Douglas Reed

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Douglas Reed (1895-1976) was a British 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 Second World War. According to his obituary in The Times, Reed was a "virulent anti-Semite." ^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 3 External links 4 References

[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. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, gaining a single kill in aerial combat and severely burning his face in a flying accident. (Insanity Fair, 1938) 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, later transferring 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 at the appeasement of Hitler after the Munich Agreement of 1938 and that following the Second World War], Reed retired to Durban, South Africa. In his Insanity Fair, Reed was informed that he had to leave Germany quickly, and there was concern as to his whereabouts in diplomatic circles.

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.

A contemporary reader mostly remembers Douglas Reed for his book "The Controversy of Zion". Ivor Benson wrote in its preface: “In Europe during the years immediately before and after World War II the name of Douglas Reed was on everyone's lips; his books were being sold by scores of thousand, and he was known with intimate familiarity throughout the English-speaking world by a vast army of readers and admirers.” He generalized: “Everything that has happened since Reed wrote those last sentences in 1956 has continued to endorse the correctness of his interpretation of more than 2000 years of troubled history.”

[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,1940)
• 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 (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 (Veritas, 1985)^[2]

[edit] External links

• Douglas Reed.co.uk Comprehensive compilation of his works

[edit] References

• Thurlow, Richard; "Anti-Nazi Antisemite: The Case of Douglas Reed", in Patterns of Prejudice (London, vol. 18, no. 1, (January 1984), pp. 23-34.