As if on cue, The World At One on Monday (Radio 4) ended with a short (too short) interview with an Austrian documentary film-maker who recently made a film about Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary to Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. The announcement of her death in Munich, aged 106, prompted the conversation, which happened to follow all the stories about the repercussions of President Trump’s executive order banning those from certain countries from entering the US. The significance was not lost on the ever-astute Martha Kearney.
Florian Weigensamer described Pomsel in great age as ‘just incredible’. She was ‘quick-witted, funny, a great storyteller’. But, said Kearney, ‘She was working at the heart of the Nazi machine, wasn’t she?’
‘She was not one of those avid Nazis,’ replied Weigensamer. ‘She was just one of those millions of followers that the system was built on…’
He went on to explain, ‘She ended up working for one of the worst criminals in history just because she always looked the other way, and just because she was looking for her own advantage, and just because she always led a very selfish life.
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