Many people collect antiquities, paintings (the rich do), stamps, coins and notes, Coca Cola memorabilia amongst other things. Military souvenirs are also highly sought after, items such as medals, caps, badges, epaulettes and straightforward military items, such as bayonets, shell casings etc. There is nothing on this planet that someone is not collecting and most collectors form societies and associations. So, what was the row about? Nazi memorabilia to be precise.
A Bray auction house had acquired from two different private collectors a trove of Nazi memorabilia, which they intended to put up for auction. Amongst the items to be sold were some plaques of Hitler, an armband, uniforms and other stuff from the period. It was part of a wider sale, which included a blanket from the H-Blocks, signatures of all the Apollo Space Programme astronauts, the cutlery used by Michael Collins before he was shot in the Irish Civil War. It quickly became quite controversial. The basic argument put forward was that it was immoral to trade in Nazi memorabilia that as Oliver Sears, the son of a camp survivor put it:
A Bray auction house had acquired from two different private collectors a trove of Nazi memorabilia, which they intended to put up for auction. Amongst the items to be sold were some plaques of Hitler, an armband, uniforms and other stuff from the period. It was part of a wider sale, which included a blanket from the H-Blocks, signatures of all the Apollo Space Programme astronauts, the cutlery used by Michael Collins before he was shot in the Irish Civil War. It quickly became quite controversial. The basic argument put forward was that it was immoral to trade in Nazi memorabilia that as Oliver Sears, the son of a camp survivor put it:
There is an abundance of such material in museums around the world and, if there is a place for these items, that is surely where they belong.Mullen's sale also includes personal photographic albums, which may well include historical data that is significant and worth documenting, professionally. However, making money out of such material is immoral and unethical.
There is a very good reason why most auction houses refuse to handle this material, including Sotheby’s, Christies and Bonhams. Simply put, this material is tainted beyond any mitigation or redemption.[1]
The auction house has defended itself.[2] He makes valid points about the material and photographs. They probably should be in museums or libraries that we can all consult, though war memorabilia is so abundant there are not enough museums in the world for all of it, only for some of it. That could also apply to almost any conflict and no one is proposing this. The point seems to be his last comment of the material being beyond mitigation or redemption. This goes to the uniqueness of the Holocaust argument. It is a weak argument. There was, sadly, very little unique about it and it is beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about it. But suffice to say the Armenians would quibble that the genocide carried out by the Turks was not equally terrible. There are no bans on Turkish memorabilia from that period. Likewise, Mike Davis wrote a book called Late Victorian Holocausts, whose title says it all. And yet anything from the Victorian period is collectible, and the more it has to do with Victoria and the British Army the better. And of course, there is no ban or outcry on the collection from the Mau Mau period in Kenya or France’s brutal war in Algeria. These, apparently, are not tainted beyond redemption.
The items may be distasteful to some. I would not collect them and yet we surround ourselves with the Nazi memorabilia every day and no questions are asked. Have you ever wondered why the Nazis and the Wehrmacht looked so dashing in the films and even documentaries? Well, because they were. They had a great designer to hand: one Hugo Boss. Boss had joined the Nazi Party before it came to power. His company was failing and was rescued by Hitler who gave him the contract on the German armed forces, and the Nazi Party uniforms. The result is that stylish swagger we know from Hollywood and the yuppies who wear his modern versions. I am personally in favour of confiscating all of the company’s assets and no more modern Nazi apparel on our streets, tough to be fair, I don’t think they currently do a line in Jackboots, but place a big enough order for your dictatorship and Hugo and the boys will be happy to supply them. Likewise, with Krupps and Siemens, two companies that were intimately bound up in the Nazi war machine.
Krupps was intimately involved in Germany’s rearmament, before the Nazis came to power. Alfred Krupp was open about this.
I knew German history well, and out of my experiences in the rest of the world I believed to know the German kind; therefore, I never doubted that, although for the time being all indications were against it, one day a change would come. How, I never knew or asked, but I believed in it. But with this knowledge -- and today I may speak about these things and for the first time I am doing this extensively and publicly -- with this, as responsible head of the Krupp works, consequences of the greatest importance had to be taken. If Germany should ever be reborn, if it should shake off the chains of Versailles one day, the Krupp concern had to be prepared again.
