Alan Furst Quotes
I write about the period 1933-42, and I read books written during those years: books by foreign correspondents of the time, histories of the time written contemporaneously or just afterwards, autobiographies and biographies of people who were there, present-day histories of the period, and novels written during those times.
Furst, Alan. "A Conversation with Alan Furst." The Spies of Warsaw, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2009.
He had abdicated and was serving as the Governor of the Bahamas at the time. While the public was given the reason for has abdication as his love for a divorced woman, his pro Nazi viewpoints which were not publicly known in England, made him unacceptable and his treason a danger to England at war with Nazi Germany.
“Lord Haw Haw” was the name that he used in his propaganda broadcasts from Germany to England. Despite the fact that the broadcasts were anti-British and pro German, many in Britain listened to him regularly. He was very witty and many of his criticisms of British society were views held by many patriots in Britain. As pure entertainment, he was better than most of the BBC broadcasts during WWII. At the end of the war, Joyce was captured, tried and executed for treason.
A little over a decade later the struggle began.
The military security people were so used to ferreting out communists in the 1930s that they had a hard time adjusting to the fact that the security risks or people who might have German connections or backgrounds. Many immigrant scientists were recruited for work on the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb and they only did security clearances. The military security people kept checking on any communist background they might have had as opposed to possible connections with fascist organizations. By the end of the war they had adjusted but then had to go back to looking for communists as the Cold War evolved.
Although a fervent Nazi, he detested Hitler. When Hitler consolidated power, one of the first things he did in 1934 was to order his guards to murder Strasser, just as Strasser had feared.
She, like her husband and many of the America Firsters, believed that Hitler should be allowed to overrun Europe and Russia. See {613688}. The America First group was a pro-fascist organization who supported the axis powers until they declared war on the United States. Even then, there were some Nazi sympathizers who were anti-immigrant, racist and anti-Semitic in addition to being fascists. Both of the Lindberghs were America Firsters
Alan Furst (/fɜːrst/; born 1941) is an American author of historical spy novels. Furst has been called "an heir to the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene," whom he cites along with Joseph Roth and Arthur Koestler as important influences. Most of his novels since 1988 have been set just prior to or during the Second World War and he is noted for his successful evocations of Eastern European peoples and places during the period from 1933 to 1944.
