My mother was a child in Nazi Germany and witnessed Hitler’s rise before she fled. I remember her telling us how people initially thought Hitler’s language was exaggerated for dramatic effect, to attract notice, to shake things up a bit, and for a time he was a comic figure. As it carried on and people became used to it, the language of racism and fascism became normalised, acceptable and eventually embraced. It wasn’t funny any more. David Lammy is right to call them out – stop it now.
Marcia Heinemann Saunders
London
• James Bloodworth (I have no time for the ERG, but David Lammy was wrong to compare them to Nazis, 16 April) reminds us of the good debating rule not to bring the Nazis into the equation unless you are talking about the actual Nazis. Yes, Lammy was clumsy but we would be wrong to look on Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf as having had little impact in the UK. My copy was one of 107,000 printed in English. Maybe this was the equivalent of Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time, bought by many and read by few but Hutchinsons, its well-respected publishers, claimed that “no autobiography has been issued for decades over which controversy has raged so bitterly”.
David Wardrop
London
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