"Old
Pickering School House"
Valley Park Road
Williams' Corner
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania 19460
21 March 1972
Dear Mr Toland,
I am very grateful for these enclosures, and I
much enjoyed talking with you last week,
I should be very glad to spend more time with you
re Hitler. A few years ago I entertained seriously the
idea of doing a Hitler biography. But I am not doing too
well with commercial publishers (though my books are
being published by them) and I would need a year or more
off. Perhaps not more, because I have a rather large
personal library, (I live in the country, and it is a
pleasant place, less than an hour from Philadelphia, and
you are most welcome to visit me and spend a day or an
evening,) A little mere than two years ago I wrote a
piece on Hitler for the N Y Times Sunday Magazine, on the
occasion of the 25th anniversary of his death. It was
(and is) one of my better articles but they did not take
it; my agent liked it v. much and it was then that I
mentioned a Hitler book and he went on the phone and then
and there we learned about
the Irving contract (with a $35,000 advance) just then
concluded, So I said & thought, forget it, But my
fascination with H. remains.
I am inclined to be convinced that H's parental
grandfather was Jewish, but my conviction rests on
intuition and interior reasoning rather than on external
documentation I'd be glad to talk to you about this some
time, It is connected with my knowledge to the effect
that his relationship to the Jewish "problem?' was not as
simple and as emotional as almost everyone thinks (which
does not mean, of course, that it was not the most
powerful, and perhaps central, obsession of his
life.)
In this respect I find the Bloch interview &
article extremely interesting & even moving, on
occasion. I think it wd be worth while for you to track
down Dr Bloch's descendants and get hold (a) of his
papers (b) of some of their reminiscences. (Did you ever
read George Orwell's few remarks on Hitler? they shd be
available in the new collected O. edition. He was
attacked by Mary McCarthy for it -- of course,)
Stephanie Hohenlohe's memory is fading (it was
never too accurate) if you want her address I can let you
have it. The OSS interview is largely useless, though I
am most happy to have it -- for once, her memory is
correct while Hanfstaengl's is wrong. Re Skorzeny -- more
in person (though I do not have v. much). I shd advise
you to look up a Quadrangle paperback, Schramm, ed. on H,
as military commander -- v. good, Repeat that I'd like
very much to meet you again,
Very sincerely,
John Lukacs
John
Lukacs
* She never was H's mistress,
but a go-between, a kind of social-diplomatic
butterfly.
write
to David Irving