I wanted and had to maintain Krupp, in spite of all opposition, as an armament plant for the later future, even if in camouflaged form. I could only speak in the smallest, most intimate circles about the real reasons which made me undertake the changeover of the plants for certain lines of production for I had to expect that many people would not understand me…
After the accession to power of Adolf Hitler I had the satisfaction of being able to report to the Fuehrer that Krupps stood ready, after a short warming-up period, to being the rearmament of the German people.[3]
And yet, whilst it is distasteful to buy Nazi memorabilia, the heirs of the Nazis are in all our homes. Siemens was another company, that got rich off of not only the war, but of slave labour, provided to them by the Nazis, and even had a factory at Auschwitz itself. The company that made the gas used by the Nazis I.G. Farben dissolved into various companies such as Agfa, BASF and Bayer, companies that are also present in one form or another in our homes. So, the empty gas cannister to be sold at Mullens is distasteful, but those Bayer medicines[4], or printed materials from Agfa[5] or the incredibly wide range of products offered by BASF[6] are ok. All these companies make money and their status and power are connected to their role under the Nazis. IBM was a powerful company whose technology contributed enormously to the industrial precision of the Holocaust. But it is an American company and so we should leave them alone and where would we be without computers? The list of companies is quite long.[7] Though Coca Cola is not on the list, it did in fact collaborate with the Nazis. It produced Coca Cola under the Nazis, supplying it to the German public and the armed forces complete with the Swastika and a play on the Nazi slogan of ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuhrer (One Nation, One People, One Leader) substituting ein Fuhrer for ein Getrank, Coke es ist (One Drink, Coke is it). During WWII as supplies were running low, Coca Cola GmbH came up with a new drink for the Wehrmacht and the Nazis, and they called it Fanta.[8] Coca Cola memorabilia is more than an obscure collector issue, it is a major industry. And yet no concerns are raised about it either, not even the Nazi posters, bottles and other stuff.
What happened at the Mullens auction was virtue signalling. Nothing more. Perhaps there should be no trade in Nazi memorabilia, but it is hard to take that claim seriously when the heirs of Nazism openly sell their wares everywhere and are in all our homes. If there is to be a ban on trading in these items, it would make sense to do the same with memorabilia of the British and French empires, the US army, particularly stuff from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan and let’s not forget wee Belgium whose King Leopold II murdered 10 million Africans when the Congo was his own personal estate. There were plenty of coins produced during his reign, both in Belgium itself and also in the Belgian Congo. More recently a commemorative Euro coin was struck in his honour in 2007 with a nominal value of 12.50. However, it was a commemorative non circulating coin made of gold (.999) and goes for about 130 euros. No one ever complains about people who collect the old coins minted during his reign and less still about the Euro coin minted in his honour, which is actually a serious political problem. One thing is to collect Leopold memorabilia from the past and another to issue new coins with his murderous visage gracing it. Though, some of the older coins go for about 400 to 500 euros. So, if like the Nazi memorabilia the problem is with its sale, then a similar problem should surely arise with King Leopold II, an equally murderous and despicable character.
I also collect notes and coins. My collection is of historical figures I admire that appear on them, people like Fidel Castro, Ho-Chi Minh, Adolphe Saxe, Joseph Conrad and Chopin amongst others. There are no Hitlers or Mussolinis in my collection as I do not admire them. Though they don’t actually appear on many coins or notes, just a few, both of them were more into having their faces on commemorative medals. The one fascist dictator to place his ugly mug on currency was Franco. The other two are more to be found on stamps and I was once offered some Hitler stamps by a Jewish trader I know in Bogotá. I declined and bought some nice stamps of Ché Guevara instead.
The follow up article deals with the politics of producing coins and notes, rather than the collecting of them and what is says about a country.
[1] The Irish Mirror (06/03/2023) Nazi memorabilia for sale at Irish auction criticised by son of Holocaust survivor. Cathal Ryan.
[2] See.
[3] A.K. Krupp cited in Nuremberg Trial Defendants: Gustav Krupp Von Bohlen Und Halbach
[4] See.
[5] See.
[6] See.
[7] See Wikipedia for a list of companies involved in the Holocaust.
[8] See, Pendergrast, M. (2013) For God Country and Coca Cola. Basic Books. New York. Chapter 13.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist in Latin America.
That piece caught my eye.
ReplyDeletePeople should be free to collect whatever they want, normal exemptions applying While not a collector myself I think there are memorabilia which I would find worth having because of their historical connotations. It would not mean any identification with the politics that gave rise to the memorabilia in the first place. If we buy it in a stall then the chances of it being used to reward the Nazis or any other vile entity are no greater than buying anything else. We looked through a lot of Nazi memorabilia in Krakow a few years back, even trying one of the helmets on while thinking 'this could have been to the Eastern Front and the wearer dead.' One reason to buy second hand books on occasion is to ensure that what I pay goes to the bookshop and no royalty goes to the owner. I bought David Irving books on WW2 in a SVP shop which meant the few euro went to it and not as royalties to him.