entering.
If you have any family archives of trips to Germany in the 1930’s then please contact the programme.
Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich Kristin Semmens University of Victoria, Canada
Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2005
ISBN: 1403939144; price £50.00
Thomas Cook in Germany
Archivist Paul Smith explained that Thomas Cook wasn’t actively recruiting for the Third Reich, the company had been organising tours to Germany since the 1850’s.
Contact the Thomas Cook archive:
Thomas Cook Archives
The Thomas Cook Business Park
Coningsby Road
Peterborough
PE3 8SB
United Kingdom
Homeopathy as an ‘alternative’ medicine.
Dr Elizabeth Hurren of Oxford Brookes University explained the historical roots of homeopathic practice and how it fell victim to the 1858 Medical Act which promoted greater regulation of British medicine but also, in her opinion, created a cartel for the now established, scientific mainstream. For example, in workhouses following the Medical Act 1858 the Poor Law Board stated that the Guardians could employ no Medical man unless qualified in both medicine and surgery. Poor Law Doctors were to hold two formal qualifications. The General Medical Council was also established at this time, to act as a regulating body.
Many well-known Italian football clubs have supporters’ groups known as ‘ultras’. It was the ‘ultras’ of AS Roma who were involved in violence with Manchester united supporters during the recent quarter-finals of the European Champions League. David Gould told Making History that the present-day Italian football hooligans may have taken the name ‘ultra’ from the Bourbons in nineteenth century France, but the real influence was the left-wing student protests of 1968. In recent years though, largely because of changing social and circumstances in Italy, these supporters groups have veered towards supporting the right.
Italian Ultras Today: Change or Decline? Authors: Roversi A.; Balestri C.
Source: European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, Volume 8, Number 2, June 2000, pp. 183-199(17)
Vanessa has presented science and current affairs programmes for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for BBC Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.
Contact Making History
Send your comments and questions for future programmes to: Making History BBC Radio 4 PO Box 3096 Brighton BN1 1PL
Vanessa has presented science and current affairs programmes for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for BBC Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald. 