Hanns and Rudolf, by Thomas Harding – review

Confronted by this lavishly endorsed book — ‘compelling’ (David Lodge), ‘gripping’(John le Carré),‘thrilling’ (Jonathan Freedland) — I felt depressed. Two weeks ago, the New York Times’s savvy London correspondent accused the British of being obsessed with the Nazis. This might appear a case of pots and kettles: not for nothing did America’s widely watched History Channel become known as the Hitler Channel. Nevertheless, Sarah Lyall had made a valid point. A stupefying 830 books on the Third Reich were published in the UK in 2010 and — although no figures are yet available for 2013 — a reduction any time soon seems unlikely.

Germany’s history of genocide is unforgivable. Still, how many more books, over what period of time, do we require to remind ourselves of that fact? What new detail can we possibly need to learn about Auschwitz and the dreadful kommandant whose memoirs were first published in England in 1959 and are still readily procurable today? (Death Dealer, available, with giftwrap, on Amazon for around £7.