Douglas Reed
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Douglas Reed (1895-1976) was a journalist, playwright, novelist, and author of a number of books on political analysis. His book Insanity Fair (1938) was one of the most influential in publicising the state of Europe and the megalomania of Adolf Hitler before the war. According to his obituary in The Times, Reed was a "virulent anti-Semite."
[edit] Biography
At the age of 13, Reed began working as an office boy, and at 19 a bank clerk. At the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted in the British Army. Around 1921 he began working as a telephonist and clerk for The Times. At the age of 30, he became a sub-editor. In 1927 he became assistant correspondent in Berlin, he then transferred to Vienna as chief central European correspondent. He went on to report from various European centres including Warsaw, Moscow, Prague, Athens, Sofia, Bucharest, and Budapest.
According to Reed, he resigned from his job by expostulant letter in protest of appeasement of Hitler after the Munich Agreement of 1938. Following the Second World War, Reed retired to Durban, South Africa.
Richard Thurlow noted that Reed was one of the first antisemitic writers to deny Hitler's persecution of the Jews. In a review of Reed's Lest We Regret written in 1943, George Orwell compared Reed's outlook to that of the Nazi Otto Strasser and the fascist Oswald Mosley, stressing Reed's continuing denial of Nazi persecution of the Jews.
[edit] Works
- The Burning of the Reichstag (1934)
- Insanity Fair: A European Cavalcade (Jonathan Cape, 1938)
- Disgrace Abounding (do., 1939)
- Fire and Bomb: A comparison between the burning of the Reichstag and the bomb explosion at Munich (do., 1940)
- Nemesis? The Story of Otto Strasser (do.)
- A Prophet at Home (do., 1941)
- All Our Tomorrows (do., 1942)
- Lest We Regret (do., 1943)
- The Next Horizon;: Or, Yeomans' Progress, novel (do., 1945)
- Downfall (play)|Downfall, play (do., 1945)
- From Smoke to Smother (1938-1948): A Sequel to Insanity Fair (do., 1948)
- Somewhere South of Suez (do., 1949)
- Far and Wide: A further survey of the grand design of the twentieth century (do., 1951)
- The Battle for Rhodesia (HAUM, 1966)
- The Siege of Southern Africa (Macmillan, Johannesburg, 1974), ISBN 0-86954-014-9
- Behind the Scene (Part 2 of Far and Wide) (Dolphin Press, 1975; Noontide Press, 1976, ISBN 0-911038-41-8)
- The Grand Design of the 20th Century (Dolphin Press, 1977)
- Galanty Show, novel
- Reasons of Health, novel
- Rule of Three, novel
- Prisoner of Ottawa
- The Controversy of Zion (Noontide Press)
[edit] References
- “Anti-Nazi Antisemite: The Case of Douglas Reed”, by Richard Thurlow in Patterns of Prejudice (London, vol. 18, no. 1, (January 1984), pp. 23-34.
